London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Kensington 1886

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]

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93
classes. The parts of the body most commonly affected are the
viscera or internal organs; in women, the uterus and the breast;
the malady, moreover, being for the most part one of later life.
One hundred and nine of the deaths took place at ages above
45. It is right to mention that in Table 3 (Appendix) the
deaths assigned to cancer have been classified to cancer irrespective
of the question whether any other disease was named in
the medical certificate, or whether cancer was the immediate
cause of death.
Puerpura, Ilcemorrhagic Diathesis, was the cause of two
deaths; Leucocythesmia was the cause of one death; Glycosuria,
Diabetes Mellitus, was the cause of 1.6 deaths, 12 of them in
the Town sub.district.
The remaining diseases in this Class belong to the group
known as
Tuberculab, 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. Pure air and sunlight, efficient drainage and its
corollary, a dry subsoil; good food, warm clothing, and temperance
in all things, are powerful antidotes to the bane of tubercle,
which is fostered by dirt and squalor, 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 amongst the well.to.do classes are frequently 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