4 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Europeans. The fact that the psychical and intellectual, as well as 

 the physical, differences between particular races of men are really in- 

 significant, is destined to be made more plain the more the subject is 

 impartially studied, and the efforts of certain men, learned in distinc- 

 tions of types, to set up fixed marks of separation between them, will 

 not succeed. Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from "Das 

 Ausland." 



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SKETCH OF DR. WILLIAM FAKE. 



DR. WILLIAM FARR, who died on the 14th of April last, aged 

 seventy-six, was the founder of the English system of vital 

 statistics, and was chiefly instrumental in bringing it to its present 

 state of perfection ; and, in the measure that the study of the sta- 

 tistical tables has furnished facts for the guidance of sanitary officers, 

 he may be said to have contributed directly and very greatly to the 

 inrprovement that took place in the public health conditions of Great 

 Britain during his career. 



Dr. Farb was born at Kenley, Shropshire, England, in 1807. He 

 went to school at Dorrington and Shrewsbury, then entered upon a 

 university course in Paris, and concluded his studies in the University 

 of London, in 1831. He served for six months as house-surgeon of 

 Shrewsbury Infirmary, subsequently began the practice and teaching 

 of medicine in London, and afterward edited for some time the 

 " Medical Annual " and the " British Annals of Medicine." In this 

 work he exhibited a power of statistical analysis that attracted the 

 attention of the proprietor of the " Lancet," and he became a constant 

 and valued contributor to that journal, of articles dealing chiefly with 

 vital and medical statistics. He thus acquired a reputation in this 

 line of work, which induced his selection by the Government, in 1838, 

 as compiler of abstracts in the newly-created office of the Registrar- 

 General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. An act of Parliament was 

 passed directing that a statement of the cause of death should be in- 

 serted in connection with the registry of the fact, and Dr. Farr was 

 assigned this work specifically on account of his known capacity for 

 statistically analyzing the materials that would come under his eye ; 

 the registrar-general stating in his first report that the assignment 

 had been made to him as " a gentleman of the medical profession, 

 whose scientific knowledge and intimate acquaintance with statistical 

 inquiries were ample pledges of his peculiar fitness." For forty years 

 in succession Dr. Farr's reports of his analyses were presented to the 

 registrar-general to form one of the most important parts of his re- 

 ports, and were the medium for contributing facts, the practical ap- 



