[Report 1894] / Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City.

  • Nottingham (England). City Council.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1894] / Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/88 (page 46)
    trade, render a comparison of the actual numbers of births, deaths, and the like, in successive years, in many cases as reliable as that of rates based upon an estimated population. In discussing the mortality from this, and the other groups of diseases that follow, I shall for the most part confine myself to a discussion of actual numbers. The total number of deaths during 1894 from the constitu¬ tional group was 655, which is lower than any annual record of the preceding 10 years. The reduction has been principally due to a falling off in the mortality from tubercular diseases, of which I shall speak in their turn. Rheumatism and gout in the aggre¬ gate showed but little variation from the mean of recent years. Cancer and other malignant growths appear to have been slightly more fatal than in 1893, but the cancer deaths of 1892, again, had been largely in excess of those in either of the later years. The actual number registered in 1894 was 167, and 124 of these were of persons aged from 45 to 75 years. The number of females affected were 102, and the number of males 65. The Registrar- General, in his annual report for 1889, estimated that, according to the records of 1887-8-9, 1 in 12 women and 1 in 20 men in this country who survive 35 years would succumb to cancer (?.e., some form of malignant growth); and, by the law of probabilities it must follow, that on an average in one of three cases either a parent or a grandparent, if he or she survived 35 years, will have died of such an affection. But it must not be forgotten that a large part, if not all, of the apparent increase in the cancer mortality of recent years is undoubtedly due to more accurate diagnosis and classification. The deaths from the tubercular group of diseases have again declined as compared with the average of other late years Of the reality of this most desirable reduction there can be no doubt, and the record of Nottingham in this respect corresponds with that of the country as a whole. The deaths from diabetes, 15 in number, show but little variation from the mean of recent years. The mortality from the other diseases in this group calls for no special comment.