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To the Chairman and Members
of the
Walthamstow Urban District Council.
Gentlemen,
I beg to present to you my seventh Annual Report upon the
Public Health and the general conditions influencing it in your District
during 1904.
Owing to the prolonged and intense summer heat experienced,
Diarrhoea was very prevalent in August, and caused a large number of
deaths among infants.
Joined to this, Measles and Whooping Cough were scarcely absent
from the district during the year, and Scarlet Fever prevalence more
marked than in former years.
Small Pox was introduced into the district upon more than one
occasion, and owing to the disease being mistaken for Chicken Pox in
an unvaccinated person, an epidemic of some proportions affecting
42 persons resulted in June and July.
Owing to those unfavourable conditions, our Zymotic death-rate,
Infantile Mortality rate, and Infectious Sickness rate are higher than in
1903, but as will be seen in the body of the Report, even under these
headings your district compares very favourably with the country as
a whole. Diphtheria, while still maintaining the improvement noticed
since the opening of the Sanatorium, showed a larger death-rate per 100
attacked than in 1903, and slightly above that of the "76 Great Towns."
The most favourable feature of the year was our comparative
immunity from Typhoid and its death-rate reduction from -2 per 1000
to OH.