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Ill
Class II.— Parasitic Diseases
Include Thrush and Other Vegetable Parasitic Diseases, five
deaths; and "Worms, Hydatids and Other Animal Parasitic
Diseases," two deaths.
Class III.— Dietetic Diseases
Were the causes of 18 deaths, 16 of them in the Town subdistrict.
To Want of Breast Milk—Starvation, 3 deaths of
infants under one year were classified; to Scurvy, none. Delirium
Tremens was the cause of 6 deaths in the Town sub-district,
against 4, 4 and 6 in 1887-8-9; Chronic Alcoholism of 8 deaths,
6 of them in the Town sub-district, against 9, 10 and 7. It is
scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark that, if all the deaths due,
directly or indirectly, to the immoderate use of intoxicating
liquors could be ascertained, "Alcoholism" would occupy a more
prominent position in the "Bills of Mortality": but many deaths
due to the abuse of alcohol get certified, and therefore are classified,
to visceral and degenerative diseases, caused or aggravated
by "drink." Man's ingenuity in the discovery of alcohol, it may
be truly said, is accountable for a large part of the misery of
his race. "The drink" is a fruitful parent of vice and crime,
as well as being the cause of much bodily sickness, mental
trouble, moral degradation, ruin, and of many premature deaths:
it fills our prisons and workhouses, our asylums and hospitals,
our cemeteries—and our National Exchequer!
Class IV.— Constitutional Diseases.
This important Class comprises the causes of 541 deaths
(=18.3 per cent. of total deaths), including 103 of children under
the age of five years: 402 of the deaths were registered in the
Town sub-district, and 139 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 8
deaths, 7 of them in the Town sub-district; Rheumatism,
3 deaths. In fatal cases of rheumatic fever, the immediate