Public health / by the late E. A. Parkes ; revised by William Aitken.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health / by the late E. A. Parkes ; revised by William Aitken. 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.

    73/105 (page 61)
    VITAL STATISTICS. The attention now paid to public health is in a large degree owing to the careful collection of the statistics of births and deaths and of the causes of death, which have been collected in England for the last thirty-eight years. It may truly be said indeed, that not only all Europe, but gradually the entire world, has been influenced by the work of the Registrar-General of England. We are now able to determine the limits of mortality and its causes with some precision, and are being led up to the consideration of the causes which bring about a too high death rate. The chief vital statistics bearing upon public health are the determination of the birth rate ; of the death rate according to sex, age, and disease ; and of the health of each class of the community as judged of by the expectation of life at given ages. There are many other problems, but these are the most important. Statistics of sickness, apart from mortality, are not attempted on account of the difficulty of collecting the data with sufficient accuracy. The gross death rate, as calculated on the mean population without distinction of sex or age, is that which is commonly used to express the health of a town or district. It is of course to be understood that it is an inferior method to the