Vital Accounts: Quantifying Health and Population in Eighteenth-Century England and France

by Andrea A. Rusnock

• ISBN13: 9780521803748
• ISBN10: 0521803748
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-16
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Why did Europeans begin to count births and deaths? How did they collect the numbers and what did they do with them? Through a compelling comparative analysis, Vital Accounts charts the work of the physicians, clergymen and government officials who crafted the sciences of political and medical arithmetic in England and France during the long eighteenth-century, before the emergence of statistics and regular government censuses. Andrea A. Rusnock presents a social history of quantification that highlights the development of numerical tables, influential and enduring scientific instruments designed to evaluate smallpox inoculation, to link weather and disease to compare infant and maternal mortality rates, to identify changes in disease patterns and to challenge prevailing views about the decline of European population. By focusing on the most important eighteenth century controversies over health and population, Rusnock shows how vital accounts - the numbers of births and deaths - became the measure of public health and welfare.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction	1	(4)
Method of Tables	5	(2)
Method of Comparison	7	(3)
Method of Controversy	10	(5)
A New Science: Political Arithmetic	15	(28)
Crafting a New Method: Numerical Tables	16	(8)
Natural Observations	24	(9)
Political Observations	33	(10)
PART ONE: SMALLPOX INOCULATION AND MEDICAL ARITHMETIC
A Measure of Safety: English Debates over Inoculation in the 1720s	43	(28)
Arbuthnot's Vindication	46	(3)
Jurin's Accounts	49	(6)
Building a Correspondence Network	55	(4)
Tallying the Typical	59	(4)
Challenging the Atypical	63	(3)
The Appeal of Calculation	66	(5)
The Limits of Calculation: French Debates over Inoculation in the 1760s	71	(21)
The Paris Faculte de Medecine	72	(3)
Inoculation a la Mode	75	(2)
La Condamine's Lottery	77	(4)
Bernoulli and d'Almebert	81	(5)
Physicians Respond	86	(2)
A Plea for Registers	88	(4)
Charitable Calculations: English Debates over the Inoculation of the Urban Poor, 1750--1800	92	(17)
The London Smallpox Hospital	94	(1)
Dispensaries and Home Inoculations in London	95	(6)
Inoculation outside London	101	(8)
PART TWO: MEDICAL ARITHMETIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE
Medical Meteorology: Accounting for the Weather and Disease	109	(28)
Numerical Natural Histories of the Weather	110	(9)
England	111	(6)
France	117	(2)
Linking Disease and Weather	119	(9)
England	122	(4)
France	126	(2)
Observations Reduced	128	(9)
Interrogating Death: Disease, Mortality, and Environment	137	(42)
To Improve the Classification of Death	139	(4)
The London Bills of Mortality Analyzed	143	(14)
Mortality by Age and Place	157	(14)
Variations in Mortality between the Sexes	171	(8)
PART THREE: POLITICAL ARITHMETIC
Count, Measure, Compare: The Depopulation Debates	179	(32)
Counting the People: Censuses and Vital Registration	182	(10)
Britain	183	(5)
Frnace	188	(4)
Calculating the Population: The Universal Multiplier	192	(14)
Britain	193	(8)
France	201	(5)
The Role of Partial Enumerations	206	(5)
Conclusion	211	(8)
Bibliography	219	(24)
Index	243