THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH 



449 



MILNE'S CARLISLE 1760 - 1737 LIFE TABLE 







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YEARS OF LIFE 



FIG. 3. COMPARING THE EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN THE 18TH CENTURY WITH THAT 



OF THE PRESENT TIME 



and with a few trifling exceptions, notably in the years from 56 to 62, 

 the expectation of life for all higher ages was greater then than it is 

 now. Or we see in the eighteenth century the same kind of result as 

 in the seventeenth, only differing in degree. 



The changes in expectation of life from the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century to the present time furnish a record of a real evolution- 

 ary progression. In this respect at least man has definitely and dis- 

 tinctively changed, as a race, in a period of three and a half centuries. 

 This is, of course, a matter of extraordinary interest, and at once stim- 

 ulates the desire to go still farther back in history and see what the 

 expectation of life then was. Fortunately, through the labors of Karl 

 Pearson, and his associate, W. R. Macdonell, it is possible to do this, 

 to at least a first approximation. Pearson has analyzed the records as 

 to age at death which were found upon mummy cases studied by Pro- 

 fessor W. Spiegelberg. These mummies belonged to a period between 

 1900 and 2000 years ago, when Egypt was under Roman dominion. The 

 data were extremely meager, but from Pearson's analysis of them it 

 has been possible to construct the diagram which is shown in Figure 

 4. Each circle marks a point where it was possible definitely to cal- 

 culate an expectation of life. The curve running through the circles is 

 a rough graphic smoothing of the scattered observed data. Unfortu- 

 nately, there were no records of deaths in early infancy. Either there 

 were no baby mummies, or if there were they have disappeared. For 

 comparison, the expectation of life from Glover's 1910 United States 

 life table is inserted. 



It will be seen at once that the general sweep of the line is of the 

 same sort that we have already observed in the case of the seventeenth 

 century table. In the early years of life the expectation was far below 

 that of the present time, but somewhere between ages 65 and 70 the 



