View report page

ANNUAL REPORT
BY
J. S. Beistowe, M.D., LondFellow of the Royal College of
Physicians, Physician to St. Thomas's Hospital.
Gentlemen,
The year 1861 presented, in a sanitary point of view,
few features of peculiar interest. The mortality was greater
than it had been in any former year of my tenure of office,
with the single exception of 1858. But the increased number
of deaths depended, as I shall presently shew, rather
on growth of population, than on deterioration of health. No
epidemic, serious either from its nature or its extent, has
alarmed the public or the medical profession.
During this year the census was taken; but owing to the
enormous mass of material with which the Commissioners have
had to deal, and the great labour of working out conclusions,
the complete results have not yet been published. A few facts
of primary importance however had already transpired, twelve
months since, in sufficient time to be incorporated in my last
Annual Report. A few further facts I have learnt from a
perusal of some of the proof sheets of the census tables, to
which the chief Clerk in the census office has been kind enough
to give me access. As an accurate acquaintance with the
numerical strength of a population constitutes the very