Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Diphtheria: its natural history and prevention. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![medical officer of the Local Government Board.^ Dr. Longstaff has in this paper submitted to very careful examination the mortality statistics from registered diphtheria in England and Wales for 26 years from 1855, when that disease first appeared in the returns of the Registrar-General, to the close of 1880—a period during which 89,603 diphtheria deaths had been re- corded. For the purposes of his study he divided these twenty-six years into three periods; and with a view, amongst other things, of comparing the relative mortality from diphtheria of town and country districts, he classified the districts within the several counties as Dense, Medium, and Sparse, according to the density of their population. In the first period, 1855-60, in which the mean diphtheria death-rate per million for the whole country is given as 182, he found that the rate was 123 in the dense districts, 182 in the medium districts, and 248 in the sparse districts—rates which show that the disease was twice as fatal a malady in rural districts as it was in towns. In the second period, 1861-70, the results were similar, but the contrast referred to was much less marked; the diphtheria death-rates for the dense, medium, and sparse districts being 163, 164, and 223 per million living respectively. And coming next to the third period, 1871-80, the results were found to exhibit a great change in the degree to which diphtheria mortality affected areas of differing density of population, ^ Supplement on Diarrhoea and Diphtheria in continuation of the Report of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board for 1887. [C—5638]—1889.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21205814_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
