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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 arraugements.
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 overcrowding in
ill-constructed, unventilated 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-to-do
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, and like them
depending for its origin on its own specific "bacillus": we are
encouraged to hope, therefore, that a remedy may ultimately be
found for this scourge of the human race. Tubercular diseases
were the registered causes of 369 deaths (against 393, 400 and 320
in 1887-8-9), viz., 287 in the Town sub-district, and 82 in
Brompton; 98 of the deaths being of children under five years of
age. The numbers in the four quarters of the year respectively were
126, 90, 75, 78, or 204 in the winter and 165 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 in other parts of the body than the
lungs, e.g., brain, bowels, &c. Such deaths have been classified
in Table III., with those certified from "Other forms of