Book Description

Excerpt from Public Health Problems Like the health of the individual, the health of the community is mainly measured by negative results, the mini mum mortality and morbidity; that is, the fewer deaths and the fewer sufl'erers from disease per thousand per annum of the population, sex, age, and other factors being equal, the healthier the community; the positive measurements being the duration of life, ascertained by constructing a life table of the relative numbers, ages, and sexes of those living and dying during a certain period, and the number of working days available, ascertained by comparing the number, age, and sex of the sick, the nature and duration of sickness, with the number, age, and sex of the population. Statistics of sickness are drawn for the army and navy, in which services accurate records are kept, but the necessary data are not available for civil populations. As in the case of the individual, the physical and intellectual powers developed by communities vary more than the vitality, and are measured by a different class of statistics. An early allusion to statistics follows from the fact that it is only by this means that standards of structure and function, health and disease, life and death, can become established, and that personal as well as public hygiene is guided by their conclusions. Statistics are based upon the census enumeration, within a given area, of the number, age, sex, and occupa tion of the population, and in proportion to these the vitality, mortality, and morbidity are calculated. The vitality is computed upon the marriages, births, deaths, and sickness, the mortality upon the deaths and causes of death, the morbidity upon the nature and duration of sickness, which includes both injury and disease, and upon the number, age, and sex in each class. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.