The geographical distribution of heart disease and dropsy, cancer in females & phthisis in females, in England and Wales.

  • Haviland, Alfred, -1903.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The geographical distribution of heart disease and dropsy, cancer in females & phthisis in females, in England and Wales. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    CHAPTER II. SECTION I. The Geographical Distribution of the Statistics of Heart Disease and Dropsy. England and WALES arc divided into eleven Registration Divisions, each of which represents a group of counties, which are again subdivided into Union Districts. During the period I have selected, the ten years Mode of Study. . . 7 . . . 1851-60, each union district had its population carefully estimated according to the death and birth-rate, between the census of 1851 and that of 1861; this estimated mean population forms in the Registrar-General’s Supplement to his Twenty-fifth Annual Report a standard which enables us to calculate what proportion the deaths of any district bear to the number of those living within its boundaries: for instance, if there have died in a district, during the decennium selected, having a mean population of 10,000, a hundred persons from any one cause of death, Heart Disease for instance, by dividing the 100 deaths by the number of years over which they were spread, we arrive at the average annual rate of mortality, which would be 10 to every 10,000 living; the numbers therefore that I use are proportionate not absolute; and being so, it is all the more necessary that the gross sum from which they are deduced should be as large as possible. Until the present time it was impossible to chartographise disease, inasmuch as the numbers were not sufficiently large, and what had been collected were not in a form suitable for the purpose: of this we can complain no more. The mapping of England and Wales into 11 divisions, 53 counties, and 623 union districts, affords us the means of analysing the distribution of Heart Disease, or any other cause of death. By this threefold division we are enabled to sift our facts through three gauges of different degrees of fineness. In the first place, we see what proportion the death-rate from a cause of death bears to the population in each of the eleven divisions; we colour blue or red those divisions which are above or below the average, and then study this gross distribution carefully; our next process is to colour the counties in the same way, and observe whether the distribution at all coincides with that of the divisions; and our third process is to discover whether the proportional mortality of each county is influenced by the mortality in the districts. Having done this we again review our work, and calculate the effect of each of the many causes surrounding us in the production of the distribution, which our coloured map reveals: if during this scrutiny we discover a general law regulating the distribution in each of the three divisions, our last duty is to crucially test the effects of this law, separate the real from the apparent, study the exceptions, and examine their relation to the assumed law; I say assumed law, for we must remember that until it has been proved we ought not to regard it as a law at all; at the same time, it must be remembered that in physical investigations some hypothesis is requisite, in the first instance, to aid the imperfection of our senses; and when the phenomena of nature accord with the assumption, we are justified in believing it to be a general law; these last few lines