'Sickness is a Baffling Matter'. A Reply to James C. Riley

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 157-163

  Woods, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Age specific sickness mortality curve; Health; Jacques Bertillon; James c. Riley; Medical profession; Mortality; Robert Woods; Victorian England

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HEALTH INSURANCE; HISTORY; MORBIDITY; MORTALITY; OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH; UNITED KINGDOM;

GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; INSURANCE, HEALTH; MORBIDITY; MORTALITY; OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH;

EID: 0031111673     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/10.1.157     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. Robert Woods, 'Physician, Heal Thyself: The Health and Mortality of Victorian Doctors', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 1-30. James C. Riley, 'The Morbidity of Medical Practitioners', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 467-71. The title of this reply comes from the first sentence of James C. Riley, 'Disease without Death: New Sources for a History of Sickness', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17 (1987), 537-63.
2. Robert Woods, 'Physician, Heal Thyself: The Health and Mortality of Victorian Doctors', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 1-30. James C. Riley, 'The Morbidity of Medical Practitioners', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 467-71. The title of this reply comes from the first sentence of James C. Riley, 'Disease without Death: New Sources for a History of Sickness', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17 (1987), 537-63.
3. Robert Woods, 'Physician, Heal Thyself: The Health and Mortality of Victorian Doctors', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 1-30. James C. Riley, 'The Morbidity of Medical Practitioners', Social History of Medicine, 9 (1996), 467-71. The title of this reply comes from the first sentence of James C. Riley, 'Disease without Death: New Sources for a History of Sickness', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17 (1987), 537-63.
4. Riley, 'Disease without Death', 537.
5. James C. Riley, 'The Risk of Being Sick: Morbidity Trends in Four Countries', Population and Development Review, 16 (1990), 403-32 takes the inverse trends argument into the twentieth century.
6. Robert Woods and Naomi Williams, 'Must the Gap Widen Before it can be Narrowed? Long-term Trends in Social Class Mortality Differentials', Continuity and Change, 10 (1995), figure 1, p. 112.
7. Riley, 'Disease without Death', 559.
8. James C. Riley, 'Ill Health during the English Mortality Decline: The Friendly Societies' Experience', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 61 (1987), 564.
9. Riley, 'Ill Health', 571.
10. Robert Woods, Population Analysis in Geography (London, 1979), 69.
11. Samuel H. Preston, Nathan Keyfitz and Robert Schoen, Causes of Death: Life Tables for National Populations (New York, 1972) attempts to chart the changes in cause of death structures for England and Wales post-1861 using life table analysis.
12. Christopher J. L. Murray and Lincoln C. Chen, 'Understanding Morbidity Change', Population and Development Review, 18 (1992), 481-503, quoted from p. 492. Murray and Chen also remark (in a way that almost paraphrases Bertillon's observations of 1892), 'Conscious misreporting of morbidity to achieve other goals is another factor affecting self-perceived morbidity. Improved sickness compensation systems, especially in industrialized societies, may have led to increased frequency in the reporting (and misreporting) of illness' (p. 491).
13. It is also accepted actuarial practice to base the calculation of life or sickness premiums on age-specific probabilities derived from the average experience of larger populations. It will also be to the advantage of companies and societies if those probabilities are exaggerated, higher premiums will be paid than necessary. Certainly insurers in the early twentieth century used Alfred Watson's IOOF tables for 1893-97 (see Table 1) as a basis for such calculations several years after the period to which the survey strictly applies.
14. George Alter and James C. Riley, 'Frailty, Sickness, and Death: Models of Morbidity and Mortality in Historical Populations', Population Studies, 43 (1989), 25-45.
15. Actuaries like Benjamin Gompertz and John Brownlee were well aware that mortality-age and sickness-age relationships changed during the nineteenth century, but that the general shape of such curves was maintained and could be described mathematically. See Benjamin Gompertz, 'On one Uniform Law of Mortality from Birth to Extreme Old Age, and on the Law of Sickness', Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 16 (1872), 329-44, and more recently, Bruce A. Carnes, S. Jay Olshansky and Douglas Grahn, 'Continuing the Search for a Law of Mortality', Population and Development Review, 22 (1996), 231-64.
16. Actuaries like Benjamin Gompertz and John Brownlee were well aware that mortality-age and sickness-age relationships changed during the nineteenth century, but that the general shape of such curves was maintained and could be described mathematically. See Benjamin Gompertz, 'On one Uniform Law of Mortality from Birth to Extreme Old Age, and on the Law of Sickness', Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 16 (1872), 329-44, and more recently, Bruce A. Carnes, S. Jay Olshansky and Douglas Grahn, 'Continuing the Search for a Law of Mortality', Population and Development Review, 22 (1996), 231-64.
17. James C. Riley, Sick, Not Dead: Health of British Workingmen During the Mortality Decline (Baltimore, 1997) may set the record straight, but as matters stand Bertillon and I are not convinced.