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lung caused 40 deaths as it did, also, in 1957. Deaths attributed
to coronary disease numbered 166 compared with 138
in 1957 and 144 in 1956. For the ninth year in succession
there has not been a single case of diphtheria in the Borough.
There were no cases of paralytic poliomyelitis and only one
case of non-paralytic disease. Sixty new cases of tuberculosis
were notified during 1958 as against fifty during the previous
year. The year under review was a measles year and a considerable
epidemic commenced in September and continued
into the early summer of 1959. During 1958, 1,246 cases
were notified but only six cases were treated in hospital.
Infectious diseases throughout the ages have shown a
rise and fall in incidence due to many and complicated
factors which are not fully understood. This matter is, however,
of great significance from the administrative point of
view as well as from the standpoint of the health of the community.
As a result of the provision of pure water supplies
in the middle of the 19th century, the enteric and diarrhoeal
diseases generally were largely overcome. Scarlet fever, which
in the 19th century and early part of this century was one
of the main killing diseases, is, nowadays, a disease of little
importance. Smallpox has been largely overcome by stringent
supervision at sea and air ports and by the instrument of
vaccination, although the possibility of an epidemic is always
present, so that the greatest vigilance is necessary at all times.
The last great epidemic of diphtheria occurred in the early
1930s and was thought to be due, largely, to an increase in
the virulence of the diphtheria organism. The introduction
of mass immunisation in the middle of the 1930s together
with great improvements in environmental and personal
health have, practically, abolished this disease, although
small outbreaks of virulent type do occur from time to time
in different areas. The need to keep the level of immunisation
of children at a high level has often been stressed. It is, of
course, possible that any deterioration in environmental conditions
resulting, for example, from war conditions or other
calamity might bring all or any of these diseases back in
an enhanced form.
Nowadays the main hazard is due to the virus diseases,
of which poliomyelitis is the best known example. There are
reasonable grounds, however, for optimism that the mass
immunisation of the young population may, before long,
in some way alter the relationship between the virus and
the human organism, but it is too early, yet, to say whether
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