The assurance of diseased and doubtful lives on a new principle, more advantageous and equitable to policy-holders than the system hitherto adopted / by Morrice A. Black ; with observations on the characteristics of assurable and non-assurable lives, by A.P. Stewart.

  • Black, Morrice A.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The assurance of diseased and doubtful lives on a new principle, more advantageous and equitable to policy-holders than the system hitherto adopted / by Morrice A. Black ; with observations on the characteristics of assurable and non-assurable lives, by A.P. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    class of doubtful lives, and how important is any proposal which, tends to lesson the inequalities inseparable from the present method of estimating their probable value. Ill —Under what circumstances, if any, is a diseased life assu- rable ? In the present state of our knowledge, it is impossible to lay down any precise rules in regard to the acceptance of lives actually diseased. It is only by the accumulation of the recorded expe- rience of many Life Offices, extending over a long term of years, that we can hope to arrive at any general results. When many reports, characterised by the accuracy and distinguished ability of those drawn up for the Scottish Widows’ Fund, and Standard Life Offices, by Drs. Begbie and Christison, shall have been issued by other long-established companies, we may hope for some clearer light to guide our decisions, which, are meanwhile little better than guesses at truth, and ofteii very wide of the mark. Each separate- case must be judged on its own merits or demerits, and where mere opinion has so much to do with the result, each one of a dozen medical examiners may come to a different conclusion on a given case. We can, therefore, do no more than offer a few hints as to the principles and considerations which are moat likely to influence medical opinion. We premise that there are three conditions that will induce a medical examiner, for the sake of the proposer as well as of the company, to suspend his decision. — 1. The presence of active disease of any kind. A common cold, if left to take care of itself, often gi’ows into a severe bronchitis, a pleurisy, an inflammation of the lung, a spitting of blood, or a consumption. An unheeded sprain of the knee or ankle may lead to white swelling, and reveal a scrofulous coustitution till then unsuspected. The ball of the great toe, chafed in walking, may, after many months of slight irritation, become the seat of the first of a series of gouty attacks. 2. Recent disease. For some time after measles, a severe influenza, a continued fever, or an inflammation of the lung, incautious expo- sure may quicken the latent seeds of consumption into rapid growth: an attack of jaundice may be the forerunner of incurable disease of the liver j and dysentery may leave behind it serious disorder of the bowels. In all such cases, the rule is to wait a little.—3. Recurrence of disease. While some complaints, as scailatina and typhus fever, protect those who have had them from a second attack, other ail- ments have a remarkable tendency to repeat themselves. We have known erysipelas and quinsy recur scores of times j annual attacks of bronchitis are very common j and a like recurrence of plemisy and inflammation. of the lung is by no means rare. The