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thirteen four-weekly reports. In 1889 there was but slight prevalence
of it, in a fatal form at any rate, for in seven of my
thirteen four-weekly reports no death was ascribed to this cause.
In the majority of fatal cases of measles, some intercurrent disease
—of the respiratory organs usually—complicating the original
malady, is generally the immediate cause of death. Comparatively
little care is taken by parents among the poorer classes to prevent
the spread of measles. Not regarding it as a serious disease,
considering it, moreover, to be just as inevitable as teething, they
naturally enough rather like to have all of the children down with
it at one time. We must allow, however, that it is difficult to
prevent measles from spreading, the disease being highly infectious
from an early stage, if not from the commencement of
the attack. The circumstances, moreover, in which the poor live
in London—two or more families usually occupying one house
and using a common staircase—almost preclude the possibility of
isolation. But more care might be taken to protect the sufferers
against secondary affections, which, as already stated, are, as a
rule, the immediate causes of death.
The deaths in London from measles in 1889 were 2314,
being 278 fewer than the corrected decennial average, and about
three times as many as the deaths from scarlet fever. "When
the year began, a serious outbreak of measles, which had commenced
in the early autumn of 1888, and had reached its maximum
in the latter part of December, was still in progress, and
the mortality from this disease remained above the decennial
average until the beginning of May, when the epidemic came to
an end, and the mortality remained for the rest of the year
considerably below the average of the previous decennium."
(Registrar-General's Annual Summary.)
WHOOPING-COUGH.
Whooping-cough was the cause of 26 deaths in 1889 (7 of
them in the Brompton sub-district), against 82, 86 and 100 in
the three preceding years, being 62 below the corrected average
number. All of the deaths save 2 were of children under five years