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109
the first period, without correction for increase of population,
and 448 fewer after such correction; and that the
scarlet fever deaths were fewer by 383, without correction, and,
with correction, by 1,053. It will be observed that in the first
ten years of the first period no deaths were recorded from
diphtheria, although the Table commences in 1859, the year in
which diphtheria was first classified and registered as a disease
separate and distinct from scarlet fever. I am unable to
account for the omission, there being no records extant, except
upon the improbable assumption that no deaths from diphtheria
took place in Kensington in those years. I have thought it
fair, in any case, to bracket scarlet fever and diphtheria in the
two periods, respectively, for comparison; and thus, adding the
deaths from diphtheria, 23 in the first period, and 213 in the
second period, to the deaths from scarlet fever, we have in the
second period an absolute reduction of 193 in the deaths from
the two diseases, the reduction corrected for increase of
population being 878.
Comparing the mortality from the "seven principal
diseases of the zymotic class" in the two periods,
we arrive at a corrected reduction in the number of
deaths, in the second period, of no fewer than 1,411. In other
words, had the rate of mortality from these diseases been the
same in the second period (1871-82), as in the first period
(1859-70), there would have died in the second period of twelve
years 1,441 persons more than did die, or 120 per annum. The
zymotic death rate, I may add, which in 1859-70 was 3.6 per
1,000 persons living, fell to 2.8 per 1,000 in 1371-82; the
deaths from the diseases, moreover, which in 1859-70 formed
18 per cent, of total deaths, were only 15.4 per cent, in
1871-82. The improvement still goes on, for the rate fell in the
quinquennium 1883-87 to 1.9 per 1,000 living, and the deaths
were only 11.8 per cent, of total deaths.
Other causes, doubtless, besides notification, contributed to
bring about this satisfactory result, and we must not forget, as