[Report 1868] / Medical Officer of Health, Leicester Borough.
- Leicester (England). Borough Council.
- Date:
- 1868
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: [Report 1868] / Medical Officer of Health, Leicester Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.
20/48 (page 20)
![tive agent, but upon the want of vita] resisting power or stamina in the 'patient attacked by it. I cannot of course prove the negative of the proposition, but ] may say that the arguments adduced to prove the affirmative, that Diarrhoea is a Zymotic Disease, have never appeared to me sufficiently conclusive and free from ambiguity to carry conviction to my mind, whilst the arguments on the other side arc, in my estimation, of a much more convincing character. That the fatality of the disease did not depend upon an exceptional virulence of its causative agent, is demonstrated by the fact, that although Diarrhoea was, so to speak, universal during the summer quarter, affecting equally persons of all ages, the deaths in the whole popu¬ lation, from three years old to forty (that is in the robust period of life), amounted to only three in the entire year, 327 of the remaining deaths being those of children under three years of age, and 19 of individuals from 40 to SO, and upwards, that is to say, those in the weakest periods of life. A reference to the Table of Deaths at All Ages, will show that from all causes during the summer quarter, the deaths in the whole population, from five years of age to sixty, only amounted to 14S, being the lowest mortality of the four quarters, the other three quarters, within those limits of age, being March quarter 169, June quarter 163, December quarter 182. With such a comparatively and absolutely small mortality in the summer quarter](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29724776_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
