Bills Of Mortality Research Articles

The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (review)

Reviewed by: The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England Brian H. Childs (bio) Raymond A. Anselment, The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995. 315 pp. Clothbound, $47.50. At the conclusion of this fine work Raymond A. Anselment, a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, makes the claim that while other centuries are better known than the seventeenth for making the great contributions to the literary sense of illness, the works of the 1600s mark a major contribution to the uses of language for healing and transformation. “The fundamental meaning of suffering and loss cannot be denied,” writes Anselment: Like the medicine of the period, which now also seems both simple and fanciful, the poetry sought to heal pain that still seems real. Individually, an epitaph by Elizabeth Egerton or an elegy by John Oldham may appear about as relevant as prescriptions of Venice treacle or amulets of arsenic. Together and in the contexts they help to create, however, the literary and medical texts express the need and offer the comfort found in the diary or memoir as well as in the sermon or spiritual tract. All are meaningfully understood as part of a realm long celebrated in tributes to “the lyre and bow of Lykorean Phoibos.” (P. 212) Anselment’s claim is well-founded in its modesty about the literature of the era as well as in the importance of that literature’s attempt to understand pain, suffering, and death. While the eighteenth century gave us the great English literary narrative about plague and the nineteenth century showed us the impact of venereal disease on artists’ lives, it was the seventeenth century that contributed an early attempt to find meaning in suffering and loss, especially as suffering and loss were understood to be the results of smallpox. Making sense of smallpox gave physicians, poets, and the general populace an especially difficult time because smallpox could not be attributed to either corporate or individual sin and [End Page 263] transgression as could the other three major causes of death and suffering—stillbirth and neonatal death (the sin of Eve, which is to say original sin), plague (God’s judgment on sinful nations), and venereal disease (the cost of a profligate life). Smallpox was not in the compendium of the results of divine anger. It was a democratic, cruel, and decidedly impartial disease. Anselment’s method for illuminating the relationships between the four common diseases (stillbirth and neonatal death, venereal disease, plague, and smallpox) and the human attempt to make some sense of them is simple and elegant. Medical texts, treatises of the era, and bills of mortality are cited and discussed in a way that sets the context. Interspersed with the medical discourse are personal accounts of disease found in diaries and other forms of personal narrative. These personal accounts, usually by the survivors or the bereaved, form the link with the poetic works that attempt to put to language what the medical texts and diaries could not. The unifying figure for Anselment’s method is Apollo, the god of medicine, the father of Asclepius, and the god of poetry, who as Pindar writes: . . . sends mortal men and women relief from grievous disease, Apollo, who has given us the lyre, who brings the Muse to whom he chooses, filling the heart with peace and harmony. (P. 11) The unifying theme is the relationship between the Apollonian healing traditions of the Greeks and the literary healing represented in seventeenth century English texts, especially poetic texts. In Chapter 1, Anselment sets the context for subsequent chapters dealing with each of the four causes of death listed above. He asserts that in the seventeenth century Apollonian healing had taken on Christian overtones and united “traditional” medicine with the cura animarum, or the healing of the soul, which was more emotional healing than physical solace. In medicine, the schools of Hippocrates and Galen gave the seventeenth century an explanation of disease that was an alternative to a supernatural one. In addition, the followers of the sixteenth-century Swiss physician Paracelsus offered a naturalistic understanding of disease combined with...

The Rise of Tuberculosis in America before 1820

Bills of mortality, newspaper and gazette articles, journals, and other records with specific references to "consumption," "phthisis," and other terms for tuberculosis were reviewed to determine the occurrence and importance of tuberculosis in the American colonies before 1820. Review of these sources indicates a marked increase in the proportional mortality from tuberculosis in the United States in the 18th century. "Consumption" may have been the leading cause of death in adult American colonists.

Burial seasonality and causes of death in London 1670-1819.

