Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Wood Green]
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cause of death, being responsible for as many as 175 deaths, or
over 30 per cent. of all the deaths. Of these deaths from heart
disease, almost three-quarters occurred in persons over 65 years of
age, which indicates, as I have remarked in previous reports, that
in old persons heart failure is very commonly stated as the cause of
death without any proof being given that organic disease of the
heart necessarily existed. Cancer came second as a cause of death,
with 69 deaths, and was followed by pneumonia, with 35 deaths,
tuberculosis, with 32 deaths, and cerebral haemorrhage, with 25
deaths. The deaths due to influenza numbered 21.
The number of deaths due to the principal zymotic diseases,
enteric fever, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough and diarrhoea (in children under 2 years), was only two,
diphtheria and whooping cough being responsible for one death
each. The Zymotic Death Rate was 0.04 per 1,000 of population,
as compared with 0.18 for the previous year.
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The number of deaths occurring in children under 12 months
of age was 32, and the Infantile Mortality Rate 53 per 1,000 live
births. This is not so good as in the previous year when the number
of infantile deaths was 28, and the Infantile Mortality Rate 41.
The Rate for the whole country during 1933 was 64, and for the
118 great towns, 67.
The individual causes of the infantile deaths and the age at
which death took place, are shown in Table V. The table shows
that of the total infantile deaths, no fewer than 13, or more than
one-third occurred within one week of birth and almost two-thirds
within one month of birth.
MATERNAL MORTALITY.
Only one mother died during the year as a result of childbirth.
The death in this case was due to septic broncho-pneumonia and