[Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Eastbourne County Borough.

  • Eastbourne (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1904] / Medical Officer of Health, Eastbourne County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In the two previous years our rate had been 4/1 and 4-4 per 1,000 respectively less than that of England generally, but in 1904 our Death-rate was no less than 5*7 per 1,000 less than that for England and Wales. The Zymotic Death-rate was 0*5 per 1,000, only about one quarter that of England and Wales, viz: 1*9 per 1,000. These two—the General and the Zymotic Death-rates are in each case the second lowest on record for Eastbourne, and show a gratifying continuation of improvement in the healthy state of the Borough. The Infantile Mortality Rate is the lowest recorded for Eastbourne, viz : 92 per 1,000 births as compared with the 146 of England and Wales. The Birth-rate has slightly increased. A noticeable feature of the Report is that deaths from Infantile Diarrhoea, the most serious disease of a fine and hot summer and autumn, did not remarkably increase in 1904 compared with the previous year, contrary to the experience of the country generally. Frequent removals of house refuse and similar sanitary measures undoubtedly help to cause this satisfactory feature, for the Meteorological conditions were against us. Another index of the healthiness of a community, viz : the incidence of notifiable infectious disease, was lower in 1904 than in any previous year but one, being at the rate of 2 9 per 1,000 as against a ten years average of 4’i per 1,000. In 1904, an important step was taken under the Food and Drugs Act by the Authority, in instituting successful prosecutions for adulteration of brandy by other spirit. Hitherto prosecutions had only been undertaken for the most harmless adulterant, viz: water. Standards of purity for various foods are very necessary, since in a few Courts of Jurisdiction, similar prosecutions have failed owing to want of a definition of pure brandy.
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