Report on the deaths among the assured in the Standard Life Assurance Company for the period from 15th November, 1850, to 15th November, 1855.

Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the deaths among the assured in the Standard Life Assurance Company for the period from 15th November, 1850, to 15th November, 1855. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    only two and a half per cent. Among 92 accepted after 60, not a single death arose from that disease. There is no other apparent way of accounting for the low rate of consumptive mortality among those assured after the middle period of life, compared with what is observed in the population at large, except the skilful application of the means for avoiding consumptive risks, by medical inquiry into the family liability, and personal constitution of proposers. Fifthly. Among the rules for avoiding consumptive risks, one of the most important specified in my last report was, that lives should in general be declined, when two deaths have been occasioned by consumption in the proposer's original family —that is, including his father, mother, brothers and sisters. It has been objected that this exclusion will have so wide an influence, as to circumscribe too much the operations of an As- siurance Company. It is supposed that, in consequence of the large proportion of the general mortality which is caused by con- sumption in the population at large, the disease must be widely disseminated through families. And thus some colour is even given to the opinion of those who will insist that Assurance Com- panies may disregard family history altogether, and safely accept risks on the simple history of the health and habits of the pro- poser. In the course of my duties as medical officer of this Com- pany, it has several times occurred to me to observe that the Company's local medical officer expressly disclaimed family con- stitution as an element of judgment, where the risk of consumption had to be weighed. This doctrine, indeed, is not entirely without recent scientific support, as very lately a paper was read in the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, to prove that tubercle, and pulmonary consumption, its most familiar result, depend on the constitution of each sufferer being depraved by the con- tinual breathing of a scanty, vitiated atmosphere. And in this paper the writer asserts the following proposition concerning the prevalent doctrine, that it often originates in family liability. Tubercle, it matters not whether pulmonary ... or mesenteric has been said to be hereditary. Yet there is not a shadow of reason for the hypothesis, except tlie frequency of tubercle. I hope, therefore, it will appear neither superfluous nor out ot place if I endeavour to put this point on a clear foundation. No physician of experience and observation can have failed trequently to observe consumption occurring to a fearful degree in