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37
in the Town sub-district, and five in Brompton. Eleven took
place in hospitals, to which 44 patients were removed. The
recorded cases were 102 (77 in 1890) : 55 in North
Kensington, and 47 in South Kensington, the Uxbridge Road
being the dividing line. There were 8 deaths from typhus in
London, 42 from simple and ill-defined fever, the decennial
averages being 35 and 72. The deaths from enteric fever
were 547, or 238 below the corrected decennial average.
I
DIARRHCEA.
This disease was the cause of 91 deaths, against 58, 70,
and 78 respectively, in the three preceding years: 82 in the
Town sub-district, and 9 in Brompton; being 4 above the
corrected decennial average. Seventy-three of the deaths
were of children under five, including 63 under one year. Of
the total number, 53 were registered in 8 weeks—July 19th
to September 12th, inclusive. The deaths from diarrhceal
diseases in London generally, were 2437 (677 below the
corrected decennial average), of which 1782 were of infants
in the first year of life, and 362 of children between one and
five. The question why diarrhoea is so prevalent and
fatal, especially to infants, in hot summers, has been long
under consideration by the medical department of the Local
Government Board. A " provisional or working hypothesis"
has been formulated, which assumes the existence of a form
of germ-life in the earth—especially where this is sewagetainted
or otherwise polluted—which germ, developing into
activity when a certain temperature is attained, and rising
into the air, finds admission with food into the system, and
multiplying there, generates a poison which is the immediate
cause of death.