Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/381

Rh placed before the public in concise and popular form lies buried in our official records and in the files of our statisticians and scientists who have analyzed them for their own or scientific use.

Owing to the incompleteness of mortality statistics, especially in former years, it is frequently necessary in making comparisons to insert personal estimates to fill gaps. The rates in such instances are, therefore, deduced partly from statistics and partly from personal judgment.

The statistics used in arriving at the comparisons given below were, however, sufficiently complete to render unnecessary the interpolation of estimates to fill omissions, with one unimportant exception. The rates deduced are the direct product of existing official reports, which are accessible to any one desiring to look them up.

The purpose of submitting these ratios is not primarily to fix a specific rate of increase, but to indicate the trend of mortality in middle life and old age in the area named. Those interested in the subject will judge the measure of the actual increase by the value they may place upon the original data from which these rates are extracted.

That the ratio of deaths from the more important degenerative affections has increased sharply in recent years is so generally known that it is needless to present in this brief paper the indicated advance

in the rate for each disease separately. They are, therefore, grouped by age divisions. By this method the disturbing effect on the rates of