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We do death differently now

How causes of death have changed.

By Martha Gill Published 22 June 2012 17:09

Causes of death. Photograph, Getty Images

The New England Journal of Medicine has looked back through 200 issues and come up with this - a handy chart telling us how we currently die (compared to ten years ago).

Well, mortality rates have dropped, thanks to the massive reduction in infectious diseases, so that's good. Cancer, on the other hand, has got much worse - the mortality rate almost doubling. We have fewer fatal accidents, but more suicides; no Diptheria, but more noninfectious airway disease; and, on a semantic note, Alzheimer's disease instead of "senility".

But more differences emerge when we look further back in time.

Back in 1812, it turns out spontaneous combustion was taken quite seriously. Here's the New England Journal report:

Reports of spontaneous combustion, especially of “brandy-drinking men and women,” received serious, if skeptical, consideration.

In a 1912 issue of the journal, one article noted a new problem, "automobile knee" which afflicted “persons of extremely indolent habits of life” who no longer walked more “than the few steps that are needed from the chamber to the elevator, from the elevator to the dining-room, or lounging-room, and then to the automobile”.

The report notes however that at least one editorial from that year was a little off the mark:

One editorial, describing progress made since the Journal's early years, rhapsodized about what another century of medical discovery might bring: “Perhaps in 1993, when all the preventable diseases have been eradicated, when the nature and cure of cancer have been discovered, and when eugenics has superseded evolution in the elimination of the unfit, our successors will look back at these pages with an even greater measure of superiority”.

More from Martha Gill

View the discussion thread.

9 comments

Tue, 2012-09-04 21:14 — wpsble (not verified)

oleoen

Sat, 2012-06-30 15:08 — Mr Humanus Wright (not verified)

Once again we are being told about technology in the Civilian Sector that has been in existance within the military sector, 10 to 20 years before it has been openly publicized, within the civilian sector. We are talking about the UKUSA agreement and TTCP agreements, Porton Down (QinetiQ - DSTL - DERA), RSRE (Worcestershire), and DARPA, NASA and CIA-DST. This technology is way passed its' study/experimental stage, and is in full implementation, being used activily on a procedural level, with consent and without consent. If you refer to some of the illegal programs that were being occustrated in the 50s, 60s and 70s, under ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA stemming from 'Operation PaperClip', you can gain an insight to the level of depravity that the medicial, scientific research, intelligence and military establishments were willing to go to, and how there is a huge deception on how these technologies and programs are now being presented to the public audience: William Sargant, St Thomas's Hospital, Donald Ewan Cameron, Harry Bailey and Galbraith, amongs others ... The Radio Telemetry Laboratory, and Military Radiations Signals Intelligence, Neural Oscillations, and the Central Nervous System, with ELF or VLF manipulation; under the subject heading Brain Computer Interface (BCI), Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) and Synthetic Telepathy. Nano-Medicines have hugely allowed this early pioneering 'torture' experimentation to be unimaginably enhanced beyond all scientific expectations, for manipulation of test subjects/live subjects, 'Unethical Human Experimentation' - in the ten of thousands (every living organism has a unique 'Bioelectric Field').

Mon, 2012-06-25 19:36 — jankaas (not verified)

i wonder who the 'Dr Wakefield' of that spontaneous combustion claim was?

and as for that wide-of-the-mark prediction made in 1912; we should accept that politicians and other well meaning groups, themselves ignorant of the science involved, obstruct an awful lot of useful science. we could be far better off by now, yet our human nature keeps getting in the way.

Mon, 2012-06-25 07:08 — EdgePenguin (not verified)

Increase in heart disease and cancer isn't necessarily liked to environmental cause. It could simply be that we are living much longer, and those are two hazards of old age.

Mon, 2012-06-25 00:21 — Cancer survival (not verified)

is about early detection, all clear? All clear? Clear to me.

Sun, 2012-06-24 23:45 — Robert Taggart

Unfortunately we do not do death enough !...
Far too many people are saved from the inevitable prematurely (defibrillators 'popping up' everywhere), but, worse still, far too many geriatrics are being saved also !!
Just a thought...
In an overpopulated country in an overpopulated world - should there not be a cut-off age for life-saving treatment ? how does 76 years sound ?? This will soon equal 10 years of a state pension in Blighty - enough is enough - surely ???!!!

Sun, 2012-06-24 18:26 — hugh markey (not verified)

There have been several omissions.
Zombieism, Vampirism, Lycanthropy, Frankensteinism and Celebritis. And all these conditions are highly contagious. But, here's the crux. only if you watch television, read the tabloids and mags, or go to the cinema. Yes, even 3D isn't safe!

Abbott and Costello

Sun, 2012-06-24 18:21 — M. E. (not verified)

The disturbing thing is that increase in heart disease and cancer surely is related to pollution, what we eat and drink and the way what we eat and drink has been treated. I know that breast cancer in Belgium is many times higher than in Tanzania for example.

Sat, 2012-06-23 13:00 — McMac

Fascinating chart, if anyone see this and doesn't find themselves exploding with questions they probably belong on the histogram.

Has Senility / Alzheimer's really halved despite the aging population???

Until relatively recently suicide carried such stigma that the true cause of death would often be covered up. Perhaps that explains some of the higher accident deaths in 1900.

Thank god for anti-biotics and clean water, who'd want to live in an age where 13% of people got a fatal dose of the shits.