View report page

Let it still be borne in mind, that these numbers are based upon small populations,
and represent the facts for short periods; and it will be sufficient to observe,
that the deaths of 1858 are much more uniformly distributed than in the preceding
year, localities which correspond in their other chief features being more similarly
affected by consumption. In my last report, for 1857, I confessed my inability to
explain the relative position of the different parts of St. Giles, in respect of these
diseases. We are only beginning to learn the degree of dependence of consumption
and allied maladies upon local conditions, and interpretations are less to be sought at
present than accessions to our knowledge by accumulations of facts.
Lung diseases, other than consumption, which produced death in St. Giles's,
last year, were a little less fatal than previously, instead of being, as in the town at
large, distinctly in excess over the preceding year, 1857. The localization of the fatal
diseases of the respiratory organs is shown in the following, to which the remarks just
made on the former table are equally applicable.

* These include, in this place, consumption affecting the lungs or lymphatic glands,
scrofula, and water-on-the-brain in children. Six of the last kind of cases arc included with
brain diseases in Table III appendix. Hence an apparent in consistency,