Report on the health of Liverpool during the year 1858 / by W. H. Duncan.

Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the health of Liverpool during the year 1858 / by W. H. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    5 The opinion that Diphtheria is allied to Scarlatina is in some degree corroborated by the fact of their contempo- raneous increase and decline ; but in Diphtheria the deaths occurred at a somewhat earlier asre, about one-lialf being infants under two years, while little more than one-fourth of those from Scarlatina were registered at the same early period. It may be mentioned with regard to Scarlatina, that every eleventh death was that of a second or third indi- vidual in the same family. There is no doubt that the principal Zymotic diseases obey certain laws, whose elucidation may be expected when the record of facts becomes large enough for the purpose. They require the presence of some peculiar, and in most cases unknown, condition of the atmosphere, in order to give them an epidemic character. These con- ditions, varying with each disease, seem to come into operation at different seasons of the year, but usually at in the case of the same Zymotic. The experience of the last eleven years, during which weekly returns of deaths within the borough have been received, embracing 6480 cases of Scarlatina and 3770 of Measles, may perhaps justify with regard to these two diseases, an indication of their epidemic periods. With regard to Scarlatina, the rule seems to be that the mor- tality begins to increase in August, attains its maximum at the end of October or early in November, and then gradually declines until February, when it reach-es the level which it retains with comparatively little variation during the subsequent six months. Such was the course which it followed in Liverpool last year. Starting from a 50, in the first week of November, and afterwards slowly subsided (in Feb. 1850) to about the point from which it: nearly the same period