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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 571 deaths
(=20 per cent. of total deaths), including 128 of children
under the age of 5 years; 441 of the deaths were registered in
the Town sub-district, and 130 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 10
deaths, three of them in the Brompton sub-district; Rhaumatism,
one death. 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. But the connexion
between the two diseases is either overlooked or, it may
be, unknown to the certifying practitioner. In the new classification,
deaths due to rheumatic disease involving the heart are
distinguished from deaths due to rheumatism without such
complication. Gout was the cause of 12 deaths, seven of them
in the Town sub-district, and Rickets of six.
Cancer, Malignant Disease, was accountable for 117 deaths;
84 in the Town sub-district, and 33 in Brompton. Cancer
appears to be on the increase in the country generally: possibly,
however, some portion of the increase in c eaths classified to this
cause may be due to more accurate diagnosis. The deaths in
Kensington from this cause in the previous ten years were 88,
79, 95, 90, 112, 92, 128, 117, 119, and 128. Deaths from cancer
are usually more numerous, proportionally to population, in the
Brompton sub-district, than in the relatively poorer Town subdistrict.
Cancerrin fact, is quite as prevalent, probably even
more prevalent, amongst well-to-do people, than in the poorer