View report page

42
being often difficult to obtain admittance at General Hospitals for
patients suffering from diphtheria, however necessary removal
may be for the sake of the patients and of other inmates of the
same room or house.
WHOOPING COUGH.
Whooping Cough, the cause of 82 deaths in 1886, proved
fatal in 1887 to 86children, all but 2 under five years of age, and
33 under one year. All the deaths save three were in the Town
sub-district. The corrected decennial average is 98. Fifty of the
deaths were registered during the first 24 weeks of the year, the
remaining 36 deaths being spread over 28 weeks (vide Table at
page 24.) Reference has already been made to the indifference
of parents in regard to the spread of measles in their families.
The observation is perhaps even more generally applicable in
regard to whooping-cough, and the danger of this always
distressing malady being unappreciated by the poor, who, in
the engrossing struggle of life, pay scant attention to an ailment
which they deem at once inevitable and seldom dangerous.
Often enough, when the disease ends fatally, the event comes
as a surprise, being due commonly to some secondary disease—
of the respiratory organs, or of the nervous system: few deaths
are registered from whooping-cough alone. These secondary
diseases cannot always be prevented; but the occurrence of
bronchitis or pneumonia, for instance, is often owing to want
of care in the management of the sufferers. The little ones are
not, perhaps cannot be, confined to the house, even in winter:
they catch cold; the “cold" and the "cough" are not
differentiated; medical treatment is not sought until the child
is obviously very ill, and, when it is obtained the patient
is but too frequently beyond the reach of help.
The deaths in London from whooping cough (2,928) were
261 fewer than the decennial average; but the disease was
unusually prevalent during the greater part of the year. "The
saving of life was entirely in the earliest months, the mortality