Smallpox and Nutritional Status in England, 1770‐1873: On the Difficulties of Estimating Historical Heights

Abstract

I n a recent issue of this journal, Voth and Leunig (V&L) analysed the impact of smallpox on physical stature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and drew far-reaching conclusions about the correlation between the incidence of smallpox and the development of human stature in England.2 Using a sample of lower-class boys recruited into the Marine Society,3 they estimated that the disease had a strong negative impact of about 1 inch on height. We argue below that their methodology is inappropriate and that their results are flawed for at least three reasons. The Marine Society was a charitable institution that took poor boys from the streets of London and educated them as servants and apprentices for the navy. However, the admission of the boys was controlled by minimum height requirements, which changed frequently over time, and increased substantially after the Napoleonic wars. In practice they were enforced with varying degrees of stringency. Hence, some observations below the height standard are also included in the sample, a phenomenon called shortfall.4