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with the oft-repeated advice to boil their milk. And for
the rest, we must at present trust to the good. sense of milk
producers, who in these days, when sanitary knowledge is
permeating all classes, may be expected to take an increasing
interest in the preservation of the health of their stock; and,
above all, to the strict performance of their duty by local
authorities, who are responsible for the due carrying out of
the provisions of the Dairies, Cowsheds, and Milkshops Order,
which enable them to make regulations for prescribing precautions
to be taken by purveyors of milk against infection or
contamination. The Order enacts that "if at any time disease
exists among the cattle in a dairy or cowshed, the milk of a
diseased cow therein shall not be mixed with other milk, and
shall not be sold or used as human food."
DIPHTHERIA.
In 1888 diphtheria was, for the first time in my experience,
endemic in Kensington, in the north-east portion of the Parish
contiguous to the Parish of Paddington from which it would
appear to have spread. During that year, 89 deaths were registered,
only 2 of them in the Brompton sub-district. In 1889,
the deaths were 111, including 5 in Brompton. Sixty-five of the
deaths occurred at home, and 46 in hospitals, the majority of them
at the Western Fever Hospital. The quarterly totals were 30, 25,
37, and 19 respectively (against 7, 10, 30, and 42 in 1888). The
ages at death were: under five years 73, including 1 under one
year, 13 between one and two, 15 between two and three, 22
between three and four, and 22 between four and five; between
five and fifteen there were 35 deaths, of which 30 occurred
between five and twelve. The remaining deaths were of a school
girl aged 17, and two married women aged 37 and 42 respectively.
The recorded cases of illness were 245, against 144 in 1888,
the case-mortality being 45'3 per cent. in 1889, against 61.8 in
1888, in which year, probably, there was a larger proportion of
concealed cases: but epidemic diseases tend to become less fatal