On the best modes of representing accurately, by statistical returns, the duration of life, and the pressure and progress of the causes of mortality amongst different classes of the community, and amongst the populations of different districts and countries / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
[1843?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the best modes of representing accurately, by statistical returns, the duration of life, and the pressure and progress of the causes of mortality amongst different classes of the community, and amongst the populations of different districts and countries / by Edwin Chadwick. 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.

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    ence. This, very probably, is below the truth; from whence it will follow, that a child born in a country parish or village has at least an expectation of 3G or 37 years; supposing the proportion of country to town inhabitants to be as 3^ to I, which, I think, this ingenious writer’s observations prove to be nearly the case in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and some other kingdoms.” By Mr. Milne, in his work on Annuities, and in his article on mortality in the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, by Ur. Bissett Haw- kins, and by nearly all statistical writers, the proportions of deaths to the population, and the average ages of death, ure treated as equivalent. Dr. Southwood Smith has been misled to adopt the same view. lie states in his work on the Philosophy of Health, p. 135, that “ There is reason to believe that the mortality at present throughout Europe, taking all coun- tries together, including towns and villages, and combining all classes into one aggregate, is 1 in 36. Susmilch, a celebrated German writer, who'flourished about the middle of the last century, estimated it at this average at that period. The result of all Mr. Finlaison’s investigations is, that the average for the whole of Europe does not materially differ at the present time.” “ It has been shown that the average mortality at present at Ostend, is 1 in 36, which is the same thing as to ussert, that a new-born child at Ostend has an expectation of 85^ years of life.” Reference is usually made to the writings of Mr. Milne as the autho- rity on whom the proportions of deaths to the population are taken as equivalents of the ages of death, and as data for the construction of tables to show the expenditure of life. Mr. Milne’s data are thus stated in his chapter “ On the construction of Tables of Mortality,” in the article, “ Mortality,” in the “ Encyclo- paedia Britannica:” “ Now let us suppose,” says he, “ the population of a place to have remained invariable for one or two hundred years past ” (a state of things which it might be difficult to find in any moderate sized market-town for two or three years, much less two cen- turies), “ during which period 10,000 children have been born alive at 10,000 equal intervals of time in each year” (a state of things to which it would be equally difficult to find an approximation at any time or in any place); “ also that there having been no migration ” (another state of things equally difficult to find), “ and the law of mortality having been always the same, both the number of the living and that of the annual deaths have remained constant; the whole of the annual deaths at all ages, as well as the number of annual births, having been 10,000.” “Then, if the law of mortality, exhibited in the above table, be that which obtains in the place just mentioned, that table will represent the stream of life which flows through it, and fills the vacancies left by those who advance in age, or are carried ofF by death, their successors inces- santly following and being followed in the same course.” Having assumed these data, he reasons upon the assumption (which, for practical purposes, to which such reasonings are proposed to be applied, appears to me to be as misleading as would be reasoning in physics for practical purposes on assumptions of a perfectly calm sea, and a perfectly regular wind or stationary atmosphere, for two centuries), —-and, by a chain of fifteen more propositions, none of which I shall attempt to, controvert, demonstrates that “ the number of years in the expectation of life at any age is the same as the number of living persons M' pm1]0_ (LIBRARY*