INFANTILE MORTALITY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2168, 5 February 1881, Page 3

INFANTILE MORTALITY.

The " British Medical Journal " says that, owing to the very large existing mortality among infants, the Looal Government Board have consented to undertake the general inquiry into the causes whioh determine the origin and prevalence of summer diarrheal. In a communication addressed to the Town Council of Leicester—a place pre-eminent among English towns for the terrible infantile mortality that takes place there every summer —the Board have stated that, having in view the importance of obtaining, for general use, more information as to the conditions under whioh diarrhoea is so provalent and fatal among infants in urban populations, they propose to refer the subject to one of their medical staff as a matter of general study and local research, with directions to give Leicester a foremost place in his inquiries. It is but fair to assume that the recent decision of the Local Government Board has, to no small degree, been influenced by the terrible mortality from diarrhoea whioh ooourred throughout tho kingdom in the third quarter of this year. A glanco through tho Registrar-General's returns shows that the fatality was much more generalized and intense than usual, although the old haunts of the disease still stand out in conspicuous relief. Hardly a town or urban district of importance escaped, and in some the mortality was simply appalling. The general rate throughout the oountry was, indeed, higher than in any of the ten preoeding summers ; the highest having been 311 in J 870, while that of this year was 332 per 1000 of the population. In the twenty large towns the rate was 4 4, varying from 2 4 in Bristol, and 3.3 in London and Oldham, to 8.4 in Salford and 10.6 in Leicester. In fifty other considerable towns the rate was 4 6, and in Ipswich was 8.2, in Coventry 83, in Stockport 10.0, and in Preston 13 6. The Registrar-General's statistics unfortunately do not give, except for London, the ages at which tho fatal cases occurred, but summer diarrhoea is well known to be a disease specially fatal to children, and still more so to infants. The metropolitan figures show that nearly threefourths of the deaths from diarrhoea are those of children under one year of age, and a fifth more are of children between the ages of one and five. These proportions are even exceeded in certain manufacturing districts; and at the best, they constitute a subject for very serious reflection. As a preliminary step to the commencement of the Government inspector's labours, the Looal Government Board have issued a circular letter of inquiry to all plaoes having last quarter exceptional mortality from diarrheta j asking whether the inquiries of the local officer of health have led him to any judgment as to the conditions which have determined the prevalence or the fatality of the disease in the district.