Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Biography Historical Article
'Death is the cure of all diseases': using the General Register Office cause of death statistics for 1837-1920.
The series of cause of death statistics for England and Wales published by the General Register Office between 1837 and 1920 are a fundamental source for historians studying death and disease in this period. Attention was first drawn to the historical importance of this source, and to its principal shortcomings, by Bill Luckin in 1980. Research by a number of scholars in recent years on mortality and morbidity in the nineteenth century has uncovered further problems, which are outlined in this essay under two heads: general problems, and problems relating to specific cause of death categories.
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Historical Article
The importance of social intervention in England's mortality decline: the evidence reviewed.
This paper examines the first phase of England's mortality decline, which commenced in the middle of the eighteenth century, and proceeded fitfully down to the end of the nineteenth. It finds that recent research in population history has weakened the explanation known as the McKeown thesis, but that the alternative synthesis, developed by Szreter, does not stand up well to a scrutiny of the evidence on infant mortality and morbidity. ⋯ C. Riley for the second half of the nineteenth century.
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Historical Article
Tuberculosis statistics and the McKeown thesis: a rebuttal to David Barnes.