An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of Vermont, October 22, 1856 / by Joseph Perkins.

  • Perkins, Joseph, 1798-1872
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered before the Medical Society of the State of Vermont, October 22, 1856 / by Joseph Perkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    cally the statistics of nearly one million of people, deriving their nativity from different countries, and presenting many varieties and modes of life.—offer a more reliable basis for truthful deductions in relation to the important interests of hu- mam life, in the New England states, than can be attained by the more labored and less adapted reports of the European states. This appears especially in regard to longevity, as re- lated to different occupations and conditions of people ; and also as relates to the various cause,-, of disease and death. We are from these sources supplied with data of the time present, and our proximate locality, from which to select, (in reference to their healthfulncss.) our occupations and pursuits,—for esti- mating the true risks incurred in the insurance of life;—and especially for studying the complications of the causes and forms of disease. The plan of registration, as already ado].ted, notes the three great epochs of each life; the birth, marriage, and death. The first and last, embracing the extremes of individual existence ; the second resulting in the connection of families and the com- mon origin of population. In a multitude of questions involv- ing the descent of property, pecuniary claims on individuals or governments, the settlement of paupers, the age of persons, the places of their nativity, the history of individuals and fam- ilies ; the want is apparent and urgent of such an authorized legal record. It is the remark of an eminent English jurist, 4- That it is as necessary, for the preservation of the rights of individuals, to preserve a registry of births, marriages and deaths, as it is to preserve a registry of deeds. Many in- stances are known in the history of New England, of great and often fruitless expenditures of money, time and mental labor, in tracing out family relations in our states and our father land, in order to establish a claim to property. And it must be well known to the legal profession, that in the state of Vermont, nothing is so meagre and uncertain as the recorded data necessary for these inquiries ; and, until quite recently, nothing in the institutions of enlightened and prosperous America, has so much astonished intelligent Europeans, as this want of any legislative means of tracing out the identity, con- nexions, and principal events of the personal history of indi- viduals. England has, at the present time, treasured up vast entailed estates,—and has often scught, by special formal no- tices, legitimate heirs among her trans-Atlantic descendants,— and in most cases sought in vain, in consequence of the lack of record in our vital statistics. But at the present we are interested to examine the higher and wider aspects of our subject, as it regards the sanitary and
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