View report page

80
to other specific eruptive fevers, and they encourage the hope that
in time a remedy may be found for this great scourge of the
human race. The diseases in this order were the registered
causes of 442 deaths, viz., 374 in the Town sub-district, and 68
in Brompton, 169 of the deaths being of children under five years
of age. The numbers in the four quarters of the year respectively
were 111, 126, 104 and 101; 212 in the winter and 230 in
the summer quarters. Not uncommonly "phthisis" is returned
as the cause of death in the earliest infancy, a period of life at
which tubercular disease usually manifests its presence in other
parts of the body, e.g., brain and bowels, rather than in the lungs.
Such deaths are here classified with those properly certified due
to scrofula and tuberculosis, the total being 48, of which 35
occurred under five years of life, and only 3 were registered in
the Brompton sub-district. Tabes mesenterica, popularly known
as "consumption of the bowels," was the cause of 59 deaths
(56 under five years of age): 13 of them in Brompton.
Hydrocephalus (water on the brain), and Tubercular meningitis
were the causes of 91 deaths—11 in Brompton, and 76 under
five years of age. Phthisis, the variety of the malady known as
"decline" or "consumption," was the cause of 244 deaths,
irrespective of the deaths of non-parishioners at the Consumption
Hospital, which will be referred to later on. Two of the deaths
occurred under five years of age, six between 5 and 15 ; and 231
between 15 and 65, viz., 42, 65, 67, 40 and 17, in the five
decades respectively : five deaths were registered at ages over
65. The quarterly numbers were 56, 70, 47 and 71; of the total,
203 belong to the Town sub-district, and 41 to Brompton. The
deaths from tuberculous diseases generally were disproportionately
more numerous in the Town sub-district, less than a sixth having
occurred in Brompton, which contains little more than a fourth
of the population—a fact which may be explained in part
by the relatively small proportion of children, and of the poorest
classes, in this sub-district. It is probable, however, that the deaths
ascribed to tubercular diseases do not comprise all the deaths that
might justly be attributed to diseases indicating the tubercular
diathesis, and that many deaths of young children classified to
such causes as premature birth, atrophy, debility, convulsions,
&c., are primarily due to the scrofulous taint. In many instances