Abstract
ACCORDING to an editorial in the April issue of the Statistical Bulletin, the organ of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York, the United . States have enjoyed a period of remarkably good health during the months they have been at war. An improvement in mortality-rate during the first three months of 1942 over that in 1941 was reported for almost all the important causes of death, and no less than nine diseases have shown death-rates lower than ever before. These diseases included not only typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, syphilis and appendicitis, but also such important diseases as influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis, in which the mortality has been low in recent years. The 1942 record for the most important diseases of middle and later life, namely, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular renal diseases is favourable compared with that of 1941, the death-rate from diabetes being down 10 per cent and cancer and the cardiovascular renal diseases each 3 per cent. One of the few diseases to show a rise in 1942 as compared with 1941 are diseases of the puerperal state, of which the rate rose from 4.1 to 4.5 per 100,000, or approximately 10 per cent. It is probable that the increase was due to the rise in the birth-rate and in the number of women exposed to the risks of pregnancy and child-birth. Another group of conditions in which there has been an increase in the death-rate were external causes, with the exception of suicide, which had declined. Homicides and accidents, especially accidents due to motor-vehicles, were higher than in 1941. The war deaths reported to the Company in the first three months of 1942, amounting to 5 per 100,000, accounted for a part of the rise in the death-rate from external causes.
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American Health in Early War Months. Nature 150, 231 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150231c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150231c0