Compared with Japan and E ngland (including Wales), the United States shows a noticeable slowing-down in the seasonal variation of overall mortality in recent years for all age groups, particularly babies under 1 year. When this phenomenon began to appear and what process it has undergone will be studied in this paper on the basis of vital statistics in the past three decades for the City of New York.
Not until the 1940's did the slowing-down of mor t a lity variation come to the fore in the City of New York for babies under 1 year,1-4year old infants and old age people over 70 years. On the other hand, little change was seen in the meantime in the seasonal variation of mortality for able-bodied groups from 20 through 50 years, for which mortality has hardly varied from season to season in the preceding decades. The recent moderation of mortality variation by season means, in fact, the steady flattening of the winter peak, which resulted for the most part from the remarkable decrease of deaths from such infectious diseases as influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis, particularly for infants who showed a winter maximum in the 1930's but a nearly straight curve in the past two decades.
It must be noted, in this connection, that before the 1930's there had been a mortality mode in summertime as well as in the cold months in the United States as observed by some American statisticians. Higher mortality in the hot months had come mostly from gastro-intestinal diseases. But this had disappeared by the 1930's thanks to the improvement of public health services and regulatigons, the improved handling and processing of provisions, the pasteurization of milk and other foods, and the wider use of refrigerators.
The disappeara n ce of the summer mode was followed by the rapid flattening of the winter peak, which is to be ascribed to the ever wider adaption of central heating as well as the notable improvement of medical techniques and services and the marked betterment of general living conditions.
In the 1930's, though central heating was widely adopted in the City of New York, the seasonal variation of mortality was fairly high for oldage people and infants probably owing to the prevalence of pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis; etc. Deaths from these diseases appear to have curved up in the cold months to form a peak. After World War II, however, the winter peak levelled off year after year because deaths from pneumonia, tuberculosis, etc. decreased rapidly thanks to the everwider use of sulfa drugs and antibiotics and the effective adoption of central heating. The favorable effect upon infancy of the artificial climate created by central heating must be highly appreciated.
This study in the slowing-down of mortality variation by season in the United States has urged the writers to reconsider their previous concept of “mortality concentration in winter with the progress of human culture” from a wider point of view. In England, no summertime peak was seen as early as the 1800's, while the mortality curve climbed up, though slowly, in the cold months in recent years. This is a new subject worth studying with utmost care. The seasonal variation of mortality in the past 10 decades might well be summarized as follows:
The mortality peak has shifted from summer to winter for Japan; without any maximum in the hot months, the winter peak has been getting steeper for England; and the death summit itself, though it has moved from summer to winter, has got so flat as to indicate a possible “deseasonality” of mortality in a long perspective.
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