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14 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
of the case before those uneducated classes, where
the omission usually arises, would be to procure
Coroner's inquests every year in respect of some
half dozen or more instances where the evidence of
neglect might happen to be glaring.
In the fifth column of the table stand recorded a
hundred deaths by the poison of erysipelas, in one
form or another; arising sometimes spontaneously,
sometimes in connection with the child-bearing
state, sometimes in sequel of accidental lesions and
surgical operations.
My daily experience as a Surgeon, especially as a
Hospital-Surgeon, enables me confidently to speak
of these diseases as an artificial product of unhealthy
exterior conditions. The contrasting results
of surgical operations in town and in country
—of operations undertaken amid pure ventilation,
in spacious cleanly rooms and dry localities, with
those undertaken under opposite circumstances (in
the dwellings of the poor for instance, or wherever
else amid damp, dirt, and over-crowding) and the
similar experience which exists as to the origination
of puerperal fever, would be quite conclusive as to
the fact, that of the 101 deaths under this head,
a large majority might have been prevented.
Next, in the sixth, seventh and eighth columns,
stand deaths arising in the chief acute diseases of
infancy, those to which the disproportionate mortality
of infants is mainly due. Many careful
statistical observations, as well as personal