Early death: Mortality among young children in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 315-354

  Condran, Gretchen A ^a   Lentzner, Harold R ^b  

^a TEMPLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 35348923456     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219504771997881     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Citizen's Association, Sanitary Condition of the City (New York, 1866), 82;
2. Richard Meckel, Save the Babies (Baltimore, 1990), 11;
3. Samuel H. Preston and Michael Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth Century America (Princeton, 1990).
4. For previous historical work on the summer diarrhea of infants and young children in U.S. cities, see Rose A. Cheney, "Seasonal Aspects of Infant and Childhood Mortality: Philadelphia, 1865-1920," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XIV (1983), 561-585;
5. Lentzner, "Seasonal Patterns of Infant and Child Mortality in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans: 1870-1919," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (University of Pennsylvania, 1987);
6. Lentzner, idem and Condran, "Seasonal Patterns of Infant and Childhood Mortality in New York, Chicago and New Orleans, 1870-1920," paper presented at the meeting of the Population Association of America, Boston, 1985;
7. Condran and Lentzner, "An Analysis of Excess Summer Mortality of Infants and Young Children, New York, 1820-1920," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington D.C., 1991.
8. United States Census Office, Ninth Census, Volume 1: Statistics of Population of the United States (Washington, 1872);
9. Frederick L. Hoffmann, "The General Death-Rate of Large American Cities, 1871-1904, Journal of the American Statistical Association, LXXIII (1906), 29-44;
10. New York Department of Health, Annual Report of the Board of Health of the Department of Health of the City of New York (New York 1913).
11. For a previous use of this index, see Daniel Seiver, "Trend and Variation in the Seasonality of U.S. Fertility, 1947 to 1976," Demography, XXII (1985), 89-100. Like Seiver, we also calculated an index using a twelve-month moving average of deaths in the denominator. This moving average removes the trend from the index and is therefore preferable on theoretical grounds. The two methods of analysis produced similar results, and because the use of the moving average is particularly affected by missing data, we have not used it in this analysis. It should be noted that the index produces underestimates of the seasonality inasmuch as the ex-cess mortality in the summer is distributed across the year.
12. There were a number of other vague causes of infant deaths that showed a high summer peak. The most notable were convulsions, which often followed dehydration brought on by diarrhea.
13. New York Times, 7 July 1870, 3.
14. For a more extensive description of the late nineteenth-century views on the relationship between heat and infant mortality, see Condran, "Early Death: The Construction and Uses of the Infant Mortality Rate in the Nineteenth Century," paper presented at the meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington, D.C., 2001.
15. Lentzner and Condran, "Seasonal Patterns,"
16. and Lentzner, "Seasonal Patterns," 85-87, contain descriptions of the models used in the analysis of the effects of temperature and the month/temperature interactions. We analyzed the month/temperature interactions only for the period from 1870 to 1917 for all three cities.
17. Because the mortality of those aged two to five never showed the summer peak in mortality, we have not continued the analysis of this age group. We ended our analysis in 1917 because the shift in the seasonal pattern of death caused by the influenza epidemic of 1918 overestimates the decline in the summer index. Earlier epidemics, no doubt, also affected the seasonal patterns producing unusually high or low values in some years, but their effects would have been small compared to that of the 1918 influenza epidemic.
18. The highest index value for the year occurred in either July or August in Chicago and New York and in either May or June in New Orleans. The highest value reflects the timing of the decline better than the decadal average monthly index values that can be affected by changes from year to year in the month in which the peak occurs.
19. Lentzner, "Seasonal Patterns," 333-352.
20. William H. Davis, "Statistical Comparison of the Mortality of Breast-Fed and Botde-Fed Infants," in Transactions of the Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography (Washington, D.C., 1912), 184-190;
21. L. Emmett Holt, "Infant Mortality and Its Reduction Especially in New York City," Journal of the American Medical Association, LIV (1910), 682-691;
22. L. Emmett Holt, idem, "Infant Mortality, Ancient and Modern: An Historical Sketch," in Transaction of the Fourth Annual Meeting (American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality) (Washington, D.C., 1913), 24-55;
23. George Kober, "Impure Milk in Relation to Infantile Mortality," Journal of the American Medical Association, XXV (1895), 983-987;
24. Herman Schwarz, "Nursing Statistics Derived from the Study of the Infancy of 1500 Children, and a Contribution of the Cause of the Summer Infant Mortality," Transactions of the First Annual Meeting (American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality) (Baltimore, 1910), 207-215;
25. J. Lewis Smith, "Causes of the Great Mortality of Young Children in Cities During the Summer Season, and the Hygienic Measures Required for Prevention,"in Sanitary Care and Treatment of Children and Treatment of Their Diseases (Boston, 1881), 239-263;
26. Victor C. Vaughan, "Infantile Mortality: Its Causation and Its Restriction,"Journal of the American Medical Association, XIV (1890), 181-185;
27. Smith, "Causes of the Great Mortality," 257.
28. Holt, The Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (New York, 1897);
29. Holt, idem, "Infant Mortality and Its Reduction," 686;
30. Davis, "Statistical Comparison," Table V, 189.
31. Robert M. Woodbury, "The Relation Between Breast and Artificial Feeding and Infant Mortality," American Journal of Hygiene, III (1922), 668-687.
32. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine: Or, A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases by Region and Simple Medicines (Halifax, N.C., 1801);
33. Charles E. Rosenberg (ed.), Reprint of 1818 Edition of The Maternal Physician (New York, 1972).
34. For descriptions of the late nineteenth-century accounts, see Rima D. Apple, Mothers and Medicine (Madison, 1987);
35. Meckel, Save the Babies; Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1914);
36. Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1921).
37. Holt, Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (New York, 1906).
38. Holt, Idem, "Infant Mortality and Its Reduction."
39. Davis, "Statistical Comparison," 186. Davis had no separate classification of Jewish mothers, but they likely dominated the Russian category in Boston in 1912. The exceptionally low mortality of Jewish immigrant mothers has been noted and discussed in the context of breastfeeding in a number of previous studies.
40. See, for example, Preston and Haines, Fatal Years," 28,107;
41. Condran and Ellen Kramarow, "Child Mortality Among Jewish Immigrants to the United States," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXII (1991), 223-254.
42. Woodbury, Causal Factors in Infant Mortality: A Statistical Study Based on Investigations in Eight Cities (Washington, D.C., 1925), 99-101.
43. Lentzner, "Seasonal Patterns." Isolating these three factors from the other likely influences on general mortality levels and early childhood mortality more specifically simplifies our analysis but probably under-represents the interaction among many independent variables affecting mortality in the same direction. Our representation of this overdetermined model is necessarily incomplete and limited by the available data and analytical tools. In this article, we summarize Lentzner's extended account of these public-health initiatives and focus on their relationship to the observed changes in infant and early childhood mortality.
44. Merchant's Association of New York, The Water-Supply of the City of New York (New York, 1900).
45. New York City Department of Health, Annual Report (New York, 1890);
46. Merchant's Association of New York, Water-Supply;
47. New York City Department of Health, Annual Report (New York, 1893);
48. idem, Annual Report (New York, 1905);
49. idem, Annual Report (New York, 1909);
50. New York Department of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity, Annual Report (New York, 1910);
51. idem, Annual Report (New York, 1916).
52. Sewer-connected privies, known as "school sinks' because they first appeared in the public schools, allowed the eventual movement of waste through the sewers and eliminated the need for manual removal. They represented little improvement over regular privies, since flushing was infrequent, and the amount of water used was inadequate to eliminate all the waste. Tenement House Department of the City of New York, First Report (New York, 1902/03);
53. New York City Department of Health, Annual Report (New York, 1891) 31;
54. Carroll D. Wright, Seventh Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor (Washington, D.C., 1894);
55. Tenement House Department of the City of New York, Tenement House Census (New York, 1909);
56. idem, Ninth Report (New York, 1917).
57. Chicago Bureau of Engineering, Official Report to the Commissioner (Chicago, 1925).
58. For a description of the use of the typhoid-fever rate as an index of water quality, see Lentzner "Seasonal Patterns," 198-199. Research in Philadelphia attempting to link the quality of the water supply to infant and childhood mortality and typhoid-fever rates found that the latter declined consistently with the filtration of water in sections of the city, though the infant and early childhood death rates did not.
59. Condran and Cheney, "Mortality Trends in Philadelphia: Age- and Cause-Specific Death Rates 1870-1930," Demography, I (1982), 97-123;
60. Condran, Henry Williams, and Cheney, "The Decline in Mortality in Philadelphia from 1870 to 1930: The Role of Municipal Services," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, CVIII (1984), 153-177.
61. Wright, Seventh Special Report;
62. Chicago Department of Health, Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago (Chicago, 1918), 665.
63. Louisiana Board of Health, Annual Report of the State Board of Health (New Orleans, 1874);
64. idem, Annual Reports (New Orleans, 1883);
65. idem, Biennial Reports (New Orleans, 1890/ 91);
66. Board of Health for the Parish of Orleans and the City of New Orleans, Biennial Reports (New Orleans, 1919).
67. New York City Department of Health, Annual Report (New York, 1873);
68. idem, Annual Report (New York, 1889).
69. Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XLVI (1972), 359-390.
70. Chicago Department of Health, Department of Health of the City of Chicago (Chicago, 1898).
71. Times Democrat (New Orleans), 15 June 1897;
72. Ridgeways, 17 Nov. 1907;
73. Louisiana State Board of Health, Biennial Reports (1919).
74. Until 1889, the monthly and/or weekly series for New York includes only deaths in Manhattan and the Bronx; from 1898 onward, the time series contain deaths from all five boroughs of New York.
75. Rudolph Matas (ed. John Duffy), The Rudolph Matas History of Medicine in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1962), II. It is also important to note that because infant and early childhood deaths did not have the same seasonal pattern as recorded births, they did not reflect the latter. Seasonal patterns, which differed by age and cause of death and which also differed from that of births, argue against seasonal underreporting as the source of the monthly variation in deaths.