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83
The Somers Town and Kentish Town sub districts suffered
far more heavily from diarrhoea than the other sub-districts.
How far any proportion of this excess may be due to a
proportionately larger infantile population in these two districts
cannot be seen until the full Census Report is published,
and the numbers of people at different ages in each district
known.
It will be observed that until the twenty-seventh week in the
year, but comparatively few deaths were registered from this
disease; but from this date to the thirty-third week inclusive,
the mortality from diarrhoea was considerable.
During this interval a very large majority of the persons
who died were infants under one year of age. The diarrhoea
which occurs at other periods of the year does not show as
special an incidence upon infants as does the diarrhoea of the
period to which I have referred. There is something therefore
about the diarrhoea of this period which tends to indicate
that it has a cause different from that which produces the
diarrhoea of the rest of the year; whatever this cause may be,
it is more powerful in its action in towns than in rural districts,
and in some towns than in others.
The cause has been said to be the artificial feeding of
children, the poisoning of houses from imperfect sewers, the
use of impure water, associated with certain meteorological
conditions.
That high temperature is intimately associated with the
existence of this disease there can be no doubt, but I have
failed in St. Pancras to find any evidence that would lead me
to conclude that children brought up by hand suffer more
than children wholly breast-fed.
"With regard to the statement that any local condition of a
sewer is a cause of atumnal diarrhoea, I have arranged the
streets in which deaths from diarrhoea have taken place in
three years in St. Pancras, so as to show whether any particular
streets are liable to this disease. In eighty-six streets,
in which two or more deaths from diarrhoea took place during
three successive years, this event happened in each of these
years but once, and occurred a second time in the same street
but twelve times.
Whatever cause may produce this heavy mortality among
children, there is much probability that it is in some way or
other associated with the putrefactive changes whieh take
place in hot weather, and the necessity, therefore, for
cleansing of roads, the frequent removal of house dust, and
for enforcing general cleanliness in streets and habitations is
clearly marked.