Vital Accounts
Quantifying Health and Population in Eighteenth-Century England and France

Rusnock shows how vital accounts became the measure of public health and welfare.

Andrea A. Rusnock (Author)

9780521101233, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 February 2009

272 pages, 53 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

"Rusnock's book will be of value to historians of medicine and quantification as well as to those interested in the sociology of knowledge and the history of sceince and its social context more generally. Of particular interest is her comparative focus, which allows the book to escape an oversimplified view that sees scientific innovations such as quantification succeeding largely because they were 'right'. The different trajectory of medical quantification in these two countires--so well described by Rusnock--is a powerful argument in favor of a more complex and multitextured explanation, one that can take into account the important differences in the communities of researchers who first used numbers to measure the health and vitality of populations." - Joshua Cole, University of Michigan

Why did Europeans begin to count births and deaths? How did they collect the numbers and what did they do with them? Through a compelling comparative analysis, Vital Accounts charts the work of the physicians, clergymen and government officials who crafted the sciences of political and medical arithmetic in England and France during the long eighteenth-century, before the emergence of statistics and regular government censuses. Andrea A. Rusnock presents a social history of quantification that highlights the development of numerical tables, influential and enduring scientific instruments designed to evaluate smallpox inoculation, to link weather and disease to compare infant and maternal mortality rates, to identify changes in disease patterns and to challenge prevailing views about the decline of European population. By focusing on the most important eighteenth century controversies over health and population, Rusnock shows how vital accounts - the numbers of births and deaths - became the measure of public health and welfare.

Introduction
1. A new science: political arithmetic
Part I. Smallpox Inoculation and Medical Arithmetic: 2. A measure of safety: English debates over inoculation in the 1720s
3. The limits of calculation: French debates over inoculation in the 1760s
4. Charitable calculations: English debates over the inoculation of the urban poor, 1750–1800
Part II. Medical Arithmetic and Environmental Medicine: 5. Medical meteorology: accounting for the weather and disease
6. Interrogating death: disease, mortality and environment
Part III. Political Arithmetic: 7. Count, measure, compare: the depopulation debates
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], History of medicine [MBX], Social & cultural history [HBTB]