View report page

78
Order 2.—Enthetic.—Syjjhilis in some form or other,
generally hereditary, was the registered cause of 14 deaths: 10
in the Town sub-district, and 4 in Brompton. Eleven of the
victims were infants under one year old. Probably if the truth
were known this Protean malady was accountable for a much
larger number of deaths. Stricture of the Urethra occasioned
two deaths in the Town sub-district.
Order 3.—Dietic.—Deaths registered 26, viz., from Want of
breast milk, 8; Purpura and Scurvy, 3, and Alcoholism, 15;
the registered cause in 5 cases being delirium tremens, and in
10 cases intemperance. Twelve of the deaths attributed to the
abuse of alcohol occurred in the Town sub-district. It is hardly
necessary perhaps, to say that if all the deaths due directly and
indirectly to the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors could be
ascertained "Alcoholism" would occupy a much more important
position in the "Bills of Mortality;" but many deaths due to the
abuse of alcohol get registered as having been caused by visceral
and degenerative diseases, secondary in their character, which have
been caused or aggravated by "drink." Man's ingenuity in the
discovery of alcohol is accountable for a large share of the misery
of his race. "Drink" is the fruitful parent of vice and crime as
well as being the cause of much bodily sickness, mental trouble,
moral degradation, ruin, and of many premature deaths : it fills
our prisons and workhouses, our asylums, our hospitals, our
cemeteries and, though happily to a decreasing extent, our
National Exchequer!
Order 4. Parasitic.—Ten deaths, 9 in the Town sub-district,
and seven of them in the first year of life, were caused by Aphtha
(Thrush), and one by Worms.
Class 2. Constitutional Diseases.
The second great Class in the Registrar-General's classification,
viz., Constitutional Diseases, comprises the causes of 572 deaths,
nearly 20 per cent. of total deaths: 467 in the Town sub-district,
105 in Brompton, and 170 under five years of age. The number
in 1881 was 571. The class includes two orders (1) diathetic
130 deaths (2) tubercular (or scrofulous), including phthisis, 442
deaths.