View report page

43
due to the misuse 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 513 deaths
(=16.7 per cent, of total deaths), including 88 of children
under the age of five years: 409 of the deaths were
registered in the Town sub-district, and 104 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 10
deaths, 9 of them in the Town sub-district ; Rheumatism, 3
deaths. In fatal cases of rheumatic fever, the immediate
cause of death, not infrequently, is disease of the heart
arising in the course of the malady ; and of the deaths certified
from heart disease at later periods ol life, not a few might
properly be ascribed to rheumatism as the primary cause.
But the connection between the two diseases is either overlooked
or, it may be, unknown to the certifying practitioner.
In the new classification, deaths due to rheumatic disease
involving the heart are distinguished from deaths due to
rheumatism without complication. Gout was the cause of 7
deaths, and Rickets of 4.
Cancer—Malignant Disease, was accountable for 127
deaths; 98 in the Town sub-district and 29 in Brompton.
Cancer is on the increase in the country generally ; possibly,
however, some portion of the increase in deaths classified to