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9
with Acts of Parliament passed since the Metropolis
Local Management Act came into operation, and will
assist in maintaining the public health in a good state
when the district shall become a comparatively crowded
one.
The year 1863 comprises in the Registrar General's
Reports a period of 53 instead of 52 weeks as usual;
but I have in my mortality tables included only 52
weeks, so as to compare the deaths of this year with those
of other years. The corrected death-rate for the whole
of London was above the average of the last 24 years,
having been so high as 2.481 per cent. against the mean
of 2.452 per cent. This excessive mortality has been
caused chiefly through the unusual prevalence and
fatality of fever and scarlet fever, 2892 deaths having
been recorded from the former, and 5075 deaths from
the latter disease; and in addition, 724 deaths from
diphtheria—a large proportion of which were, doubtless,
caused by scarlet fever. As I pointed out in a former
report, and in essays published separately, scarlet fever
is a disease which appears to depend less as to its spread
on the sanitary state of the neighbourhood than other
eruptive diseases. Thus, it is well known that its
intensity depends chiefly on the constitution or diathesis
of the person attacked: as one member of a family will
have it in its severest form, and another very lightly.
There cannot, however, be any doubt, that a depressed
state of health induced by want of fresh air, the