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9
As showing the urgent necessity of the most earnest
endeavours to diminish the mortality of the infantile
and juvenile population, it may be mentioned, that in
the Metropolis generally, the deaths of infants under
one year of age were 14.6 per cent. of the registered
births, and of children under five years of age 41.3
per cent. of the total deaths.
ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
SMALL POX.
To those who were conversant with the vital
statistics of the country, and had marked the tendency
of certain diseases to prevail at intervals more extensively,
or with unusual violence, and to exhibit
other peculiarities as regards their modes of approach,
progress, and disappearance—in other words, to
assume an epidemic form—the recurrence of smallpox
in such a form in the autumn of 1876 can have
occasioned little surprise. To the Registrar-General
it would not be a difficult matter, as regards some of
those diseases, to predicate with tolerable accuracy the
time of their appearance, the order of their occurrence,
and the probable number of their victims during the
next few years. This epidemic tendency, or influence,
has long been observed in connexion with catarrhal
and contagious eruptive affections, such as influenza,
small pox, scarlet fever, measles, &c.
Various hypotheses, wholly destitute of proof,
have been urged, by way of explanation, of the cause