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The detailed list of zymotic diseases, is: scarlet fever, two; typhoid (enteric) fever, four;
typhus fever, none; pueperal fever, none; continued fever, none; relapsing fever, one; small
pox, none; diphtheria, nine; diarrhœa, twenty-four; measles, nineteen; whooping cough,
twenty-three; erysipelas, one.
Small Pox has caused no death during the year, nor any during the last four years. In
London there was but one death registered from this disease.
Scarlet Fever has caused two deaths, whereas, last year, it was credited with seven.
Fevers. The various forms of fever (typhus, typhoid (enteric), puerperal, continued, and
relapsing) have caused five deaths ; four being assigned to enteric, as against six for the
previous year; and one to relapsing fever, as against one attributed to "fever" (not
defined).
Diphtheria has been registered as the cause of nine deaths. Two of these cases, that were
seen by me, were certainly not cases of diphtheria, one being a case of exhaustion following
whooping cough, and the other a case of croup. The houses, in which this disease has been
notified to exist, have been examined,—the examination having special regard to water
supply to the house and water closet, the state of the drains and sinks, and the general
condition of the house, also in some instances to the state of the occupants, for in these lastnamed
cases, the latter required almost as much attention as the former.
The great increase in the number of deaths from this complaint throughout the country
generally, has called forth the following remark from the Registrar-General. It is taken from
the Summary appended to his yearly Report. He there makes the statement that "the
mortality from Diphtheria has been steadily increasing for many years, but in the last two
years (1888 and 1889) made the most alarming bounds, the deaths rising from a total of 953,
in 1887, first to 1,311, and then, in 1889, to no less than 1,588, whereas the decennial average,
after correction for growth of population, was only 952. In about half of the Metropolitan