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decrease, although, like whooping cough, it is not notified; but I
am not aware that we are entitled to claim any credit for the
reduced mortality. The diminished diarrhœal mortality may be
attributed in considerable measure to the coldness of recent
summers, and may therefore be regarded almost as accidental.
It is when we come to scarlet fever and “fever," that the real
grounds for satisfaction appear, these being the diseases which
admit, the latter of mitigation by improved sanitary arrangements,
and the former of control by early isolation by removal
to hospital. And what do we find ? That the deaths from
fever in the second period were 108 less than the number in the
first period, without correction for increase of population, and no
fewer than 448 after such correction; and that the reduction in
respect of scarlet fever, without correction, was 383, and with
correction no fewer than 1053. But it will be observed that in
the first ten years of the first period no deaths from diphtheria
were recorded, although the table commences in 1859,
the year in which diphtheria was first registered as a separate
disease. I am unable to account for the omission, except
upon the assumption that no deaths from diphtheria were
registered in Kensington—a somewhat improbable assumption
—there being no records extant. I have thought it
fair, therefore, to bracket scarlet fever and diphtheria in
the two periods respectively, for comparison; and thus
adding the deaths from diphtheria to the deaths from scarlet
fever, only 23 in the first period, and so many as 213 in the
second period, we observe in the second period an absolute
reduction in the number of deaths, amounting to 193, the
reduction corrected for increase of population being 878.
Taking the “seven" principal diseases of the zymotic class
together, there appears a corrected reduction in the number of
deaths in the second period of no fewer than 1441. In other
words had the rate of mortality from these diseases been the same
in the second period, 1871.82, as in the first period, 1859.70, there
would have died 1441 persons in the twelve years more than did
die; or 120per annum—the difference between the actual annual