Fifty-fourth annual report on the health and sanitary condition of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington.

  • Islington (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Fifty-fourth annual report on the health and sanitary condition of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    114/354 page 106
    1909] 106 ALCOHOLISM. 18 deaths were registered under this heading, of which 12 occurred among males and 6 among females. The return shows that the male deaths increased by 4 and that the female deaths increased by 3. Since 1901,217 deaths, 96 being males and 121 females, have been registered in Islington from this cause, thus showing that alcoholism is playing a not unimportant part in the mortality returns. Everyone who deals with mortality statistics very well understands that the registered deaths by no means represent the actual number caused by the excessive use of alcohol. In the Report for 1908 this fact was pointed out, and, therefore, it will not be discussed further here. It may, however, be mentioned that while acute alcoholic poisoning, acute alcoholic mania, delirium tremens, chronic alcoholic neuritis, and alcoholic paralysis are generally ascribed in the death returns to alcoholism, yet there are many other diseases to which alcohol is the attributing cause, which are not so included, and which comprise such diseases of the throat as catarrhal sore throat; of the stomach, such as gastric catarrh, chronic dys pepsia and dilatation of the stomach; of the liver, such as congestion, cirrhosis and fatty liver; of the kidneys, such as Chronic Bright's Disease; of faulty metabolism, such as gout; of altered tissue change, such as glycosuria and obesity; of functional disorders of the generative system, such as sterility and incapability of mothers to suckle their infants at the breast; of the heart, such as dilatation and fatty heart; of the blood vessels, such as degeneration; of fibroid changes in the vessels of the lungs, such as increased susceptibility to inflammatory and infectious diseases, viz., inflammation of the lungs, consump tion, bronchial catarrh, etc.; of the eyes, such as susceptibility to inflammatory diseases; and of the nervous system, such as the inflammation and degeneration of the nerve structures, epilepsy, melancholia, dementia, imbecility, hysteria, idiocy, and sunstroke; of infectious diseases, such as erysipelas, blood poisoning of various types, tubercle, syphilis, diphtheria and cholera; and of industrial diseases, such as lead poisoning. It would be interesting to discuss the actual effect of alcohol on these several diseases, but this is not the place for it. Suffice it to say that excess of alcohol is a very potent factor in many diseases, although no return of the fact is made to the registrar of deaths; but it may be taken for granted that such excess is a secondary, if not a primary cause of death in innumerable cases.
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