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Cough exceed the total deaths from small-pox, scarlet fever,
diphtheria, and " fever " combined. Thus in 1888, the deaths
from measles and whooping cough, in London, were 2,401 and
3,087=5,488 ; the deaths from small-pox (9), scarlet fever
(1,209), diphtheria (1,301), and "fever " (720), being 3,239 only.
It is right to add, and it is a very important consideration, that
admission to hospital would be of the highest value to individual
sufferers from measles, by removing them from homes too
often wholly unfit for the treatment of a disease which is apt
under insanitary conditions, to assume an unfavourable type
and to kill by complications which might be averted, could the
sufferers be placed where they would have pure air and suitable
diet, with proper medical attendance and nursing. This being
granted, it must be conceded that a case has been made out in
support of the request addressed to the Managers by the Battersea
Vestry. At the same time time it has to be borne in mind
that sufferers from measles are admitted at the Workhouse
Infirmaries, and it is a question whether sufficient accommodation
might not be found in those establishments for such cases
as need isolation or the special treatment rendered necessary by
complicating affections. Otherwise, and especially when there
are many empty beds at the hospitals, I should regard the
admission of cases of measles, if only for a time, as an experiment
of value.
SCARLET FEVER.
This disease, which was the cause of seven, eleven and forty
deaths in 1885, 1886 and 1887 respectively, proved fatal to 26
persons only, in 1888, the corrected decennial average being
47. Only three of the deaths belonged to the Brompton subdistrict.
Sixteen of the deaths occurred in hospitals, to which
184 out of 252 recorded cases were removed for treatment. Of