Vital Accounts by Andrea A. Rusnock - 9780521803748

Vital AccountsQuantifying Health and Population in Eighteenth-Century England and France\nAuthor(s): Andrea A. Rusnock\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521803748, 978-0521803748\nSynopsis\nWhy did Europeans begin to count births and deaths? How did they collect the numbers and what did they do with them? Through a compelling comparative analysis, Vital Accounts charts the work of the physicians, clergymen and government officials who crafted the sciences of political and medical arithmetic in England and France during the long eighteenth-century, before the emergence of statistics and regular government censuses. Andrea A. Rusnock presents a social history of quantification that highlights the development of numerical tables, influential and enduring scientific instruments designed to evaluate smallpox inoculation, to link weather and disease to compare infant and maternal mortality rates, to i.