The advantages of a uniform stat

The advantages of a uniform statistical nomenclature, however imperfect, are so obvious, that it is surprising no attention has been paid to its enforcement in Bills of Mortality. Each disease has, in many instances, been denoted by three or four terms, and each term has been applied to as many different diseases: vague, inconvenient names have been employed, or complications have been registered instead of primary diseases. The nomenclature is of as much importance in this department of inquiry as weights and measures in the physical sciences, and should be settled without delay.
Both nomenclature and statistical classiffcation received constant study and consideration by Farr in his annual “Letters” to the Registrar General published in the Annual Reports of the Registrar General. The utility of a uniform classiffcation of causes of death was so strongly recognized at the ffrst International Statistical Congress, held in Brussels in 1853, that the Congress requested William Farr and Marc d’Espine, of Geneva, to prepare an internationally applicable, uniform classiffcation of causes of death. At the next Congress, in Paris in 1855, Farr and d’Espine submitted two separate lists which were based on very different principles. Farr’s classiffcation was arranged under ffve groups: epidemic diseases, constitutional (general) diseases, local diseases arranged according to anatomical site, developmental diseases, and diseases that are the direct result of violence. D’Espine classiffed diseases according to their nature (gouty, herpetic, haematic, etc.). The Congress adopted a compromise list of 139 rubrics. In 1864, this classiffcation was revised in Paris on the basis of Farr’s model and was subsequently further revised in 1874, 1880, and 1886. Although this classiffcation was never universally accepted, the general arrangement proposed by Farr, including the principle of classifying diseases by anatomical site, survived as the basis of the International List of Causes of Death.
6.2 Adoption of the International List of Causes of Death
The International Statistical Institute, the successor to the International Statistical Congress, at its meeting in Vienna in 1891, charged a committee, chaired by Jacques Bertillon (1851–1922), Chief of Statistical Services of the City of Paris, with the preparation of a classiffcation of causes of death. It is of interest to note that Bertillon was the grandson of Achille Guillard, a noted botanist and statistician, who had introduced the resolution requesting Farr and d’Espine to prepare a uniform classiffcation at the ffrst International Statistical Congress in 1853. The report of this committee was presented by Bertillon at the meeting of the International Statistical Institute in Chicago in 1893 and adopted by it. The classiffcation prepared by Bertillon’s committee was based on the classiffcation of causes of death used by the City of Paris, which, since its revision in 1885, represented a synthesis of English, German, and Swiss classiffcations. The classiffcation was based on the principle, adopted by Farr, of distinguishing between general diseases and those localized to a particular organ or anatomical site. In accordance with the instructions of the Vienna Congress made at the suggestion of L. Guillaume, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Statistics of Switzerland, Bertillon included three classiffcations: the ffrst, an abridged