Note 246-11 — Chapter II

Bernouilli, Populationistik, 363, seq. Whether, on this account, we can infer the increased health of the people, is very much doubted by the aged laudatores temporis acti. They would have us believe that it is possible that the prolongation of the average of human life is to be explained by taking into account the case of numerous valetudinarians who formerly died early, but who are now preserved to drag out a miserable existence. The relative number of those who have died of old age did not noticeably increase between 1816 and 1860 either in Berlin or in the Prussian state. (Engel, Zeitschr., 1862, 222.) Compare, per contra, Marx, Ueber die Abnahme der Krankheiten durch die Zunahme der Civilization: transactions of the Göttinger Gesellschaft[TN 82] der Wissenschaften, 1842—44,43, ff. The extreme limit of the decrease of mortality, where there are no other causes of death but inevitable weakness of childhood and age, J. G. Hoffmann thinks would be one death per annum for every 52-53 living, and Wappäus, one in 57-58. (Allg. Bevölkerungstatistik, I, 231, 340); (Schäffle, System, I, 571); according to Capeland observations, one for every fifty.