Prior to 1898 there was no standard
classification of cause of death throughout the United States. But,
as of the first of that year Michigan blazed a trail by becoming the
first state in the country to adopt the Bertillon classification
scheme. [1] One reason Michigan adopted this system so early was
because the chief of the division of vital statistics for Michigan,
Cressy Wilbur, was one of three commissioners appointed to implement
the change in the U.S. [2]
The American Public Heath Association,
at their meeting in October 1897, recommended that the Bertillon
system be adopted by all registrars in North America. [2] At that
time “no two states in this country, hardly any two cities and no
two nations (except such as had already put the Bertillon system in
force), used identical classification of causes of death.” [3]
This may not be a big deal to genealogists, but it certainly was to
state and federal bean counters who wished to compare death rates
from certain diseases across jurisdictions. Ultimately, this type of
analysis could result in public health benefits by identifying
disease trends and promoting systems for containment and prevention,
like showing the advantages of public sewer systems. However, before
this could happen, the causes of death from region to region needed
to be comparable.
The Bertillon classification scheme was
based on the anatomical origin of the disease. This meant that
diseases of the respiratory system, for instance, were listed
together, with a further breakdown within each category rather than
simply including all diseases alphabetically. [4] This was a rather
radical change from previous methods that grouped causes of death by
the nature of the fatal disease. [6] While not a perfect system it
did eliminate the necessity of searching the entire list to find a
disease that could be described by numerous terms (for example,
typhoid fever was also called dothinenteritis, mucous fever or
continued fever). [4] Diseases affecting the entire organism were
listed separately under the term general diseases, which was further
broken down into epidemic diseases such as measles or influenza and
other general diseases such as cancer or diabetes. Some other causes
of death were listed separately: malformations, diseases of infancy,
diseases of old age, violence (suicide, accidents, homicide) and a
final catch-all category “causes ill-defined.” [5]
Jacques Bertillon, who devised the
scheme was one of its foremost proponents, by virtue of his work with
the International Statistical Institute (ISI). The system was to be
revised every ten years to keep up with progress in medical science
[6] By 1909, Bertillon reported to the ISI meeting in Paris that the
first revision of the system “was in use throughout the world, in
the Americas, Australia, and Japan.” [7] It was also in use in
several countries in Europe, but adoption there lagged because
countries wanted to maintain the ability to compare statistics with
those collected in the past. [7] The tenth revision of the system
was published in 1989 and is still in use, including by the World
Health Organization. [8]
- Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1898. (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Printing Co, 1900), ix-x.
- Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report . . . 1898., appendix, p. 5.
- Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report . . . 1898., x.
- Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report . . . 1898., appendix, p. 9.
- Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report . . . 1898., lxxiv-lxxv.
- Iwao M. Moriyama, Ruth M. Loy and Alastair H.T. Robb-Smith, History of the Statistical Classification of Diseases and Causes of Disease, (Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011), 12.
- Moriyama, Loy and Robb-Smith, History of the Statistical Classification, 13.
- Moriyama, Loy and Robb-Smith, History of the Statistical Classification, 21.
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