A new life table for Glasgow : based on the mortality of the ten years 1881-90 / by Arch. K. Chalmers.

  • Chalmers, Archibald Kerr.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new life table for Glasgow : based on the mortality of the ten years 1881-90 / by Arch. K. Chalmers. 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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    PREFACE. The present Life Table is now the third of its kind which has been prepared for the population of Glasgow during the present century. In this respect the experience of the City is an unique one, and the explanation of it is to be found in an early appreciation, on the part of the Municipal Authorities, of the advantages to be derived from accurate and precise records of the movements of the population. Early in the century, while, as yet, public hygiene, as a branch of the general science of medicine, existed but in rudimentary form, and before the conception that vital statistics would supply reliable data, from which advances might be made toward the repression of disease, can be said to have acquired any definite expression, these records of population were being compiled for the City. In the third and fourth decades, they were utilised for purposes similar to that which has now been completed for the ninth decade of the century, and the contrasts which these several Tables present, supply invaluable indications of the vital history of Glasgow during the years which lie between. It is now considerably over a year since the work of constructing the present Table was begun, and it will readily be understood that it could by no means be carried on in a continuous manner consistent with the attention which other duties of the Department demanded. The interruptions were of necessity not only frequent, but, on many occasions, prolonged,