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1,942 persons between the ages of five and sixty-five years
and 904 above sixty-five years of age died in St. Pancras in
1880.
The year has been characterised by a mean temperature
very slightly in excess of the average mean temperature of
the last ten years—a heavier rainfall than the average of
that period, and a slight diminution of dryness of atmosphere.
The proportion of deaths from pulmonary diseases (other
than phthisis) and from tubercular diseases to deaths from
all causes has been below the average proportion which these
deaths have borne to the total deaths during the last six years.
The same fact may be stated with regard to deaths from the
wasting and convulsive diseases of infants. On the other
hand, the deaths from the seven principal zymotic diseases
thus calculated show a very slight increase upon the average
of the same period.
ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
Before giving an account of the number of cases of infectious
disease which occurred in St. Pancras during 1880, it
will be well, very briefly, to refer to one of the most important
arrangements which exist in the metropolis for the prevention
of this cause of mortality, viz., hospital provision; and
it will perhaps bo permissible, in the twenty-fifth report of
your Medical Officer of Health, to notice, in passing, the
efforts which have been made in past times iu St. Pancras
for this purpose.
The first parish to erect a hospital for infectious diseases
was St. Pancras. As early as the year 1802 we find that
"much good had been done by a parochial fever-house,
established by the Vestry of St. Pancras." Later on the
only special hospital provision for the whole of London was
due to the private charity of the supporters of the London
Fever and London Small-pox Hospitals. At a later stage
the Guardians paid these institutions for the maintenance of
paupers sent to them while suffering from infectious disease,
and later still, with a view to increasing the accommodation
which the Guardians found necessary for such paupers who
were stricken with fever or small-pox, the Metropolitan
Asylums Board was formed.
The Vestries, as a rule, made no provision for those who
were not paupers, although the duty of giving opportunity