LIFE INSURANCE AS A SCIENCE 211 



of Woolhouse, Gompertz, and Makeham, each period presents pro- 

 blems of its own which demand the specialization of expert talent, 

 never needed to such an increasing extent as in the administration 

 of a great and successful life insurance company of to-day. 



Biological science, or the science of living things, rests in a larger 

 measure than is commonly assumed upon a statistical foundation. 

 Much, if not most, of what life insurance companies require to know 

 of biology for the medical selection of risks relates to normal and 

 abnormal man from the viewpoint of anatomy and physiology. 

 American anthropometry, while well advanced since the army sta- 

 tistics by Gould were published in 1869, as a memoir of the Sanitary 

 Commission, leaves much to be attained before we shall be in a posi- 

 tion to deal in a strictly scientific manner with the problems of normal 

 stature, weight, chest-expansion, pulse-rate, and other elements too 

 numerous to be here referred to. The tables published by the Asso- 

 ciation of Medical Directors and rearranged by Dr. O. H. Rogers, 

 are an admirable indication of the treasures which the archives of life 

 insurance companies yield when subjected to expert tabulation and 

 critical analysis. For the needs of accurate chest diagnosis we require 

 more determining data than are at present available, while the 

 field of human thermometry as applied to life insurance selection has 

 remained almost neglected since Seguin published his work in 1876. 

 The larger and more involved problems of human multiplication 

 and normal increase, the marriage-rate, fecundity and sterility, con- 

 sanguinity, race-mixture and intermarriage are all pending questions, 

 toward the solution of which insurance contributes much informa- 

 tion and expert talent. All that is summed up in the problems of 

 heredity, both direct from parent to offspring and through collateral 

 branches of the family, is of the utmost importance to life insurance 

 companies, and in time the vast number of accurate family records 

 in the possession of these companies as a part of the application for 

 insurance, supplemented by the known results of subsequent mor- 

 tality, with certified causes of death, must needs add much of value 

 and interest to the future development and practical value of bio- 

 logical science. Toward the problem of reproductive selection, so 

 admirably set forth by Karl Pearson, life insurance can contribute 

 much valuable information, particularly on the point of the effect of 

 the age of the parents- at the time of the applicant's birth on the 

 subsequent chances of death. 



If the mathematical basis of life insurance is derived from the doc- 

 trine of probabilities, the medical basis is derived from pathology, or 

 the doctrine of diseases, their causes, mode of occurrence, etc. The 

 position of the medical director is of equal fundamental importance 

 in the administration of a life insurance company to the position of 

 the actuary, in that upon the medical selection of risks proposed for 



