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8
It will be seen that diseases of the zymotic class and consumptive disease,
presented a very considerable preponderance in St. Giles's, over the quota which its
54,300 inhabitants are calculated to furnish to the general mortality of the town. Also
in excess, but to a minor degree, were diseases of the nervous and respiratory systems,
and violent deaths.
Of Zymotic disorders, the chief members appear at the foot of the foregoing
table. Smail-pox, though its mortality has risen from 7 deaths in 1858, to 22 in
1859, has only observed the same rise that has been experienced by the town at
large. To this disease, however, I intend to devote a special chapter.— Measles
was twice as fatal in our district as in an equal population taken from the average
of London. Its prevalence was most marked during the second quarter of the year.
Here we have an instance of the fluctuation of a disease from one year to another,
as affecting the comparative mortality of different parts of London. In 1857, St.
Giles lost 59 children from measles, its quota being 28; in 1858, the disease was
fatal to 25 only, though the rate at which measles was fatal to the whole town in
that year, would have given 48 to our population. Now again, in 1859, we have 52
deaths instead of our quota of 25. Whooping Cough is another disease which was
in excess last year. Fifteen more deaths from it were registered in 1859, than in
1858, but as the disease had subsided in the rest of London, our deaths from this
complaint proved to be just double what ought to have been contributed by our
population. The greater part of the deaths from whooping cough were in the former
half of the year, so that St. Giles has partaken in the subsidence of this disease,
though more tardily than other districts. Diarrhoea was in a little, but only a little
excess of its quota. The actual number of deaths from it however, has seriously
risen, for this was the case everywhere in London. The mortality from Scarlatina,
including diphtheritis, remained at exactly the same high number (82), as in 1858,
a proportionately high mortality continuing also to be maintained throughout the
whole metropolis. Nine of our 82 deaths are registered as diphtheritis. Fevers,
both typhus and typhoid, little fatal as they were in London in 1859, were happily
still less fatal to St. Giles. Our quota was thirty-six, our actual number of deaths
only twenty-six.
As a class, zymotic diseases in St. Giles's, were fifty above their proportion
for the population in 1859. In 1858, they were fifty below this quota, but in 1857
they were in the more serious excess of 65 above the estimate.
Passing to the "Constitutional" class of diseases of the Registrar-General, we
find from the foregoing table, that they were in the large excess of 347 deaths over
a quota of 243. To one familiar with the diseases of St. Giles's this excess ceases
to be surprising when it is said that this group comprehends the Tuberculous group
of diseases; the mesenteric disease of children, consumption and water-on-the-brain,
habitually affect the residents of St. Giles's, out of proportion to the other parts of
London. Last year the surplus was represented by 290 instead of the estimated 199.
Insufficient food, exposure, and crowded ill-ventilated rooms must be charged with
the production of the disproportionate mortality from these diseases.
Of diseases of the nervous system 164 are recorded instead of the quota 127.
The surplus includes death from apoplexy and paralysis, and there were sixty deaths
from convulsions in infants,where 39 only would have been expected from our population.
Ignorant mismanagement of children and especially improper feeding, are
here powerful additional causes of this great loss of life.
Lung diseases are every year in excess in St. Giles's as surely as consumption,
and they appear to owe their production to very similar causes. I am disposed
to believe that they are also connected with bad drainage in a more direct manner
than has generally been suspected. In 1852, these diseases produced 224 deaths.
This is a much smaller number than in 1858, when 292 deaths from these maladies
are recorded, but it is 44 in excess of the share that our population ought to have
borne of the mortality from such causes. The excess in 1858 was fifty-four, and
in 1857, seventy-two.
Premature birth, teething, and atrophy in children, have been very exceptionally
below the average. Our estimated number for the year was 85 deaths from