LIFE INSURANCE AS A SCIENCE 213 



deplored increase in self-murder would be of considerable financial 

 value to insurance companies. Of the total mortality of insured 

 males, aged forty-five and over, 4.3 per cent are deaths from self- 

 destruction, and the financial loss to insurance companies is of much 

 larger proportions than is generally assumed to be the case. 



The achievements of surgery are one of the glories of modern 

 civilization and of both direct and indirect value to life insurance 

 science in making for an improved longevity and a resulting increase 

 in the chances of a healthy life following a successful surgical opera- 

 tion. Beginning with the two principal factors the introduction 

 of anesthetics and the introduction of antiseptics w r e have a long 

 list of important modern discoveries in surgical methods which have 

 done much to reduce human mortality and do away with needless 

 suffering. 



Gynecology has an important relation to insurance science. 

 Woman as an insurance risk is one of the perplexing problems 

 in life insurance practice. In most of the mortality tables for the 

 general population women at nearly all ages experience a lower 

 death-rate than men, and the tendency would seem to be toward 

 a still greater difference in the future and in favor of women under 

 modern conditions of life. In contrast, insured women have often 

 proved a loss to the companies on account of certain subtle elements 

 of adverse selection not readily comprehended or allowed for in the 

 medical examination of women as insurance risks. As a rule, the 

 physical examination of women, for reasons of modesty and general 

 custom, is made with less care than in the case of men; obscure pelvic 

 diseases and diseases of the ovaries and uterus often exist, but they 

 are quite concealed. Many other facts, brought out by extensive 

 experience, tend to complicate the matter, and all companies exercise 

 great caution in the acceptance of women as insurance risks. 



During the past thirty years the chances of death have undergone 

 a material modification, and in most civilized countries the general 

 death-rate is much lower to-day than it was during the early seventies. 

 This improvement in human longevity, however, affects almost 

 entirely the younger ages of life and in particular children under ten 

 years of age. 



The modern treatment of the diseases of children, or the science 

 of pediatrics, combined with improved measures of public hygiene, 

 has resulted in a great saving of infant life, which goes far to balance 

 the general decline in the birth-rate. Industrial insurance companies 

 in particular are affected by this improvement, and the amounts now 

 paid for a weekly premium of ten cents are twenty per cent greater 

 than they w r ere some twenty-eight years ago, \vhen this method of 

 family insurance was first introduced into the United States by Mr. 

 John F. Dryden. There are, however, general benefits resulting to life 



