LONGEVITY OF VARIOUS CLASSES. 



73 



number of people in a town, the rate of taxation, or similar 

 points, because the standard of health is not an invariable 

 quantity. Not every one is equally sick ; and what is down- 

 right sickness to one person is only an inconvenience to 

 another. Hence the only absolute and numerical standard 

 of health, imperfect though it may be, is the number of 

 deaths, and their ages. On these points we have more than 

 approximate data. 



Fortunately for ourselves, our own Commonwealth has the 

 oldest, the most perfect and accurate system of records of 

 births, marriages, and deaths, of any State in the Union ; and 

 we have just issued the thirty-seventh of these annual re- 

 ports by the honorable secretary of state, with the compila- 

 tions and calculations carefully wrought out by Dr. C. F. 

 Folsom, the secretary of the State Board of Health, Lunacy, 

 and Charity. In Table XIII of this Report we find statisti- 

 cally classified the number of persons in the whole State over 

 twenty years of age who are engaged in some one of the ten 

 occupations specified, and the average age of the deaths in 

 each occupation for the past thirty-five years and eight 

 months. 



The following table shows the average age at death of the 

 citizens of Massachusetts, for the last thirty-five years, who 

 were engaged in one of the following occupations, and were 

 over twenty years of age : — 



Some twenty-five years ago, Dr. William Farr of London, 

 now an octogenarian in full vigor, devised a new classification 

 and arrangement of man's diseases in place of the previous 

 classification of Cullen, which was utterly unscientific, and 

 established on mere, theories and vague notions of previous 



