Vital Accounts: Quantifying Health and Population in Eighteenth-Century England and France (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) - Softcover

Rusnock, Andrea A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521101239 ISBN 13: 9780521101233

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This study examines the pre-history of statistics in eighteenth-century England and France, before state governments and other institutions began to collect statistical data on a regular basis. Eighteenth-century political and medical arithmeticians developed a variety of useful techniques to measure health and population. This book highlights the history of numerical tables, as new scientific instruments, and explains how they were used to evaluate smallpox inoculations, and the health and size of populations.

About this title

Review:

"An excellent overview of a vital, though hitherto neglected , dimension of eighteenth-century history." The International History Review

"the wide range of issues raised by the author, and her ability to contextualize the complex web of interactions among science, institutions and social processes and to refute simplistic and essentialist views on 'the power of numbers', makes this a valuable contribution on the genesis of social statistics that any historian will benefit from reading." - Paul-Andre Rosental

"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

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521101239
• ISBN 13: 9780521101233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272