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31
and sex distribution, even then the variations in in the rates
from 1881-1800 were as great as from 2.250 per million for
London to 1,574 for Monmouthshire. The incidence of Cancer
upon the Finchley District is happily below the average figure
for England and Wales.
Consumption (Phthisis).
During the year the Council has taken a very important
step with the object of adopting measures to reduce the sickness
and death resulting from Tuberculosis, by making that
disease voluntarily notifiable in the District. Pulmonary
Tuberculosis (Consumption) causes one-ninth of all the deaths
in Great Britain and one-sixteenth of the total deaths in
Finchley. If there had been no Consumption t he
average length of life for each individual born would
have been lengthened by 2½ years and the working
period of life would be lengthened on the average by very
nearly 2 years. During the past two or three years several
London Boroughs have taken a similar action to Finchley,
but Finchley must take the credit of being one of the first of
the London suburbs to adopt this valuable measure. Tt
is surprising that it has been left so late in the day for Local
Authorities to make some organised attack upon this largely
preventable disease. As one writer has put it. " Try to fancy
that some 150.000 of our people are kept in some dreadful
bondage, and that every year some 60,000 of them have to
submit to the pain of death at the hand of some unrelenting
foe. Would it not be thought worth a little trouble to adopt
some direct plan of campaign against this enemy, and would
it be considered possible that any Government would refuse
to sanction the expenditure of money necessary to assist in
an attempt promising a fair amount of success?"