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Hence, 65 persons have died at the rate of 10,000 of the population
of Limehouse, 65 in Ratcliff, from zymotic diseases, while only 46
and 43, respectively, have succumbed in Shadwell and Wapping. And
if I take fever (proper) as the most perfect type of these diseases the
contrast is still more extraordinary, for then tho deaths, at this rate,
would be, in Limehouse, 23; in Ratcliff, 22; Shadwell 11, and
Wapping 7.
True, this is only for a single year; but these proportions have
always been found to prevail, and I have to record the same result from
year to year. Nor can it be said that the social condition is superior ;
but, on the contrary, from the birth-rate and the "In and Out-door
Poor" relief rate, it is clear that the prosperity of the District is not
in the direction of Shadwell and Wapping. This is, then, a poorer
locality, and it is a fact, not to be forgotten, that poverty itself, with its
concomitant privations, especially of food, has the very strongest tendency
to disease, and to the engenderment of fever.
The explanation of this sanitary anomaly is unquestionably to be
found in the river as the great agent in ministering to the health of
these two parishes. Of the 80 legal acres of Wapping, 39 are water—
nearly one-half, and of the 99 of Shadwell, there are 31 water—nearly
one-third; and these parishes have, and, 1 venture to say, always will,
as a consequence, have an immeasurably smaller amount of zymotic
disease. Limehouse has about l/16th of its acreage water, and Ratcliff
about 1/7th, and the diseases spoken of, assuming all other things
equal, have run up to largo and inordinate dimensions. To charge the
river, then, as the source of disease, and zymotic disease—of cholera,
diarrhœa—as some have loudly stated, is to give non causa pro causa,
and to assert what is, on careful watching, minute investigation, totally
destitute of the necessary substratum of facts. As in my previous
Reports has been asserted, so I again express my conviction, that the
tidal currents every six hours—the displacement of millions of cubic
foot of air every few yards of frontage—the breezes necessarily set up
in all directions, immensely outweigh the unquestionable evils of the
"polluted" stream, and establish it as my opinion in relation to
zymotic disease, as not the mythic but the true "Conservancy of the
Thames."
The next class of diseases contributing to the increased death-