Recent discussions of urban mortality in early modern Europe have concentrated on mortality levels to the relative exclusion of cause-of-death patterns. These it is often assumed were dictated by certain characteristics of the urban environment in particular the problems of waste disposal and water supply and were thus dominated by water- and food-borne gastric diseases. The present study is based on an analysis of burial seasonality in the weekly London Bills of Mortality 1670-1819. Contrary to expectation substantial changes were observed in the seasonality of burials over this period. An initial pattern of excess summer mortality characteristic of gastric infection gave way during the eighteenth century to a winter peak of the kind generally associated with respiratory conditions and typhus and similar to that observed in England as a whole. Some implications of this finding are considered together with some possible explanations. (EXCERPT)

Mortality, weather and prices in London 1675–1825: a study of short-term fluctuations

Eighteenth-century London, like other contemporary European metropolitan centres, experienced a substantial excess of recorded burials over baptisms. The importance of this phenomenon has long been recognized, but its origins and nature have received relatively little empirical study. A preliminary analysis of data from the London Bills of Mortality has suggested that levels of mortality in the capital were unusually severe for much of the period. The present paper is based on an analysis of association between short-run movements in burial totals in the Bills and those in certain price and meteorological series. This reveals a complex pattern reflecting both the direct effects of ecological fluctuations and their indirect effects mediated by variations in migratory streams. The scope and limitations of such a short-run analysis are discussed and appropriate statistical techniques reviewed. Data on prices, temperature and rainfall are considered in conjunction with burial totals broken down by age and cause of death. The importance of spatial structure and migration patterns to the understanding of early modern metropolitan vital regimes is stressed.

Edmond Halley: astronomer and actuary

Edmond Halley, who was born in 1656 and died in 1742, is well known generally because of the Comet which bears his name. He is not, however, associated to any great extent with other activities and if it were not for the Comet it is likely that most people today would never even have heard of him. Outside the actuarial profession, and perhaps to some extent even within it, it is not generally known that in 1693 he constructed a life table from the bills of mortality in the German city of Breslau and then went on to calculate from that table annuity rates on one, two and three lives. Reference to this was formerly included in the introduction to the Year Book, but this has now been shortened and the reference to Halley has disappeared.

Correspondence of William Heberden, F.R.S. with the Reverend Stephen Hales and Sir Charles Blagden.

The letters transcribed below from unpublished manuscripts were written by men of three different generations, William Heberden (1710—1801) providing the link between Hales (born in the reign of Charles II) and Blagden, who was still a boy at the time of Hales’s death. Heberden, son of a Southwark innkeeper, received a classical education at the local grammar school, proceeded to St John’s College, Cambridge, was in due course elected Fellow and then began his study of medicine. He received his M.D. in 1739 and his ambitious course of lectures on Materia Medica, which he delivered annually, helped to establish his reputation. He was elected F. R. C. P. in 1746 and F. R. S. three years later, soon after settling in London. It is clear from his lectures and other works that he was a voracious reader and that his interest in scientific matters was not limited to the field of Physic. In 1758 he was busy preparing ‘A Collection of the Yearly Bills of Mortality’ and it was no doubt this preoccupation, combined with his interest in obtaining pure, uncontaminated drinking water, that prompted the enquiries contained in the (lost) letter to which Hales is replying.

Sir William Petty on the Causes and Consequences of Urban Growth

If modern economic science is built on the twin foundations offactual investigation and deductive reasoning from clearly stated premises, Marx's characterization of Sir William Petty (1623-87) as the founder of economics is well deserved. His Political Arithmetick was a pathbreaking effort the art of reasoning byfigures upon things relating to government. Although Petty's primary concern lay analyzing problems of taxation, money, international trade, and national income, he was also interested demographic processes and their relation to economic phenomena. The passage reproduced below from pp. 26-40 of his An Essay Concerning the Multiplication of Mankind Together with another Essay Political Arithmetick, Concerning the Growth of the City of London with the Measures, Periods, Causes, and thereof. 1682. (London, 1698) is an appealing display of that interest. The first part of this essay is devoted to an astute ifflawed estimation of the size and rate of growth of the population of the globe, of England, and of the City of London. Petty set the global population at 320 million (about half of its actual level) and estimated that it was increasing at a geometric progression with a doubling time of 360 years. Thus, he reasoned, world population within the next 2000 years so increase as to give one Headfor every two Acres of Land the Habitable part of the Earth. At that density (with a total population of some 10 billion), Petty expected Wars and great Slaughter &c. The population of the City of London he estimated as 670,000, doubling every 40 years. Both of these figures (both overestimates) were derived from a time series of burials, taken from Graunt's celebrated Natural and political observations made upon the Bills of Mortality (1662), a series that Petty extended to 1682. (Burials in such Years as were neither remarkable for extraordinary Healthfulness or Sickliness tended to be doubling every 40 years, Petty observed, and he assumed that such years there was one death for every 30 persons alive.) Since the population of England and Wales (like that of the globe) grew much more slowly than that of London, Petty reasoned that London's growth would come to a halt by Anno 1800, when it will be eight times more than now, with above 4 millions. What are the Causes and Consequences of London's growth? This is the subject Petty addresses the excerpt reproduced below. Characteristically,

