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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 478 deaths
(=16.5 per cent. of total deaths), including 79 of children
under the age of five years: 359 of the deaths were registered
in the Town sub-district, and 119 in Brompton.
Rheumatic Fever, and Rheumatism of the Heart caused 10
deaths, 8 of them in the Town sub-district; Rheumatism, 2
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 of 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 10 deaths, 9 of them
in the Town sub-district, and Rickets of 4,
Cancer—Malignant Disease, was accountable for 129
deaths; 91 in the Town sub-district and 38 in Brampton.
Cancer is on the increase in the country generally: possibly,
however, some portion of the apparent increase in deaths
classified to this cause, may be due to more accurate diagnosis.
The deaths in Kensington in the previous ten years, were