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MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH'S
ANNUAL REPORT, FOR 1864.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
The year 1864 may be regarded as having been generally
an unhealthy year. The death-rates of London and of its
several groups of districts were higher than they had been for
ten years previously; and the epidemic of typhus fever, which
at the end of 1864 had prevailed for three years in London,
caused during that year more deaths than it had done during
either 1862 or 1863; moreover there was an increased mortality
from hooping cough, measles and diarrhoea, and especially from
bronchial and pulmonary affections. The death-rates in 1864
were, according to the Registrar General:—for the whole of London
2.645 per cent., for the Western group of districts 2.485,
for the Northern group 2.532, for the Central group 2.901, for
the Eastern group 2.809 and for the Southern group 2.530 per
cent. Deaths from hooping cough increased from 2229 in 1863,
to 2386 in 1864 : and (still comparing the former with the
latter year) deaths from measles rose from 1698 to 2750, deaths
from diarrhoea from 2448 to 2861, and deaths from pulmonary
affections from 6049 to 8666. Deaths from fever, which were
3635 in 1862, and 2892 in 1863, amounted to 3689 in 1864.
It should be added however that other zymotic diseases diminished
in severity ; that deaths from diphtheria fell from 724 in