The rise and fall of epidemiology, 1950--2000 A.D.

IN 1662 John Graunt, a London haberdasher, published his magnum opus, Natural and Political Observations... Made upon the Bills of Mortality, and thereby established the field of epidemiology.1 Graunt brought to light a diversity of facts about human life and disease that had not previously been appreciated. He was the first to notice that the numbers of births and deaths of males exceeded those of females (by the ratio of 14 to 13); he noticed, too, that despite their greater mortality, men had less morbidity than women. Graunt quantified for the first time the high mortality in children, noting that . . .

The ‘Bills of Mortality’ of Florence

Summary In a number of North Italian Cities a series of Bills of Mortality is available, beginning in the late Middle Ages and continued without significant interruptions until the nineteenth century. On the basis of fresh archival material, the author re-assesses the reliability of the Bills of Mortality of Florence and concludes that during the sixteenth centuries deaths of children were recorded only exceptionally.

The `Bills of Mortality' of Florence

The `Bills of Mortality' of Florence

A collection of some observations on bills of mortality & parish registers: an unpublished manuscript by Stephen Hales, F.R.S. (1677-1761).

Publication. No work on vital statistics by Hales appears under his name in the British Library’s Catalogue o f Printed Books. Professor D. V. Glass kindly sought out Stephen Hales’s publications in the library o f the Royal Society, and has consulted the Librarian there, and he informs me lift, that no book by Hales nor any paper in the Philosophical Transactions by him is on vital statistics. As presumptive evidence that the Collection of.some Observations was not generally known in the mid-eighteenth century, we have Short’s analysis o f vital statistics (9) from more than 160 parishes, since these include neither Farringdon nor Teddington. (Short’s ‘Country Parish, Hampshire’, the only parish unnamed, is without data after 1658.) In six demographical papers in the Philosophical Transactions o f the Royal Society, William Brackenridge, writing between 1754 and 1758, makes no mention o f Hales. Price (10), in 1769, draws attention to the difference between town and country in the mortality o f early childhood,

The accuracy of the London parish registers, 1580-1653.

Abstract In a recent discussion of London mortality experience, and in particular of the impact of the plague from 1563 to 1665, based on the Bills of Mortality, Dr I. Sutherland wrote: ‘...family reconstitution studies on the London parish registers do not appear to be a practical proposition.’ He went on to explain why this was so. ‘It seems likely that during the period under review all the burials came to the notice of the parish authorities, and that deficiencies, perhaps of the order often per cent, will have occurred by omissions either from parish registers or the bills of mortality.... The deficiencies in christenings before the Civil War will certainly have been greater than those in burials....’1 However, because it is impossible to verify the aggregate totals of baptisms and burials given in the Bills of Mortality because they are not broken down by parish, conclusions based on the use of this source will always be open to question. This is why a reconsideration of the London parish registers ...

Life Table Analysis and Manpower Statistics — A Note

The idea of a life table was first suggested by John Graunt in his Observations on the Bills of Mortality for the City of London, which was published in 1662. A number of these tables were produced in the next century to meet the needs of the growing insurance industry. These companies insured lives and needed to know how long people of various ages could be expected to live to pay premiums or receive benefits.

