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1862-3.
ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
Medical Officer of Health.
SECTION I.—On the Mortality of the Metropolis in 1862.
The year 1862 has been characterized by an unusually high mortality
in London. Allowance being made for increase in population, the deaths
were more numerous than in any year since 1858. Sixty-six thousand, nine
hundred and fifty persons died in the year, giving a death rate of 23.41 in
the thousand, or one in every forty-three inhabitants.
Among the diseases that produced the high mortality in London in 1862,
an epidemic of typhus first requires mention. Although every year large
numbers of deaths are registered from so called typhus fever, the real
typhus which especially occurs in an epidemic form had been practically
absent from London for several years, until in the latter half of 1861 it
again appeared with its well known epidemic characters. In the course
of 1862, 3742 deaths from various fevers were registered in London, the
highest number in any of the preceding five years having been 1996. Of
the 3742 deaths it is probable that upwards of 2000 were from true
typhus.* But though the reappearance of typhus has thus swollen the
mortality from fever, still, the zymotic class of diseases taken as a whole,
shows only a slight excess of deaths in 1862. Scarlatina, measles and
whooping-cough each contributed their full annual average of deaths—not
much beyond it. Small-pox was quiescent, waiting for another accumulation
of unvaccinated persons before renewing its epidemic visitation in 1863.
Another great member of this class, diarrhoea, was markedly less fatal than
usual, and its subsidence mainly has prevented the zymotic mortality from
being very high in London.—The other causes of death that exhibit material
fluctuations from one year to another, being much affected by the atmospheric
conditions that prevail, are Consumption and Diseases of the lungs.
From diseases of the former kind the number of deaths recorded in 1862
was very much the average of the last five years, while from diseases
* This disease usually causing about one death in every six persons that it attacks,
it follows that the serious number of 12,000 persons have suffered from typhus fever in
the year, almost the whole of whom belonged to the poorer classes of society. A special
economic interest rttaches to the prevalence of typhus. It is the epidemic disease which
ot all others carries off the heads of families. Most diseases of this sort find their
victims chiefly in children.