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understated if all the facts were known. One death of a child 12
months old was registered as "Syphilis (Vaccine), 7 months." Without
questioning the accuracy of the diagnosis as to the nature of the fatal
disease, there appears good reason for doubting whether vaccination had
anything to do with the illness. At any rate a careful inquiry made
with the assistance of the vaccination officer led to no positive result,
for I could not learn whether any other children had been vaccinated
from the same child as the deceased, or whether the lymph from the
arm of the deceased had been employed for vaccination. The case
occurred in private medical practice.
Order 3.—Dietic Diseases.— Eight deaths were attributed to the
diseases in this order, viz , Purpura and Scurvy, 2, and Alcoholism, 6.
Five of the deaths attributed to drink occurred in the Town sub-district.
The registered cause of death in three cases was delirium tremens, and
in other three intemperance. Many deaths really due to the abuse of
alcohol appear on the registers as having been caused by diseases
which doubtless had been set up or aggravated by drink.
Order 4.—Parasitic Diseases.— Nine deaths in the first year of
life (six of them in the Town sub-district) were due to Aphtha (Thrush),
the only fatal disease named in this order.
Class 2.-CONSTITUTIONAL DISEASES.
The second great class in the Registrar General's tables, viz., Constitutional
diseases, comprises the causes of 605 deaths; 498 in the
Town sub-district, and 107 in Brompton—122 above the number
registered in 1877. This class includes two Orders, viz , (1) diathetic
diseases, 101 deaths; and(2) tubercular or scrofulous diseases (including
phthisis) 504 deaths.
Order 1. Diathetic Diseases.—101 deaths.— The fatal diseases
were Gout (4), Dropsy (9), Cancer (79), Cancrum oris (4), and Mortification
(5). Twenty of the deaths occurred in the Brompton sub-district,
including 18 due to cancer.
Order 2. Tubercular.— Total deaths 504, viz., 417 in the Town
sub-district, and 87 in Brompton. Scrofula and Tuberculosis occasioned
59 deaths; 8 in Brompton. Tabes mesenterica (popularly called "consumption
of the bowels") 61 deaths—3 in Brompton. Phthisis 299
deaths, 238 in the Town sub-district, and 61 in Brompton. Hydrocephalus
(water on the brain), and Tubercular meningitis 85 deaths—
15 in Brompton. As usual the deaths from these diseases were