London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Bethnal Green 1872

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Bethnal Green]

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Report
September, 1873.
Gentlemen,
It is with great satisfaction that I lay before you the
Seventeenth Annual Report, compiled for this District. The Vital
Statistics and Sanitary Proceedings are of the most gratifying character,
for you will find our birth rate far higher, and our death rate far lower,
than it has been for many years. As to our birth rate, if it continues in
the same ratio as last year, the population will be so great that there
will not be houses enough in the Parish to hold them.
The work done by the Sanitary Staff greatly exceeds that of former
years, and one duty, of an important nature, has taken up very much
time. I refer to the Water Supply, which has been a source of great
trouble during the last few months; but this matter will be treated with
further on.
The total number of registered births daring the year was 5187, while
the total number of registered deaths was 2588 ; excess of births, 2599,
or there were more than double the number made their advent into this
Parish than passed away out of it "to that borne from whence no traveller
returns."
The deaths from Zymotic diseases were fewer than in any year since
I have been your Medical Officer of Health. The word Zymotic is not
generally understood, so I will here give a definition of the term, extracted
from " Aitken's Practice of Medicine," vol. I., pages 196, 199.
" The name Zymotic (first suggested by Dr. William Farr to designate the class) is
not to be understood as implying the hypothesis that these diseases are fermentations,
which the derivation of the term would lead one to believe. It has become extensively
used of late as applied to the diseases whose characters as a class are already indicated,
and for whioh some convenient term is applied. The class, then, to which the term
Zymotic has been applied is intended to comprehend all the principal diseases which
have prevailed as epidemics or endemics—all those which are due to paludal or animal
malaria; and those due to specific disease poisons, capable of propagation from one
human being to another, and communicable either by direct contract, or indirectly through
various channels of human intercourse, contaminating drinking water or infecting the
air, or by animals in a state of disease. The class also comprehends the diseases that
result from the scarcity and the deterioration of the necessary kinds of food, or from the
generation, propagation, or existence of parasitic animals. The diseases of this class are