Diphtheria : its natural history and prevention, being the Milroy lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1891 / by R. Thorne Thorne.

  • Thorne, R. Thorne (Richard Thorne), Sir, 1841-1899.
Date:
1891
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diphtheria : its natural history and prevention, being the Milroy lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1891 / by R. Thorne Thorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    the rates being 114, 125, and 132 for the dense, medium, and sparse districts respectively. Thus, whereas in 1856-60 the rate for the sparse districts was double that of the dense districts, in the period 1871-80 the rates for these respective districts came to be nearly equal. TABLE No. Ill Death-Rates from Diphtheria per Million living. Districts. 1855-60. 1861-70. 1871-80. Dense districts 123 163 114 Medium districts . 182 164 125 Sparse districts 248 223 132 In short, during each successive period, fatal diphtheria, which, though always maintaining a predilection for sparsely populated rural areas, came more and more to hold its own in densely-peopled urban areas. This is a subject to which I shall have on more than one occasion to refer again. But in the meantime I would point out that since 1880 this incidence of diphtheria on towns has become more marked than ever before, and that diphtheria, which, as Dr. Buchanan has pointed out, has always displayed a marked tendency to prevail in sparsely-populated districts rather than in centres of population, is undergoing a change of distribution by which the chief urban districts seem to be approaching nearer than before to rural districts in their rate of suffering from this disease. The following statistics, which are compiled from the