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| The Philosophy of Death John Reid (MDCCCXLL) |
What did people die of, before vaccination?
Below is a page from the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, from 1850, showing causes of death in the Metropolis from 1848-1850. For your convenience, I’ve made a chart of the infectious causes. Some of these diseases (cholera, typhus) have been mainly eliminated by hygiene; a few (scarlatina – Scarlet Fever) by antibiotics; some (influenza) are still scourges, though not nearly as serious; and many, including most of the major killers of 1850, are history — or would have been history, if not for the valiant efforts of the anti-vaccine loons, who are trying to bring us back to the good old days when children routinely died of whooping cough, measles, and smallpox.
For other exciting charts:
- The effect of measles vaccination in the USA, 1950-2007
- The effect of measles vaccination in Finland (1982) and Bourkina Fasso (2002)
- Pertussis vaccination in England and Wales: The impact of anti-vaccine loons
- Overall impact of vaccines on mortality and morbidity
- Effect of vaccination on polio
Here’s the images (click for larger versions):
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| Journal of the Statistical Society of Landon, Vol. XII London: John William Parker, 445, West Strand 1850 |
Selected infectious Diseases, 1848-1850 |
That is amazing data — do you know if they have data around how many of these people were children? Who knows if those figures will convince anybody, but I suspect most of these victims were probably children and what better way to fight the anti-vaccine loons than to point out that they kill babies?
do you know if they have data around how many of these people were children?
I think the data are there, but it’s hard reading, and I haven’t put them together yet. I’ll probably get to it some time.
[…] A while ago I made the point that many of the biggest killers of 19th-century London were almost unknown today, because of vaccination (”hooping cough”, measles, smallpox) and sanitation (typhus, cholera) (see “Life & Death, pre-vaccination“). […]