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classified to cancer irrespective of the question whether any other
disease was named in the medical certificate, and of the question
whether cancer was the immediate cause of death.
Purpura, Hemorrhagic Diathesis, was not among the fatal
diseases in 1884; Anaemia, Chlorosis, and Lencocythcemia were
the causes of five deaths; Glycosuria, Diabetes Mellitus, of
16 deaths, three of them in the Brompton sub-district.
The remaining diseases in this Class belong to the group
generically known as
Tubercular, and they are amongst the most important with
which sanitarians have to deal, the degree to which they prevail in
a given district being regarded, in some sort, as a test of the
healthiness or otherwise of the population. Generally hereditary,
these diseases are nevertheless susceptible of considerable amelioration
under improved sanitary arrangements. Scrofula is unknown
in Hygieapolis! Sunlight and pure air; efficient drainage
and its corollary, a dry sub-soil; good food, warm clothing, and
temperance in all things, are powerful antidotes to the bane of
tubercle, which is fostered by squalor and dirt, by cold and nakedness,
by vice and intemperance, by the want of the proper
necessaries of life, by over-crowding in ill-constructed, unventilated,
and sewage-tainted houses, and, in a word, by whatever is
inimical to the maintenance of a typical condition of health. The
cases that occur among the well-to-do classes are usually traceable
to the influence of heredity; modern researches, however, which
have thrown great light on the origin of tubercle, raise a presumption
that tuberculosis may be an infectious disease, a specific
fever of slow progress with a veiled resemblance to other specific
eruptive fevers: we are encouraged to hope, therefore, that a
remedy may ultimately be found for this great scourge of the
human race. Tubercular diseases were the registered causes of
413 deaths viz., 343 in the Town sub-district, and 70 in Brompton
; 137 of the deaths being of children under 5 years of age.
The numbers in the four quarters of the year respectively were
100, 97, 101 and 115; 215 in the winter and 198 in the summer
quarters. In a few instances "phthisis" was returned as the