DR. TOBIAS SMOLLETT ON THE EVILS OF URBANIZATION (1771)

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), usually remembered as a brilliant novelist, was also a surgeon in the Royal Navy. He published a number of satirical novels on English social life. In one of these, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771), Smollett described how urbanization was changing London as follows: But notwithstanding the improvements, the capital is become an overgrown monster; which, like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment and support. The absurdity will appear in its full force, when we consider, that one sixth part of the natives of this whole extensive kingdom, is crowded within the bills of mortality. What wonder that our villages are depopulated and our farms in want of day-labourers? The abolition of small farms is but one cause in the decrease of population. Indeed, the incredible increases in horses and black cattle to answer the purposes of luxury, requires a prodigious quantity of hay and grass, which are raised and managed without much labour; but a number of hands will always be wanted for the different branches of agriculture, whether the farms be large or small. The tide of luxury has swept all the inhabitants from the open country. The poor squire, as well as the rich peer, must have his house in town, and make a figure with an extraordinary number of domestics. The plough-boys, cow-herds and lower-hinds are debauched and seduced by the appearance and discourse of those coxcombs in livery, when they make their summer excursions. They desert their dirt and drudgery, and swarm up to London in hopes of getting into service, where they can live luxuriously and wear fine clothes, without being obliged to work; for idleness is natural to man.

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries - A Bibliography of Sir William Petty, F.R.S. and of Observations on the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt, F.R.S. By SirGeoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. xviii + 103. £5.50.

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries - A Bibliography of Sir William Petty, F.R.S. and of Observations on the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt, F.R.S. By SirGeoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. xviii + 103. £5.50. - Volume 6 Issue 3

A Bibliography of Sir William Petty, F.R.S. and of

Somewhat neglected because few of his works were published in his lifetime (and some remain unpublished today), Sir William Petty (1623-1687), an early and influential member of the Royal Society, was a seminal figure in the development of economic theory and ideas of social welfare. Early in his career he was professor of anatomy at Oxford, and scattered through his writings are ideas on education of doctors, the role of hospitals in society, and a concept of egalitarianism in medical care prefiguring 19th and 20th century reforms. The Observations on the Bills of Mortality , by John Graunt (1620-1674), was the first serious effort to deal with what has become the study of vital statistics, and Petty assisted Graunt in preparing them for publication, inasmuch as they furnished a useful application of his theory of political arithmetic. Sir Geoffrey Keynes, himself a physician widely admired for his biography of William Harvey

Observations concerning the increase of mankind, peopling of countries, etc.

OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INCREASE OF MANKIND, PEOPLING OF COUNTRIES, &c. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1.Tables ofthe Proportion of Marriages to Births, ofDeaths to Births, ofMarriages to the Numbers ofInhabitants, &c. form'd on Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality, Christnings, &c. of populous Cities, will not suit Countries; nor will Tables form'd on Observations made on full settled old Countries, as Europe, suit new Countries, as America. 2.For People increase in Proportion to the Number ofMarriages, and that is greater in Proportion to the Ease and Convenience ofsupporting a Family. When Families can be easily supported, more Persons marry, and earlier in Life. 3. In Cities, where all Trades, Occupations and Offices are full, many delay marrying, till they can see how to bear the Charges of a Family; which Charges are greater in Cities, as Luxury is more common: many live single during Life, and continue Servants to Families,Journeymen to Trades, &c. hence Cities do not by natural Generation supply themselves with Inhabitants; the Deaths are more than the Births. 4.In Countries full settled, the Case must be nearly the same; all Lands being occupied and improved to the Heighth: those who cannot get Land, must Labour for others that have it; when Labourers are plenty, their Wages will be low; by low Wages a Family is supported with Difficulty; this Difficulty deters many from Marriage, who therefore long continue Servants and single. Only as the Cities take Supplies of People from the Country, and thereby make a little more Room in the Country; Marriage is a little more incourag'd there, and the Births exceed the Deaths. Editor's Note: This essay was written in 1751, published in the Gentlemen's Magazine, November 1755, and widely republished during the next fifteen years. The essay influenced economic thought in England. Thomas Malthus quoted the essay and accepted Franklin's estimate ofpopulation increase in America. The essay illustrates attitudes toward slavery based on economic rather than moral considerations and attitudes toward nonwhites which are now characterized as racist. 469 5· Europe is generally full settled with Husbandmen, Manufacturers, &c. and therefore cannot now much increase in People: America is chiefly occupied by Indians, who subsist mostly by Hunting. But as the Hunter, ofall Men, requires the greatest Quantity ofLand from whence to draw his Subsistence, (the Husbandman subsisting on much less, the Gardner on still less, and the Manufacturer requiring least of all), The Europeans found America as fully settled as it well could be by Hunters; yet these having large Tracks, were easily prevail'd on to part with Portions of Territory to the new Comers, who did not much interfere with the Natives in Hunting, and furnish'd them with many Things they wanted. 6.Land being thus plenty in America, and so cheap as that a labouring Man, thatunderstandsHusbandry, can in a short Time saveMoney enough to purchase a Piece of new Land sufficient for a Plantation, whereon he may subsist a Family; such are not afraid to marry; for ifthey even look far enough forward to consider how their Children when grown up are to be provided for, they see that more Land is to be had at Rates equally easy, all Circumstances considered. 7.Hence Marriages in America are more general, and more generally early, than in Europe. And if it is reckoned there, that there is but one Marriage per Annum among 100 Persons, perhaps we may here reckon two; and ifin Europe they have but 4 Births to a Marriage (many oftheir Marriages being late) we may here reckon 8, ofwhich if one half grow up, and our Marriages are made, reckoning one with another at 20 Years ofAge, our People must at least be doubled every 20 Years. 8.But notwithstanding this Increase, so vast is the Territory ofNorthAmerica , that it will require many Ages to settle it fully; and till it is fully settled, Labour will never be cheap here, where no Man continues long a Labourer for others, but gets a Plantation ofhis own, no Man continues long a Journeyman to a Trade, but goes among those new Settlers, and sets up for himself, &c. Hence Labour is no cheaper now, in Pennsylvania, than...

