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17
The number of Scarlet Fever admissions to the Asylums'
Board Hospitals was 412, as compared with 76 in
the previous year. The total deaths from Scarlet Fever
belonging to this district was 99, as compared with 23
in the previous year. It follows therefore that either a
large proportion of the cases were removed to hospital,
or Scarlet Fever was of a less fatal type than in the
previous year. Probably both of these suppositions are
correct. In the whole of London, 1,447 deaths from
Scarlet Fever occurred, which gives a lower death-rate
from this disease than in any except the two immediately
preceding years. The number of cases admitted into
the Asylums' Board Hospitals, which had been 1,399 in
1885, and 1,789 in 1886, rose to 5,933 in 1887. Thus
the deaths from Scarlet Fever were, during 1887, twice
as many as during 1886 ; but the number of cases admitted
was more than three times as many.
In 1887, of the 1,447 deaths from Scarlet Fever in
London, 500 occurred in the Asylums' Board Hospitals,
and 27 in the London Fever Hospital, equal to 36.5 per
cent, of the total deaths, as compared with 22.6 per cent,
in the previous year.
The Compulsory Notification of Infectious Diseases
has formed the subject of a special report, which we
have the honour to append. The time seems ripe for its
adoption in the Metropolis, and we hope that next year
we shall be able to state that steps have been taken in
this direction.