How we die

[Aelon]

The New England Journal of Medicine looks through 200 years of back issues to understand how we die differently:

The first thing to notice here is how much our mortality rate has dropped over the course of a century, largely due to big reductions in infectious diseases like tuberculosis and influenza. The way we talk about medical conditions has changed, too. NEJM finds that, back in 1812 – the first year it published – reports of spontaneous combustion were taken quite seriously by the medical community, as were debates over how, exactly one would be injured by a close-call with a cannonball: Doctors agreed that even a near miss by a cannonball — without contact — could shatter bones, blind people, or even kill them (1812f). Reports of spontaneous combustion, especially of “brandy-drinking men and women,” received serious, if skeptical, consideration (1812g). And physicians were obsessed with fevers — puerperal, petechial, catarrhal, and even an outbreak of “spotted fever” in which some patients were neither spotted nor febrile (1812e). Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/22/how-we-die-in-one-chart/

[Simon17]

Why does violence/war not register? I thought it was natural causes only but then accidents are on there.

[Aelon]

Violence and/or war belongs to accident category, IMO.

Actual study can be found here: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113569

[Hallett 82]

Last week, news headlines reported that a 30 year legal battle here in Australia where a family were accused of killing their newborn daughter was over.

The coroner read a scathing finding that detailed how in 1980-81 . .the paperwork for a Coroner Report on the death of the babe never had a selection 'box' to tick that told the truth.

They had choices for 'disease' 'accident' 'murder' and others . . but no place to describe 'death by animal'

They reported that 204 people had died as a result of crocodile attack . . sharks . .and finally dingo . .but it was only recently that such a choice was possible on the official forms the government requires.

Lindy Chamberlain was convicted because there was no place to show 'death by animal' on a form!!!

They HAD to make the death fit into the narrow choices provided within the parameters of the law at that time.

After hearing the Coroner admit that discrepancy . . I no longer trust the so called facts and figures of such agencies. One stoke of the pen can and does change all the statistics, making it risky to trust anything they say.

Death By Dingo Official