Observations on the best mode of registering deaths : read at an evening meeting of the Royal College of Physicians, June 1843 / by William Pulteney Alison.

Date:
[1844?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the best mode of registering deaths : read at an evening meeting of the Royal College of Physicians, June 1843 / by William Pulteney Alison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of the deaths, there will be no report by a medical man, on which reliance can be placed ; the cases either having been seen by none, or seen so cursorily, or at so advanced a period, as to make it impossible for them to pronounce confidently on their exact nature. This, I think, all practitioners will admit to be true, even of many cases of which they could say, with a good deal of confidence, whether any and what remedies were likely to be of service ; and if so, it is obvious that to require or even to invite a declaration of the cause of death, in the same mode, in all cases whatever, is to make the statistical statements to be founded on those registers an almost certain source of fallacy, and of erroneous doctrine. This is substantially admitted by Mr Farr himself, for he says that in England the names of diseases have often been returned, particularly as to cases not seen by medical men, in a yery unsatisfactory manner ; but the remedy which he suggests is, to have all such cases inquired into after death by medical men, and then named ; which, as it appears to me, is not a procedure that 'can be adopted, at least in Scotland, with any prospect of more satisfactory results. But, on the other hand, it is equally certain that there are various particulars which are easily ascertained, in regard to all cases without exception, and which of themselves, if ascertained uniformly and universally, will give results of great importance. These are, not only the age, sex, precise locality, and condition or mode of life of the deceased, but likewise the duration of his dis- ease, as acute or chronic; in the case of well-known epidemics, the name may be safely assigned, and in all cases of sporadic diseases, the part of the body in which the chief symptoms appeared. The importance of having these particulars recorded as to all cases, combined with the impossibility of having a scientific statement of the cause of death in many, forms the difficulty which we propose to surmount by the two distinct and even subdivided columns. .Ifc !s no cloubt possible to record all the particulars that we wish m a single column, and to have the names of diseases only assigned in that column when it can be done accurately, and afterwards to pick out, from the entries there, the cases which are accurately named, as distinguished from those of which we know only the seat and duration. But let us observe the in- conveniences of this mode of proceeding. 1st, There is much greater trouble in throwing the informa- tion required into the form of tables. For example, if we wish to know how many acute and how many chronic diseases of the head are recorded in a given register and within a given time, how many of these have been registered in general terms nly, and how many accurately named, we should have the trouble of seeking out and reflecting on the import of a great number of in ividual words, instead of merely summing up a column of figures