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108
I need not add to the remarks I have just
made; excepting only a few words in reference to
small-pox and diphtheria.
The epidemic of small-pox, which had been
so serious for Camberwell of late years, and more
especially in 1881, fortunately for us died out early
in the year 1882; and we have reason to hope that
new arrangements in respect of the admission of
small-pox into the Deptford Hospital will materially
reduce, if it do not put an end to, the danger, which
we, as I believe rightly, attributed to its presence
on our borders.
Diphtheria, as I have pointed out, has been
much more fatal in the parish than we have ever
known it before; and, as I have also shown, it has
equally been of unprecedented fatality throughout
London. What special causes for its spread there
may have been or may be I do not venture to guess ;
but it must be recollected that diphtheria (like
measles, small-pox, scarlet fever, and the like)
is a contagious disease, and therefore liable, like
these others, to fluctuations of alternate slight and
serious prevalence. It is such a wave of increased
prevalence which seems to have been passing