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72
diseases," no deaths having been registered from these latter
causes.
Class 3.—Dietic Diseases
Were the causes of 18 deaths, 12 of them in the Town subdistrict.
Want of breast milk was the cause of 8 deaths. To
Scurvy no death was assigned. Chronic alcoholism and
delirium tremens were the registered causes of 8 and 2 deaths
respectively; eight of them in the Town sub-district. It is
scarcely necessary 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 prominent position in the" Bills of Mortality; "but
many deaths due to the abuse of alcohol get registered, and
therefore are classified to visceral and degenerative diseases,
secondary in their character, but 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 comprises the causes of 602 deaths
(=23 per cent, of total deaths): including 129 of children
under the age of 5 years; 485 in the Town sub-district, and
117 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the heart caused 13 deaths;
Rheumatism 7. In many fatal cases of rheumatic fever the
immediate cause of death is disease of the heart arising in
the course of the malady; and of the deaths from heart disease
at later periods of life, not a few might justly be ascribed to