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much bodily sickness, mental trouble, moral degradation, ruin,
and of 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 587 deaths
(= 22.2 per cent, of total deaths); including 142 of children
under the age of 5 years; 474 in the Town sub-district, and 113
in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 12
deaths; Rheumatism 10. In fatal cases of rheumatic fever the
immediate cause of death, not unfrequently, is disease of the heart
arising in the course of the malady; and of the deaths certified
from heart disease at later periods of life, not a few might justly
be ascribed to rheumatism as the primary cause. The connexion
between the two diseases is either overlooked or, it may be, unknown
to the certifying practitioner. In the new classification
the deaths due to rheumatic disease involving the heart are distinguished
from the deaths due to rheumatism without such complication.
Gout was the cause of 9 deaths and Rickets of 5.
Cancer, Malignant Disease, was accountable for 117 deaths;
87 in the Town sub-district, and 30 in Brompton. The deaths
from cancer in the country generally are on the increase. The
deaths in Kensington from this cause in the previous ten years
were 67, 74, 69, 88, 79, 95, 90, 112, 92, and 128. The deaths
in the Brompton sub-district are usually more numerous, proportionally
to population, than in the relatively poorer Town subdistrict.
Cancer, in fact, is quite as prevalent in well-to-do
people, more prevalent, perhaps, than amongst the poorer classes.
The parts of the body most generally affected are the viscera or
internal organs; in women, the uterus and the breast; the malady,
moreover, being most common in later life. Ninety-nine of the
deaths took place at ages above 45. It may be well to mention
that in Table 3 (Appendix), the deaths assigned to cancer are