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[No. 5.
REPORT
ON THE
HEALTH OF PADDINGTON
DURING THE QUARTER ENDING
MICHAELMAS, 1861,
BY J. BURDON SANDERSON, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE VESTRY.
Population of Paddington, April, 1861 75,807.
Vestry Hall; December, 1861.
During the three months ending September 29th, 344 persons died in
Paddington. The mortality was less by 12 than that of the previous quarter,
and less by 91 than that of the first quarter of the year. It however considerably
exceeded the mortality of the corresponding quarter of 1860. On
analysing the returns according to the ages of the persons dying, it is found that
this excess is almost entirely referable to the increased number of deaths of
children under five. This fact adds another to the many illustrations which
these Reports have already afforded of the truth, that the mortality of infants
is a much more sensitive index of the general health, than that of persons in the
more advanced periods of life. Forty-four out of the 51 deaths by which the
present return exceeded that of last year, are recorded under the heads of whooping
cough, diarrhoea, or the nervous and respiratory diseases of infants. No
epidemic has been prevalent; small-pox is for the present erased from our list of
fatal disorders.
Public Vaccination.—Since the date of my last Report an important measure,
relating to public vaccination, has received the sanction of the Legislature.
It has for its object to facilitate proceedings before Justices for the purpose of
enforcing obedience to the previously existing Acts. Its most important provision
relates to the reimbursement to public officers of the expenses incurred by
them in all such proceedings, and of costs in those cases in which no conviction
is obtained. Any person specially appointed for the purpose by a Board of
Guardians, any Registrar of Births and Deaths, or Medical Officer of Health,
is entitled to his expenses, which are made payable out of the Poor Rates. Up
to the present time the compulsory clauses of the Vaccination Act of 1853
have been for the most past a dead letter; the recent Act renders them more
or less operative.
But the mere exercise of compulsory power is not by any means the most
important instrumentality in securing that general prevalence of the practice of
vaccination among the people which is necessary to render it an effectual barrier
against the invasion of small-pox. In this country vaccination can never become
universal, unless it is accepted by the people with confidence; and this
confidence can only be founded on the assurance that it is performed in the best
possible manner, and above all with the most vigilant caution that the purest
vaccine lymph only is employed. For the most serious obstacle with which
vaccination has to contend, both in town and country districts, consists in the
popular apprehension that the lymph may under certain circumstances be the
means of imparting, not merely the vaccine disease and the desired immunity
from small-pox which is its consequence, but some other infection or vice of
constitution which may injuriously affect the whole after-life of the person
vaccinated. One constantly meets with children of whom it is stated, that
although in good health until vaccination, they have never been well since; that