Did Smallpox Reduce Height?

Razzell, Peter

doi:10.1111/1468-0289.00095

Cited by 18 publications

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“…This conclusion was questioned by e.g. Razzell (1998), Baten and Heintel (1998) and Oxley (2002). The effect of smallpox on height in the Netherlands has not been studied before.…”

Section: A Appendix Height and Smallpoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

Jacobs

Tassenaar

2004

Economics & Human Biology

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“…This conclusion was questioned by e.g. Razzell (1998), Baten and Heintel (1998) and Oxley (2002). The effect of smallpox on height in the Netherlands has not been studied before.…”

Section: A Appendix Height and Smallpoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

Jacobs

Tassenaar

2004

Economics & Human Biology

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“…Davenport et al have mentioned individual workhouses inoculating their children, and the Marine Society inoculated all the boys recruited by them and placed in both the Royal and Merchant Navies. 62 Likewise, the Foundling Hospital made it a standing rule in 1749 that all children should be inoculated before entry. 63 It was not the absolute numbers of inoculations carried out by these institutions that were important, but the experience that the ordinary population had of the success of inoculation in preventing attacks of natural smallpox.…”

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confidence: 99%

The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London: a commentary

Razzell¹

2011

The Economic History Review

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Smallpox was probably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth-century Britain, but was a minor cause of death by the mid-nineteenth century. Although vaccination was crucial to the decline of smallpox, especially in urban areas, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, it remains disputed the extent to which smallpox mortality declined before vaccination. Analysis of age-specific changes in smallpox burials within the large west London parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields revealed a precipitous reduction in adult smallpox risk from the 1770s, and this pattern was duplicated in the east London parish of St Dunstan's. Most adult smallpox victims were rural migrants, and such a drop in their susceptibility is consistent with a sudden increase in exposure to smallpox in rural areas. We investigated whether this was due to the spread of inoculation, or an increase in smallpox transmission, using changes in the age patterns of child smallpox burials. Smallpox mortality rose among infants, and smallpox burials became concentrated at the youngest ages, suggesting a sudden increase in infectiousness of the smallpox virus. Such a change intensified the process of smallpox endemicization in the English population, but also made cities substantially safer for young adult migrants.e hr_599 1289..1314 T he late eighteenth century was a crucial period in English population history, marking the beginning of the demographic transition. On the mortality side, the period saw a rise in life expectancy that was moderate in rural areas but resulted in the transformation of the urban mortality regime. London in particular ceased to function as a brake on the national population, consuming the population growth of the countryside, and became a self-sustaining centre in which births exceeded deaths. 2 This period also witnessed the emergence of class differences in mortality, heralding the modern mortality regime where urban and higher socioeconomic groups enjoy significantly higher survival chances than their rural and poorer peers. 3 Despite the huge significance of this period for our understanding of population growth and mortality decline, we still know little more than the bare outline of events. While the work of the Cambridge Group has provided very detailed information on the age structure of mortality decline through the technique of family reconstitution, we know very little about the changes in disease patterns that were the proximate cause of these changes, because parish data rarely included information on cause of death. 4 Moreover, the reconstituted populations did not include any large towns, and it is clear that early modern cities, and especially London, had very different mortality regimes from rural areas, and experienced more profound changes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, although we know relatively little about changes in death rates in urban areas, almost all we know of causes of death in this period comes from urban populations, because the main sources for London and sev...

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“…13 13 Oxley, ‘ “Seat of death and terror” ’; Voth and Leunig, ‘Did smallpox reduce height?’; Leunig and Voth, ‘Smallpox did reduce height’; Leunig and Voth, ‘Smallpox really did reduce height’; Razzell, ‘Did smallpox reduce height?’; Razzell, ‘Final comment’; Heintel and Baten, ‘Smallpox’; Leunig and Voth, ‘Comment’; Oxley, ‘ “Pitted but not pitied” ’. For a recent summary of the debate, see Voth, ‘Living standards’. …”

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Explaining the short stature of the poor: chronic childhood disease and growth in nineteenth‐century England¹

Sharpe

2011

The Economic History Review

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This article examines the relationship between human growth, final height, and the environment in early nineteenth-century England. While the reasons for stuntedness are multifactoral and involve lack of nourishment and in utero conditions, we should also give emphasis to respiratory, gastro-enteric, and bone disease along with the inadequate and sometimes harmful arrangements for convalescence, involving opiates and inadequate rest. Hard work and prevailing social attitudes slowed recovery and affected limb and organ development.While survival chances may have improved, and indeed were enhanced by measures such as targeted poor relief, quality of life for infants and children remained low and had an influence on their height as adults.The bodies of surviving working-class children showed the burden of hard times.

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Did Smallpox Reduce Height?

Cited by 18 publications

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Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London: a commentary

Explaining the short stature of the poor: chronic childhood disease and growth in nineteenth‐century England¹

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Did Smallpox Reduce Height?

Cited by 18 publications

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Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century

The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London: a commentary

Explaining the short stature of the poor: chronic childhood disease and growth in nineteenth‐century England1

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Explaining the short stature of the poor: chronic childhood disease and growth in nineteenth‐century England¹