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79
Order 1. Diathetic.—The fatal diseases were Goat, 4
deaths ; Dropsy, 7 deaths, Mortification, 7 deaths, and Cancer
112 deaths, viz., 79 in the Town sub-district, and 33 in
Brompton. The deaths from Cancer appear to be on the
increase, the numbers in the previous 7 years having been 67, 74,
69, 88, 79, 95 and 90. The deafhs from this disease in
Brompton are more numerous in proportion to population than in
the relatively poorer Town sub-district. Cancer is quite as
common among well-to-do people, or even more common, considering
how limited are the numbers in this class, than amongst the
poorer classes. The parts of the body most commonly aifected
are the viscera or internal organs; in women, the uterus and the
breast, the malady being most common in later life. Ninety-four
of the deaths took place at ages above 45. It may be right to
mention that in Table 3 the deaths of persons who had cancer are
classified to Cancer irrespective of the question whether any other
disease was named in the medical certificate, and of the question
whether cancer was the immediate cause of death.
Order 2. Tubercular.—The diseases included in this Order
are amongst the most important with which sanitarians have to
deal, and the degree to which they prevail in a given district may
be regarded, in some sort, as a test of the healthiness or otherwise
of the people. Generally hereditary, these diseases are nevertheless
susceptible of considerable amelioration under improved hygienic
arrangements. Scrofula is unknown in Hygieapolis! Sunlight
and pure air; efficient drainage and its corollary, a dry sub-soil;
good food, warm clothing, and temperance in all things, are powerful
antidotes to the bane of tubercle, which is fostered by the
opposites—by squalor and dirt, by cold and nakedness, by vice
and intemperance, by the want of the proper necessaries of life,
by over-crowding in ill-constructed, unventilated, and sewagetainted
houses, and, in a word, by whatever is inimical to the
maintenance of a typical condition of health. The cases that
occur in the well-to-do classes, it has been the custom to say, are
usually traceable to the influence of heredity, but modem
researches, which have thrown great light on the origin of tubercle,
raise a presumption that tuberculosis may be really an infectious
disease, a specific fever of slow progress with a veiled resemblance