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47
Enteric Fever.— The deaths from this cause were 15,
against 19, 15, and 24 respectively, in the preceding three
years: they were five below the corrected decennial average.
Nine of the deaths were registered in the Town sub-district,
and six in Brompton. Three took place in hospitals, to which
16 patients were removed. The recorded cases were 57 (102
in 1891), viz. 30 in North Kensington, and 27 in South
Kensington, the Uxbridge Road being the dividing line.
There were 11 deaths from typhus in London and 20 from
simpleand ill-defined fever, the decennial averages being 25 and
64. The deaths from enteric fever were 436, or 304 below the
corrected decennial average.
DIARRHŒA.
This disease was the cause of 77 deaths, being 9 below
the corrected decennial average, against 70, 78, and 91 respectively,
in the preceding three years: 66 in the Town subdistrict,
and 11 in Brompton. Sixty-six of the deaths were of
children under five, including 56 under one year. Of the
total number, 57 were registered in 12 weeks—July 17th to
October 8th inclusive; thirty of them in the four weeks ended
September 10th. The deaths from diarrhceal diseases in
London generally, were 2,546 (504 below the corrected decennial
average), including 910 of infants in the first year of life,
and 1,484 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 sewage-tainted 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.