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

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Kensington 1887

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington]

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127
classes. The parts of the body most commonly affected are the
viscera or internal organs: in women, the uterusand the breast;
the malady, moreover, being for the most part one of later life.
Ninety-seven of the deaths took place at ages above 45, and 18
between 35 and 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.
Purpura, Hœmorrluxgic Diathesis, was the cause of one
death, Ancemia, Chlorosis, and Leucocythcemia were the causes
of six deaths. Glycosuria, Diabetes Mellitus, was the cause of 20
deaths, 13 of them in the Town sub-district.
The remaining diseases in this Class belong to the group
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. 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-todo
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