Medical handbook of life assurance : for the use of medical and other officers of companies / by James Edward Pollock and James Chisholm.

  • Pollock, James Edward, 1817-1910.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical handbook of life assurance : for the use of medical and other officers of companies / by James Edward Pollock and James Chisholm. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    13^ the increase in weight that should be allowed for each year’s increase in age. The tables of average weights that are usually published do not afford any complete guide, inas- much as an average result gives no indication of the limits of variation that may be allowed. 346. The late W. B. Brent submitted to the British Association* an ingenious plan for setting up minimum, normal, and maximum standards of weight, based on the calculated weight of men of the same proportions as certain Grecian statues [The Bronze Tumbler, The Dying Gladiator, Theseus (Brit. Mus.) and others] deduced for different heights on the assumption that the weight varies as the cube of the height. Subsequent investigations have shown, however, that the assumption on which Brent pro- ceeded is not correct.f If the initial weight be taken for a height of say 5ft. 6in., it will be found that the calculated weights for all heights under this stature are less than they ought to be, and that they are greater for all heights over 5ft. 6in. 347. In default of an absolute standard, the fol- lowing table has been compiled, taking Hutchinson’s * Reports for 1844 and 1845. Transactions pp. 82 and 80. Brent’s Tables are not printed in the abstracts of his papers, but they will be found in the work of Dr. T. K. Chambers on Corpulence, p. 77. A table printed in Volume XXIII. of the “Journal of the Institute of Actuaries,” p. 65, which is in use by certain Life Offices, is apparently constructed by taking the average of Brent’s calculated weights deduced from the three statues mentioned in the text. + “Anthropometric,” par Ad. Quetelet; Brussels, 1870. See also generally “ Manual of Anthropometry,” by Charles Roberts ; London, 1878.
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