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97
Class 3.—Dietic Diseases
Were the causes of 12 deaths, all save two in the Town sub.
district. Want of breast milk was the. cause of 3 deaths; and
Starvation of one. To Scurvy no death was assigned. Chronic
alcoholism and delirium tremens were the registered causes of 6
and 2 deaths respectively. Six 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 many
premature deaths : it fills our prisons and workhouses, our
asylums, and hospitals, our cemeteries, and, though happily to a
decreasing extent, our National Exchequer !
Class 4.—Constitutional Diseases.
This important class of diseases comprises the causes of 545
deaths (=20.2 percent. of total deaths): including 123 of children
under the age of 5 years, 437 in the Town sub-district, and 108
in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the heart caused six
deaths; Rheumatism, 8. In the previous year, 23 deaths
were assigned to the cause, rheumatism. In my report
for that year I stated that “In the majority of fatal cases
of rheumatism the immediate cause of death is disease of
the heart arising in the course of the malady, and many of the
deaths from heart disease that occur in the later periods of life,
might justly be ascribed to rheumatism as primary cause,