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109
over us last year, and not yet to have left us.
One main reason why I speak of the subject now
is, that the considerable incidence of this disease,
extending over some months in a particular
district of the parish, led one of the medical
practitioners of the parish, Dr. Ure, to address
an important letter to me on the subject early
in this year ; in which he was disposed to
attribute the prevalence of diphtheria in his neighbourhood
to certain local causes of insalubrity
which he specified. I felt it to be my duty to ask
him for fuller information, which he kindly gave me;
and this, as I think, fully confirmed his assertion
with respect to the undue prevalence of the disease.
Therein he shows that, in 19 months, from Aug. 1st
1881 to March 1st 1883, he had in his own practice,
in 27 streets, no less than 155 cases of the disease.
Now even if it be admitted (as I am inclined to
believe) that a great many of these cases were either
cases of scarlet fever or of non-specific sore throat,
there is no reasonable doubt that the majority of
them were truly diphtheritic. And since fatal cases
of diphtheria were much more numerous in the subdistrict
of Camberwell, than they were in the
locality to which Dr. Ure draws attention, we may
take this fact, I think, as a proof that the many fatal