Report of the joint special committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed to consider the expediency of modifying the laws relating to the registration of births, marriages, and deaths : presented March 3, 1849.

  • Massachusetts. General Court.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the joint special committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed to consider the expediency of modifying the laws relating to the registration of births, marriages, and deaths : presented March 3, 1849. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    increase of the wealth of the people. The wealth of a country consists in its inhabitants, and the wealth of the inhabitants in the length of their lives, in the vigor of their health, and in the productive power of their industry. An increase of wealth is as sure to result from a long life of vigorous health, as poverty is to result from a life shortened by death or impaired by dis ease. The labor of every man contributes not only to his own wealth but to the wealth of the State; and it is the duty of the government to do all in its power to raise the standard of health to the highest possible state of vigor and productiveness. It may be proper to take a pecuniary view of this matter, and consider time as money, labor as money, life as money. The pecuniary losses incurred by preventable sickness and mortality have often been estimated by competent persons. They include the cost of extra cases of sickness, in medical attendance, medicine, and nursing; the loss of wages during sick-time ; the cost of funerals for the extra deaths ; the loss of the life-time of the premature dead; and the cost of main- taining widows and orphans, thrown, by the premature death of husbands and fathers, on public or private charity. And they estimate, on the average, severe sickness, including medi- cine and nursing, at $150 per annum; loss of wages during sickness, at $50 per annum; funerals, at $10 each; the life- time of the premature dead, allowing 25 years as the average time of productive labor, at $1,250 for each entire life; and the cost of maintaining the widows and orphans which one premature death occasions, at $1,000 each. We will, however, present this subject in a more simple form, and estimate, at least, that five years might, on the average, have been added to the lives of each of the 18,000 persons who died, in this State, the last year, and that 4,000 years of sickness occurred, and 14,000 years of labor were lost, which might have been pre- vented. Taking this favorable basis, we have— Loss of labor (18,000 X 5) 90,000 years, at $50 per year, . . . . $4,500,000 Cost of 4,000 years of sickness, at $50 per year, 200,000 Loss of 4,000 years of labor, at $150 per year, . 600,000 Total annual loss, .... $5,300,000