What does a Ph.D. candidate do on a friday night? Kudos to those of you who that guessed “drink beer and read 19th century books on British military mortality”. Tonight I am perusing the pithily titled Mortality of the British Army at Home, at Home and Abroad, and During the Russian War as Compared with the Mortality of the Civil Population in England, written in 1858.
The book presents a number of tables and graphics, but these three caught my attention:
“… [E]ach parallelogram of which represents the total sum of life among 10,000 men, between 20 and 40 years of age, entering the army, and remaining on home-service, and among the same number of Englishmen taken, at the same ages. The left-hand line of each parallelogram shows that all starts alike; but the black wedge, which represents the progress of death among the various classes, it will be observed, has a very different slope in each separate parallelogram.”
More interesting, the authors use the graphics to argue that greater attention should be paid to public health in the English army:
“Each parallelogram also represents the total money value of 10,000 men between the ages of 20 and 40, as well as the loss of value from loss of life at each succeeding year between the two ages. … In the case of the army, the country incurs great expense in educating the soldier for his duties, … [and] it may be fairly stated that the whole excess of money loss between that in healthy districts and that in the army, as represented by the difference in area of the black wedges, might be saved to the tax-payers of the country.”
In other words, good public health practices in the military save money. Unfortunately, many developing world militaries have yet to make this connection. Soldiers are expensive. When you include training, transportation, housing, equipment, and the opportunity cost of removing young men from economic production, all but the most neglected soldiers are a serious financial weight to a state. Protecting their health protects the bottom-line.
And, if you feel the inkling, the entire book is in public domain and can be downloaded here.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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{ 3 comments }
Nice post!
Are the results matched for socio-economic status or anything similar? Looks like ‘Soldiers’ are what’s left if you remove ‘healthy ditricts’ from ‘Englishmen’. So, is the soldiers’ steeper slope the effect of their occupation or their background?
I do not think so. I really doubt they are controlled for anything. Still, it is nice to see some good visualization.
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