A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages

Black, William, 1749-1829Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
526K words
Chapters
53

Tags

English Originals Medicine DemographyPublic HealthMedical HistoryEnlightenment ThoughtEmpirical SpiritBioethicsLife and DeathAcademic StudyData ChartsEighteenth Century

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages by BlackAuthor: Black, William, 1749-1829,Language: English, Class: RA: Medicine: Public aspects of medicine, Release Date: Jul 2, 2019

Editor's review

This comparative study of mortality, completed by William Black in the late eighteenth century, is a rare primary document in the early history of demography and public health. Taking "all ages" as its frame of observation, the author organizes and compares the death records available at the time, seeking to reveal differences in mortality risk across the stages of life. Its value lies not in medical conclusions that still hold today, but in showing how an early modern scholar used limited data to build an overall picture of lifespan and death. Readers can see the rudimentary form of demographic method in its formative period and feel the Enlightenment enthusiasm for "understanding society through numbers." The prose is academic English, densely argued, with both terminology and tables, and requires some patience and background knowledge. It is suitable as a supplementary source for researchers in the history of medicine, population history, and social history, and for readers interested in early ideas of public health to browse by topic. Because the book is old, some of its explanations of disease and constitution have been superseded by later knowledge; it should be read as a historical text, not a contemporary health guide.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or table of contents first to grasp the author's observational framework and data sources, then move on to specific chapters.
  2. Read alongside an overview article on early modern population history or public health history to lower the barrier to understanding.
  3. Record the book's conclusions separately from what is known today about mortality, to avoid confusing historical views with contemporary consensus.
  4. If using it only for research citations, read by age-group chapters and pay attention to the original's notes on statistical definitions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53

FAQ

Is this book suitable for learning about mortality in the modern medical sense? It is not suitable as a direct modern medical reference. It reflects a comparative study made by the author at the end of the eighteenth century based on the limited records of the time, and some of its explanations have been superseded by later knowledge. Its main value lies in history and method; readers should treat it as a document from the formative period of early modern demography and public health ideas, not as a contemporary health guide.
My English is average; can I read this book? This is academic English writing, densely argued and involving statistical expressions, so readers with average English will find it difficult. It is advisable to have good academic English reading ability first, or to learn the background from relevant Chinese research literature before attempting the original; you can also read only the introduction and conclusion.
As a public-domain e-book, what should I keep in mind while reading? This book is published by Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain electronic text. Layout and table display may differ across devices; for statistical tables, a larger screen is recommended. In addition, public-domain texts may show traces of scanning or transcription, so check the original page numbers and edition information before citing specific data.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Black, William, 1749-1829 Author

William Black (1749–1829) was an English author active around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His dates and nationality are recorded in our holdings, while further biographical details are limited in publicly available sources and await verification. Our collection currently includes only one work by him, A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages. Judging from its title, the book is a comparative study of population and mortality statistics, examining differences in human mortality across age groups and reflecting an approach that uses data comparison to support its arguments. Works of this kind are of some significance in early life-statistics and public-health literature and may serve as reference for research on period ideas about death and on statistical methods. Given the limited information, his academic background, career, and the specific influence of his work cannot yet be described in detail; readers may consult the original text to learn more about his argumentation and the value of the work as a historical source.