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sions, and to many of those ascribed in the tables to premature
birth.
In respect of the 4 deaths from small pox, I do not hesitate
to say that they ought never to have occurred. Small pox is
wholly preventable ; and were vaccination universally adopted,
as it ought to be, throughout the country, would become for
this land a disease of the past. I need scarcely tell you that
since the introduction of the vaccine virus, small pox, which was
once the scourge and terror of mankind, has dwindled away,
until attthe present time it constitutes a comparatively rare and
mild disorder. But unfortunately many persons yet, with all
the bigotry of ignorance, refuse to avail themselves of the boon
which is offered them; and the disease consequently smoulders
still amongst us, and occasionally bursts into a flame, from the
ravages of which even the protected may not wholly escape.
As I informed you on another occasion, the degree in which
fever prevails in any locality may not unfairly be taken as a
measure of the sanitary condition of that locality ; inasmuch as its
constant presence is a tolerably sure indication that there is some
local cause, such as over-crowding, bad drainage, want of ventilation,
or accumulations of filth, which encourages its presence.
The number of deaths due to fever was certainly somewhat
larger last year than the year before; yet it is gratifying to be
still able to report, that a smaller proportionate number of fever
deaths have occurred in Camberwell, than in any of the 5 groups
of districts into which London is divided (Table 5). Under
the collective term of fever, are included at least two perfectly
distinct diseases, which until recently were confounded together,
and which even now are sometimes difficult to separate. One