View report page

18
Zymotic Diseases of this class were lower in fatality than
Diseases. during any previous years on record, as a glance at
Table V will shew. Measles has been the most fatal of the
class, forty-eight deaths having taken place. Its associated
disease, Whooping Cough, was fatal in twenty-one cases, a very
great reduction on the mortality of past years. Still sixty-nine
deaths from these combined causes is excessive, and it must not
be forgotten, that although not perhaps immediately fatal,
attacks of these diseases are frequently followed by Tubercular
diseases and affections of the Brain and nervous system.
They seem to bring into activity morbid constitutional
tendencies which might otherwise have remained quiescent.
Isolation is the only effectual means of meeting this type of
disease, and much has been done in this direction by the receipt
of information from the masters and mistressesof thepublic schools
in the parish, whom I have to thank sincerely for the courtesy
which they have always shewn in sending notification of the
existence of zymotic disease in the families of their pupils; a
courtesy which has, as far as possible, been met by the Sanitary
department giving notice of the existence of infectious disease
in the families of their school children. It is believed that the
reciprocal adoption of these measures has averted much
sickness, and probably saved many lives.
Diarrhoea caused thirty-eight deaths, being an extremely
small number as compared with all previously recorded years,
with the exception of 1888. This was the result of the low
temperature which prevailed during the usually hotter months.
The average number of deaths from diarrhceal diseases during
the ten years 1879-89, being sixty-four per annum.
Scarlet Fever caused but nine deaths, a great contrast to
the high mortality of some previous years. Diphtheria had a
mortality of eleven, slightly above the average, and caused by
the inclusion of many cases formerly called Croup, but which
are now known to be Diphtheritic Laryngitis, or, as it is officially
termed, Membranous Croup.
The Zymotic death-rate for the year under report was but
1.7 per thousand, by far the lowest during any year on record.