Medical statistics : their force and fallacies : a lecture delivered in Park-Street School of Medicine, November 4th, 1846, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of physic / by James F. Duncan.

  • Duncan, James F. (James Foulis), 1812-1895.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical statistics : their force and fallacies : a lecture delivered in Park-Street School of Medicine, November 4th, 1846, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of physic / by James F. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    the probability of life. When, however, the period of pu- berty has arrived, and the peculiar passions and features of the sexes become developed, the hardihood of the one, contrasted with the sensibility of the other, can easily ac- count for the difference that is found to exist.* Indeed, it will be found that this is the peculiar age at which con- sumption carries off its victims, and the greater liability of the female to this disease will be established farther on. It is also at this age that the female suffers from the casu- alties of child-birth. After this epoch has been reached, we find the sexes return for a short time to their former equality, until about the forty-fifth year, from which period until about sixty the males die in greatest proportion, per- haps because they are then most exposed to the anxieties of life, in providing for their families, and putting them forward in the world, and also, perhaps, because having usually a greater strain upon their mental and bodily en- ergies, in the ordinary affairs of life, than the female, the vital forces sooner give way to the collapse, which is the invariable consequence of excessive exertion. Females constitute the majority of those who die in ad- vanced age; a result which is attributable to their greater temperance, their domestic habits, and their self-control. But to return to the period of infancy. If we examine in detail, the diseases which are most frequent and fatal at this particular age, as may be done by a glance at the accompanying table, we shall find that there is nothing in the diseases themselves to account for this difference in the mortality of the two sexes. In including Pneumonia in this list, I have to observe, that although it is frequently met with in adult life, yet the mortality of the disease is almost entirely confined to infancy. * In favour of tho male sex, and wliieh continues xmtil the fortieth year.