J Natl Med Assoc
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Editorial Historical Article
The use of historical vital statistics when analyzing African-descended population heterogeneity.
This paper explores population substructure through an analysis of 726 individual death certificates representing African-American and West-Indian immigrant populations who died from tubercular infection in Manhattan, New York City, NY, 1890-1930. From the death certificate data, four classes of tubercular infection were derived: pulmonary, chronic pulmonary, acute/miliary tuberculosis and tubercular meningitis. ⋯ Through a Chi-squared analysis, the data demonstrated that: 1) color did not significantly influence the type of tuberculosis an individual died from, and 2) region of birth influenced the type of tuberculosis an individual died from. The results of this analysis lead to the conclusion that historical vital records, specifically death certificate data, are useful when exploring historical population substructure.