Typhoid fever in Melbourne in 1878 / [by William Thomson].

  • William Thomson
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Typhoid fever in Melbourne in 1878 / [by William Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    6/12
    Added to this 23 ought to be the 8 occurring in hospital, making a total of 31 deaths for the year. In the 16,000 of population the 31 gives 19 to every 10,000 living, a rate never equalled, nor, indeed, nearly approached, in any town in Great Britain, even during the worst epidemics. The discrepancy between the actual number and that published by authority is so great as to form a perfectly unaccountable anomaly. The large majority of those deaths were among adults between 20 and 30 years of age. It would almost appear as if there were some craze abroad to make Melbourne out a more salubrious town than it is in reality. What with a local health officer declaring there were only 9 where there were 31 deaths, representing not go, but 310 cases of fever; a medical lecturer to the Australian Health Society glibly telling his audience that typhoid fever is never very excessive, only causing about 160 deaths a year, when the yearly average is over 226, giving 2260 cases ; and a Central Board of Health reporting the number of cases of typhoid fever never very great, one is apt to doubt if authorities know what forms a relatively high or a low fever rate. In estimating the extent of typhoid fever by its fatality, the only means available in the absence of a general record of zymotic disease, it is necessary to arrange separately metropolitan registration returns; for though it may in a way be enough to know that the very high rate of over 12 deaths in every 10,000 living occurred in Melbourne and suburbs in 1878, yet it would be more exact, and might lead to closer scrutiny of supposed causes, to learn the number every district contributed to the aggregate, particularly when some of the districts are from four to ten miles apart.