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99
Purpura, Hemorrhagic Diathesis, was the cause of two
deaths, Anæmia of one death Glycosuria, Diabetes Mellitus, was
the cause of 14 deaths, nine of them in the Town sub-district.
The remaining diseases in this Class belong to the group
designated
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, uuventilated, 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
encouraged to hope, therefore, that a remedy may ultimately be
found for this great scourge of the human race. Tubercular
diseases were the registered causes of 400 deaths (against 441, 440
and 393 in 1885-6-7), viz , 320 in the Town sub-district, and 80
in Brompton; 117 of the deaths being of children under five
years of age. The numbers in the four quarters of the year
respectively were 93, 10 5, 98, and 106: 199 in the winter and
201 in the summer quarters. In a few instances phthisis was
returned as the cause of death in earliest infancy, a period of
life at which the tubercular diathesis commonly manifests itself
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