306 Observations on Bills of Mortality. 



j\^RT^ V. — Ohservaiio7is on Bills of Mortality, with a proposal for 

 their improvement ; by James Mease, M. D., &c. 



1 HAVE had for many years the subject of the longevity of the 

 people of the United States under consideration, and have made 

 large collections of the deaths of our citizens throughout the 

 Union who reached the age of eighty years, with the view of 

 showing, as I hope to show, that the chances for long life are as 

 great in the United States as in any European country, whatever 

 may be its reputation for salubrity. I confine my idea of lon- 

 gevity to the age of eighty years, and reject in my list of the 

 names of deceased persons, all those who did not reach that 

 number of years; but I might with more propriety have taken 

 seventy as my maximum, because I think that any climate 

 which permits a human being to attain that age, may justly be 

 termed healthy, and we know that where one person is capable 

 of rendering him or herself useful, after that age, fifty at least, 

 do little more than vegetate.* 



Being otherwise engaged at present, I cannot enter fully on 

 this subject, and shall therefore merely state the principle upon 

 which I intend to form my calculations, and suggest an improve- 

 ment in the bills of mortality. 



The true object of publishing the bills of mortality is, first, 

 to enable any inquirer to ascertain the comparative healthiness of 

 some city or locality with others in different parts of the same or 

 in a foreign country, (the population being the same,) and sec- 

 ondly, to inform us of the diseases peculiar to either, or of their 

 general nature, that they may be compared with those in other 

 places at home or abroad. Now a just estimate of these objects 

 of inquiry cannot be formed in the United States at least, by rea- 

 son of the practice of including in the bills, deaths from every 

 cause, whereas I have long thought, that no death ought to be 



* " The days of our years are threescore and ten, and if by reason of strength, 

 they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow." Psalms, xc. Dr. 

 Watts thus beautifully versifies this passage : 



" Our age to seventy years is set, 

 How short the time, how frail the state ! 

 And if to eighty we arrive, 

 We rather sigh and groan than live." 



