View report page

78
Class 3.—Dietetic Diseases
Were the causes of 9 deaths, 6 of them in the Town sub-district.
Want of breast milk was the cause of three deaths. To Scurvy
no death was assigned. Delirium tremens was the cause of two
deaths. Chronic alcoholism was the registered cause of four
deaths, three of them in the Town sub-district, compared with
thirteen in 1884. It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark
that, if all the deaths due, directly and indirectly, to the immoderate
use of intoxicating liquors could be ascertained, "Alcoholism"'
would occupy a more prominent position in the "Bills of Mortality";
but many deaths due to the abuse of alcohol get certified,
and therefore are classified, to visceral and degenerative diseases,
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 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 611 deaths
(=22 per cent. of total deaths); including 147 of children under
the age of 5 years: 471 of the deaths were registered in the
Town sub-district, and 140 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 12
deaths, six in each sub-district; Rheumatism 8, one only in
Brompton. 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 properly 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