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correction, 388, 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, there being no records extant,
except upon the somewhat improbable assumption that no
deaths from diphtheria were registered in Kensington in
those ten years. 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,
only 23 in the first period, and so many as 213 in the second
period, to the deaths from scarlet fever, we observe in the
second period an absolute reduction of 193 in the number of
deaths from the two diseases, 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 120 per annum—the
difference between the actual annual average number, (413),
and the number corrected for increase of population, (533).
The zymotic death rate, I may add, which in 1859-70 was
3.6 per 1,000 persons living, fell to 2.8 per 1,000 in 1871-82;
the deaths from these diseases, moreover, which in 1859-70
were 18 per cent. of total deaths, were only 15.4 per cent. in
1871-82.
Other causes doubtless, besides notification, contributed
to bring about this satisfactory result, and we must not
forget, as regards enteric fever, that this disease, under
improved sanitary arrangements, has "continuously and
notably declined in England during recent years." Chief
among these causes, and one, in my judgment, even superior