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8
MEDICAL OFFICER'S REPORT.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
For the first time since the passing of the Act of
Parliament under which this Board is constituted, Cholera appears
as an Epidemic in the Statistical Tables I have the honor to submit
for your information. In my last report, in anticipation of the
appearance of this fearful scourge, I ventured to adduce a few
reasons for believing that if the disease should unhappily visit us,
its ravages would bo inconsiderable compared with those of former
years. A larger supply of purer water was a chief ground for
encouraging this hope, and the experience of the past year has
confirmed in a very remarkable manner the opinion of those who
have long held that, in the spread of Cholera, impure water had a
preponderating influence. This District, as I then pointed out,
afforded in former Cholera periods a very striking illustration confirmatory
of this theory. The revelations of the past year make it
impossible for us to conclude that the excessive mortality from
Cholera in one district of London is to be explained by the doctrine
of chances. The mortality from Cholera for the whole of London
was 5,577, but of this number, 8,981 persons died in the East
District. In population this portion of London is about one-fifth,
which would leave to the other four-fifths an average of a little more
than 400 deaths each. The mortality of the East was therefore ten
times greater than the rest of London. The death-rate of these
four districts varied with the elevation of the land, and the wealth of
the residents—the West giving the smallest mortality, and the South
the largest—while in the mortality from all causes, tho South is
lower than three of the remaining districts into which London is
divided. With regard to the East, however, we find that there were
remarkable variations in the death-rate in the different sub-districts.
The Registrar General states that " the whole of the districts where
" the mortality was from thirty to forty-fold higher than it was
" either in the West or the central in the North or South of London,
" were supplied with water from the Old Ford reservoirs. London
" is divided into 87 districts ; 6 are supplied from Old Ford, and
" every one has been ravaged by the Epidemic: the other 31
" districts suffered slightly. The 37 districts are subdivided into
"185 sub-districts; 21 are supplied from the same water, and
" have all suffered considerably in comparison with tho remaining
"114." I have stated these facts respecting the East of London
thus fully, because they have an important bearing upon our sanitary
measures, especially in Epidemic periods. The existenco of a fatal
connection between impure wator and diseaso is an established fact,
and I have no doubt that a continuous instead of an intermittent