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attacks. On an average of the past nine years one death
represented 33 attacks. The intensity of disease was
therefore greater than the average during the past year.
The facts disclosed by an analysis of the foregoing statistics
of mortality and sickness furnish evidence that the
health of the Sub-district during the past year was in a
lower condition than has prevailed on an average of the
past nine years. The higher death-rate was dependent
upon the prevalence of an unusually large amount of
epidemic diseases —those diseases which it is the especial
province of sanitation to diminish and prevent.
The special diseases from which this lowered vitality
resulted were fever and diarrhœa, but essentially the latter
disease, which was three times more fatal than the average
since the cholera year 1854.
This unusual fatality from Diarrhoea, compared with that
of former years, indicates that the fears which have been
entertained by sanitarians of the probable advent of Cholera
arc not unfounded, and presents a caution, which, from its
significance, ought not to be disregarded, against permitting
the existence of conditions which arc known by experience
to propagate and favour the development of this fatal
disease. The most active of these, as conclusively proved
by much experience, is the use of impure water. The
question of a water supply to this Sub-district is fully discussed
in my first annual report (185G), to which I beg to
refer the reader. (Vide also Supplemental Remarks in the
Appendix to this Report.)
SANITARY PROCEEDINGS.
In addition to the general sanitary proceedings, a summary
of which is contained in Table VI in the Appendix,
the slaughter-houses and cow-houses were examined and
specially reported on.*
The practice of lime-whiting and otherwise cleansing un-
* In common with the rest of the Metropolis this Sub-district suffered from the
effects of the Cattle Plague, which, between December, 1865, and March in the present
year caused the destruction of 25 head of cattle. The disease was confined to three
dairies, two of which were situated in the town and the third in Summerstowp.