Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell]
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of " phthisis and other tubercular diseasesand 660 under
that of " other diseases, chiefly chronic."
In reference to some of the diseases here enumerated, I may
make as usual a few remarks. Several of the above headings
are of a complex character, including for convenience and
brevity more than one different kind of disease or incident, the
separation of which on sanitary grounds is a matter of no real
importance. This is especially the case with the first and last
heads on the list. Any variation which may occur from year
to year in these (notwithstanding that certain cases among
them may present individual features of surpassing interest),
is in no degree momentous; but it is somewhat remarkable
that the number of deaths assigned annually to each has varied
but little. Other of the headings relate to diseases, which,
though doubtless in many cases amenable to hygienic and
medical treatment, and by these and other means to some
extent preventible, aie essentially the result of inherited and
of personal defects and habits with which the labours of sanitarians
have only to deal indirectly and remotely. Phthisis
and hydrocephalus are the diseases to which I more particularly
refer. Here again the annual variation has been but
slight. Other headings again have to do with maladies, some
of which have been called zymotic, and all of which are pro*
duced or at least producible by infection, or by malaria, or by
insanitary conditions of various kinds. "With these diseases, and
especially with their causes, it is our special province to deal.
Some of them have been more carefully distinguished in Table
VI, and to this I particularly invite your attention. Fever
numbered 25 fatal cases. Of these 6 occurred in St. G-eorge's,
9 in Peckham, and 10 in Camberwell. Typhus was not in
that year prevalent in London, and all or nearly all the cases
therefore were typhoid or enteric, or that form of disease which
results from cesspool or sewage poisoning.