Abstract
IN NATURE oi July 6 (xcvii., pp. 383–384) reference was made to a statement by Dr. W. W. Campbell, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that recent odiscoveries in preventive and curative medicine had increased the average length of life by many years, and that the increase so caused had been great for those healthy men whose lives had been accepted as risks to be insured by life assurance companies. While it was admitted that there was a high probability in favour of that conclusion, it was also pointed out that the tables in existing use had been available for fifteen years only, and that the time had not come for them to be superseded by fresh observations. Upon this Dr. Campbell stated in NATURE of September 21 (p. 48) that the data upon which those tables are founded go back to the thirty years from 1863 to 1893, and do not therefore give full effect to the improvement in the duration of life which he believes has arisen during the last fifty years.
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Mortality Tables and Expectation of Life . Nature 98, 391 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/098391a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098391a0