View report page

22
believe that some of the cases returned by the Registrar.General
as typhoid fever were not cases of enteric fever, the word typhoid
having been employed in medical certificates of the cause of
death to describe a condition of the patient in the last stages of
fatal illness of a nature entirely distinct from enteric fever.
Simple continued fever cansed 15 deaths (8 under five years),
viz., 11 in the Town sub.district and 4 in Brompton. The
deaths in 1873 were 7 and 1 respectively in the two districts.
Diarrhoea was less fatal than in 1873, the deaths being in that
year 145, and in 1874 only 112. The annual average number in
ten years was 111, without allowances for increase of population.
The deaths last year in the two sub.districts were 90 and 22 ; in
the previous year 121 and 24. The large majority of fatal cases
occurred in infancy, viz., 100 under one year and 8 between one
and five. Above 65 years of age the deaths were 4. At intermediate
ages there was no death. The principal mortality was experienced
in the warm summer weather, viz., in July 38, and in
August 31. Five deaths from Cholera were registered, viz., 3 in
the Town and 2 in Brompton.
Other Zymotic Diseases.—Croup was the cause of 26 deaths,
25 under five years, and all save one in the Town sub.district.
The deaths in the previous year were 20.
Erysipelas caused 21 deaths, viz., 13 and 8 in the Town and
Brompton respectively. The deaths in 1873 were 24.
Puerperal Mortality.—Some difficulty is experienced in procuring
a correct record of the deaths arising out of or connected
with childbed, owing to the fact that reference to the previous
occurrence of childbirth is sometimes omitted in the medical certificate
of the cause of death. Some of the deaths, therefore, registered
as Peritonitis, Pyaemia, Erysipelas, and even under less suggestive
headings, may have been connected with the puerperal state.
The deaths actually ascribed to childbed diseases were 24, other
14 being set down to the various accidents incident to that critical
period. These numbers together represent a mortality
somewhat below one per cent. (0.87) on the births registered.
Dr. Matthews Duncan, the successor of Sir James Simpson at
the University of Edinburgh, has promulgated an opinion that
the true average mortality of the puerperal state is one
per cent, i.e., one death in every hundred confinements; an
estimate which a practitioner in this parish, who has a most
extensive midwifery practice, tells me coincides with his personal
experience. The causes of death as registered were:
—Puerperal fever, 4; Puerperal peritonitis, 9; Pyaemia, 5;
Septicaemia, 1; Metritis, 4 ; Pelvic cellulitis, 1. Eighteen
of the deaths occurred in the Town sub.district, the mortality
being pretty evenly spread over the parish, and none of the
cases being traceable to contagion. They occurred in the four
quarters respectively as follows—9, 6, 5, and 4. The ages at
death were: 20—30 years, 18; 30—40 years, 4; 40 years and
upwards, 2.