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IJE Advance Access originally published online on October 1, 2004
International Journal of Epidemiology 2005 34(3):515-520; doi:10.1093/ije/dyh195
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Published by Oxford University Press 2004

Reprints and Reflections

Medical issues in historical demography

Thomas McKeown

First appeared in: Edwin Clarke (ed.). Modern Methods in the History of Medicine. London: Athlone Press, 1971, pp. 57–74

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For the demographer and economic historian all movements of population are important and deserve, so far as possible, to be explained; but for the student of social and medical history the modern rise of population is a unique event whose interpretation is not only of the greatest historical interest but is also essential to an understanding of some of the most formidable contemporary problems.

The distinction between the earlier recurrent changes of population and the modern rise is of particular significance in the eighteenth century. The methods as well as the aims of enquiry are different according to whether the increase in numbers is regarded as analogous to that in previous periods (given particular but not necessarily unique significance because of its coincidence with the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions), or whether it is considered as the beginning of the modern expansion whose dimensions and continuity distinguish it from all previous . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   II Methods of investigation
 
(a) Eighteenth-century data
(b) Post-registration data
(c) Both before and after registration some of the most important questions raised by investigation of population growth are medical in character. They include the following
The reason for the reduction of mortality from tuberculosis
Reliability of certification of cause of death
Interpretation of the behaviour of mortality from infections in the absence of intervention by medical or other measure
The effects on fertility of advancement or postponement of age of marriage
The effectiveness of inoculation against smallpox
(d) The relative importance of birth and death rate

   III Population growth after registration of births and deaths
 

   IV Population growth before registration
 
Medical measures
A spontaneous decline of mortality
Improvement in the environment

   V
 

   VI
 

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