Demography in Early America: Beginnings of the Statistical Mind, 1600-1800

We now take for granted that the statistical treatment of social and scientific affairs can yield important insights. In this book, Dr. Cassedy, from the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine, describes the introduction of vital statistics in the United States before 1800. In quick progression he discusses the role of numbers in the religious and secular affairs of the early colonists, the census, bills of mortality, life expectancy figures, and the statistical approach to disease. The growth of colonial America, Cassedy concludes, coincided with the emergence of new statistical concepts in Europe. Without much lag-time these early statistical activities also found application in the thinking of Americans. Even so, by the end of the book, one must still conclude, as Cassedy does, that two centuries of statistical activities had not really brought Americans very far beyond a simple quantitative way of looking at things. The

THE TERRIBLE MORTALITY RATE OF LONDON CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE—ABOUT 1790

How few children survived their fifth year of life in the 1790's was forcefully shown in these words of Dr. Michael Underwood.1 The average of births annually, within the bills of mortality, for ten successive years, as taken a few years ago (c. 1790), was 16,238; out of which were buried under five years of age 10,145, and from amongst these 7,987 were under two years. So that almost two thirds of the children born in London and its environs, become lost to society, and more than three fourths of these die under two years of age.—This proves how hazardous a period that of infancy is, in this country; and I am sorry there is so much reason to be persuaded that the want of air, exercise, and a proper diet, has added unnecessarily to its dangers; there being no such mortality in barbarous nations, whose inhabitants live in a state of nature; nor in any part of the known world, amongst other young animals.

Authorship of the Natural and Political Observations Upon the Bills of Mortality

The purpose of this note is not to reopen an old controversy as to whether Petty or Graunt wrote the famous Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality, but to put forward some new direct evidence on this matter which has been missed in previous investigations.' Since this evidence comes from the writings of contemporaries of Petty who were possibly acquainted with him, it is of some importance because it adds to the testimony to Petty's authorship of the Observations given by Aubrey, Evelyn, Halley, and Burnet.2 The important place of the Observations in the history of economic and social statistics makes this new evidence of some interest to the historian of ideas. The first of these writers who attributed the authorship of the Observations to Sir William Petty is John Houghton, who, like Petty, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, having been elected to that body at a meeting at which Petty was present as a member of its Council. It is therefore very likely that the two were personally acquainted, especially since they were interested in similar fields of scientific research.3 In his A Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, which was published in 1681, Houghton made a direct reference to the authorship of the famous Observations on the Bills of Mortality in which he attributed that work to Petty, and not to Major Graunt, the generally accepted author, whose name appeared on most of the editions of that work: