I believe I’ve read before that there are people who look back at, say, authors who were said to have died of something like tuberculosis and decide that these people probably actually had cystic fibrosis. (Keats?)
I’m just wondering if we have any idea the rates through history of certain diseases we deal with today, especially the big ones like cancer, heart disease, diabetes. What sort of analysis has been done to figure this out, if any?
Really? Nothing? Or did I just post this into one of those vacuous moments where one group is just waking up and the other is going to sleep? Though this would be interesting.
Consistent and comprehensive gathering of mortality statistics really only dates from the late nineteenth century, and then only in the most developed countries. For those countries, we have very good information for the last hundred to hundred and fifty years or so. Before that, it’s pretty patchy.
the other trouble is of course no one knew what cystic fibrosis was 400 years ago. It could have been recorded as a death from amost anything.
John Graunt was the first person in the 1600s to systematically study births deaths and marriages in England. A list of some of the recorded deaths can be found here from his study
John Graunt's "Bills of Mortality" II (near the bottom)
but what many of them mean is anyones guess - e.g. falling sickness
Graunt was able to compile his study because of the London bills of mortality.
Also, the London bills were not unique and quite a few other European cities in that period kept similar records. Those compiled at Breslau allowed Edmund Halley (of comet fame) to calculate life expectancies. All such records were far from perfect. But they are better than nothing.
If it wasn’t August, I would think you’d be trying to get someone to do your homework or a term paper for you.
Also the definition of diseases has changed as well. A person who has disease X now may not have been considered to have it even 50 years ago.
No, I got to thinking about it because I’ve been reading a lot about nutrition lately. Read In Defense of Food and, saw Food, Inc. (read Fast Food Nation a while ago), and I just got to thinking about how much of our scientific knowledge regarding the body is different due to how different our diets have become over the last century.
I’ve started to wonder if European explorer’s in the tropics got skin cancer at the rates we do. Things like that. If folks like Michael Pollan are right, the conquistadors who weren’t killed or eaten by some jungle animal probably had considerably diminished chances of getting skin cancer, because they were eating real food.
Now, that’s probably not a very good analogy, since sailors probably didn’t eat the best of food while out to sea.
It’s also why I asked this question at the same time, because diet still is so different in many parts of the world, and we might be able to understand a little more about ourselves by seeing disparities among other people with considerably different eating habits, diets, and exercise regimes.
But, even if I were doing this for an assignment, I don’t see what’s wrong with getting help from the collective knowledge of those who devote their free time to fighting ignorance. As long as I’m someone who generally wants to learn, why not look for leads among people who may have insight? As long as I’m still doing the readings and making my own arguments through reasoned analysis. It’s like Googling people.
…but that’s the topic of another thread.
Skin cancer would also be affected by the *much *greater degree to which earlier Europeans covered up in hot climates - no Speedos and bikinis for them!