On the numerical ratio of disease in the adult male community : deduced from the sanitary statistics of Her Majesty's Customs, London, for the years 1857-74 / by Walter Dickson.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the numerical ratio of disease in the adult male community : deduced from the sanitary statistics of Her Majesty's Customs, London, for the years 1857-74 / by Walter Dickson. 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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    of all our diseases, is probably less fatal in this force than in most other bodies of men of similar age. It exacts four lives per 1,000 an- nually, the average age of its victims being 41 years. In the army, 7 per 1.000. and in the navy 5.5 per 1,000, is the combined death and in- validing rate of this fell disease. Cancer is of rare occurrence in the Customs force, having in the period not exceeded the rate of 0.3 per 1,000 men. Diabetes is also extremely infrequent, showing only one death and one now under treatment: a rate equivalent to o. 1 per 1,000, or 1 per 10,000 men. Brain diseases yield a death-rate of 1 per 1,000 men, and a super- annuation-rate of 1.5 per 1,000. Heart-disease and aneurism exhibit a mortality of 1.5 per 1,000 men, the average age being 48 years. Other chest-diseases, exclusive of phthisis, present a death-rate of 1.2 per 1,000 men. Bronchitis and pneumonia are the chief causes of mor- tality. Diseases of the digestive organs are fatal only in the ratio of 0.8 per 1.000. One instance occurred of leucocythmmia. Disease of the liver and dysentery were the chief causes of deaths in this class. Diseases of the kidneys and bladder are likewise rare or terminate fortunately, the death-rate not exceeding 0.3 per 1,000 men, or 3 per 10.000. In some cases of complex organic disease, involving equally various viscera, and attended with serous effusion, the deaths have been tabled as dropsy, and amount to 5 in 10,000. Deaths by accident or violence somewhat exceed the rate of 1 per 1,000 ; but I have already referred to them, and apportioned their causes. We now come, in the last place, to the extensive group of zymotic diseases, which, all-important as they are to the general, and more especially to the youthful population, will be found to affect compara- tively little the adult male community, when contrasted with the dis- ability and death induced by constitutional and organic disease, ex- hibiting only 6 per cent, of the whole amount of sickness, and 7 per cent, of the entire mortality. The zymotic death-rate does not reach 1 in 1,000 (0.9), yet no epidemic has visited the eastern and southern suburbs of London, where the large majority of the Customs officers reside, without their being, however slightly, affected by it ; and typhus, relapsing fever, and small-pox have all claimed their victims in these visitations. Small-pox was especially destructive in 1870-71-72, when it inflicted an annual loss to the extent of nearly 2 per 1,000 men.
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