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next: 127 deaths are put down to this class. Then follows WhoopingCough,
which carried off 124 children. Then Fever, which was fatal to
110 persons. This number, abstraction being made of 12 cases which
occurred in St. Luke's Workhouse, only slightly exceeds that of the preceeding
year. Upon this disease, one of the acknowledged sanitary tests,
some observations are necessary. It is well known that fever prevailed
extensively throughout the Metropolis and in many parts of the Country
during the winter and the spring of 1862. It is essential in the first
place, in reference to the recent epidemic, to bear in mind the distinction
between Typhus fever and Typhoid fever. Cases of both are almost
necessarily registered under the same term. The word "fever," also, as
used in the Registration of Deaths, is often applied to cases which have
nothing of an epidemic character. For some years past, the fever which
has prevailed in London has been Typhoid. It is this form which, there
is reason to believe, is most closely associated with defective sewerage,
with the ingestion of sewage-matters conveyed into the system either
by the water we drink, or by the air we breathe, or by other means.
This kind of fever is not endowed with very active infectious properties.
It is chiefly propagated by the direct imbibition, either by the lungs or
by the stomach, of the germs discharged from the alimentary canal of
other fever patients. Absolute cleanliness, carried out in all the details
of purification of the air, of dwellings, of clothes, of removal or disenfection
of animal excreta, of cleanliness in eating and drinking, would in
all probability abolish the disease. The diminution of it, has indeed, kept
pace with remarkable uniformity, with the progress of sanitary improvement.
As regards Typhoid Fever, recent experience offers no contradiction
to this proposition. But the other kind of fever, the Typhus
which has been prevalent during the winter and spring is very contagious.
It is apt to be propagated from person to person, and to spread throughout
a household or a community, with a facility approaching that which
characterises scarlatina. Although there is reason to suspect in some
cases an association between typhus and sewage-poisons, it is more
especially the disease of Overcrowding, and Destitution. Wheresoever,
people are exposed to the combined influence of bad and insufficient food,
and of air loaded with the impurities resulting from animal life, there a
state of blood is likely to be induced which issues in the development
of typhus fever. Such was the Famine-Fever of Ireland. Originating in