INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORT ON VITAL

STATISTICS.

The importance of vital statistics is so well recognized by all who understand their bearing, that it is now seldom necessary to explain the work begun in this State in 1838, and rendered more complete by recent laws.

Since political economy, social science and the study of population have come to be recognized as very essential factors of prosperity, not a few are getting closer insight into the work. It is a great concern of the State whether a proper guard is placed upon the conditions of marriage, whether the evidence of parents' consent to minors, of the reality of the ceremony, and of the competency of the parties to the contract, are established. The family is the essential unit of the State, because it is of all society. On it depends more for the State than upon any other of its institutions. The English requirement of notice of marriage, and the plans still adopted in some of the States and in the District of Columbia, did not arise from inquisitive officiousness, but from what both reason and experience had taught as to the concern which the State has in properly-considered and attested marriages. It is believed that the influence of the method of the Society of Friends and of our early laws on this subject has been very salutary, and help to account for the fact that the grounds for divorce and its frequency are not so commonplace in this State as in many others. The marriage certificate now furnished has, in addition to the blank, a certificate which the parties may be asked to sign, and which not only is valuable as a defense to the person performing the ceremony, but is also a proper guard to the parties.

The record of deaths not only serves to identify, but is the mildest form of certificate that the life of a human being has ceased and that there has been proper care exercised as to it. So long as one of the chief objects for which the State exists is the protection of human life,

such certificates are not incidental but essential to a proper conduct of social and civic administration. We have constant evidence of the salutary influence which the system has exerted upon that oversight of human life and its perils, which cannot be too carefully impressed upon citizens. Strange as it may seem, very many incline to be careless in the protection of life. The flagrant case which occurred in this State during the past year, as to the burial of twenty or more infants, is but an illustration of how far an act of great impropriety may take place without that reflection which is due to the sacredness of life and to the relation which each life bears to the State.

As the incident of birth is none the less real in its civic relations than that of marriage or death, and as we also need to know the age and character of the material on which the forces of disease are acting, this record comes in as essential to the other two.

As to all, it may now be said that we know of no one who has made a study of political and social economy, who does not realize that, for social as well as for legal purposes, there should be this uniform method of collecting the statistics so as to make them not only accessible but comparable with each other for statistical and sanitary purposes. While one who works in such a field has great reason for humility, by reason of the imperfections realized, yet he also has great reason for encouragement, since the imperfections decrease, and, even with them, the greatest guides and lights of social and sanitary progress have realized and exhibited their essential value.

The only rare and incidental friction that occurs is from the fact that an occasional physician or undertaker claims that he is rendering a service for which the State should award him some compensation. The first plea is that the State has no right to require this service of him, since it should be asked, if at all, from the family in which the death has occurred or from the parent of the child born.

The answer which other countries or States have seen fit to give to this is, that there are reciprocal duties always growing out of the relations between a government and its people, and that, in its supreme right, the State must decide from whom certain duties are to be asked and what duties these shall be. If it decides that, for the social and political welfare of the State, it is necessary that the State should have the information, it makes its own choice as to who shall impart it. Thus it asks of the head of the family the facts as to a census, or of

the farmer the number of sheep or cattle he has, while it passes the teacher and does not ask the number of pupils in his district but gets the information in another way. It selects the person or persons from whom it is likely to get the most correct information, and that is always some person having essential relation to the case. If the State has the right to call on anybody, it has the right to make this choice. The fact of payment or non-payment does not determine the right of the State to exact the service, for, if the State has no right to command this and other services of a citizen because of his special relations and capacity for correct information, it has no right to make him impart the information because of the proffer of pay.

If, however, it is claimed that the State should offer compensation, the reply is:

1st. That the State necessarily requires many duties of its citizens for which they get compensation in a general way, and for which it does not give specific remuneration. It sends out its census blanks or property blanks, and proffers no pay for their infilling. It requires reports of business and incomes, if it deems such returns to be needful. It summons persons on jury without attempt at any adequate pay for their time. It compels able-bodied men, if called out by an officer, to aid him in arrest, if no police force is at hand, and detains innocent persons as witnesses, if the public good requires it. The law imposes many duties on citizens and classes of citizens without direct compensation, where such duties are not burdensome or where they grow out of the special relations the individual has come to bear to society or to the State. It is, of course, important that these duties should not be unduly multiplied, or that no one person should have exacted from him a variety of such special duties. But when it is remembered that professional life practically excuses the physician from all jury duty, and recognizes him as an expert to a degree that allows him some compensation for services rendered, it can scarcely be claimed that the requisition as to these returns is burdensome.

It is to be remembered that the laws as to vaccination, as well as the general guard over births and deaths, results in emoluments to the profession at large. Even the right to practice medicine at all in a State is not a right inherent to the individual, but has to do so intimately with the health of the people that it has always been regarded as special in its character.

So readily has the right of States to require these returns to be

made been conceded by the medical profession, that we know of but one case that has ever reached the Supreme Court, viz., the case of the State of Iowa v. D. M. Hamilton (1882). The opinion of the court was given by Justice Beck, and on this point is as follows:

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"The statute requires the collection of statistics pertaining to the population of the State and the health of the people, which may impart information useful in the enactment of laws and valuable to science and the medical profession, to whom the people will look for remedies al for disease and for means tending to preserve health. The objects of the statute are within the authority of the State, and may be attained in the exercise of its police power. Similar objects are contemplated by States requiring a census.'

The same principles of law are well stated by Dorman B. Eaton, Esq., now of the Civil Service Commission, in an article on "Sanitary Legislation in England" (New York, 1872). Also, in a paper by O. W. Wight, M.D., counselor-at-law, Detroit (A. P. H. Asso., 1882); in an article by Thomas M. Cooley, LL. D., of the Supreme Court of Michigan, on "What can the law do for the health of the people?" and in the case of the State of West Virginia v. F. M. Dent, before the Supreme Court (Justice Green), as decided November 1st, 1884.

"If a legislature saw fit to make it a condition that practitioners of medicine should not practice without a stated license, for which they should pay a fee, they might do so, or they may make the simple and easier condition that they shall give certificates of death or birth, and be registered as physicians." The court, in the case of Bradley v. N. Y. & N. H. R. R. Co., 21 Conn. 306, plainly enunciates the principle which covers all these cases: "It is universally understood to be one of the implied and necessary conditions upon which men enter into society and form governments, that sacrifices must sometimes be required of individuals for the general benefit of the community for which they have no rightful claim to specific compensation." Our State has shown that it has not the least tendency to be exacting in this regard by the terms of the law as to certificates of marriage, birth and death. In cases where a Board of Health, on account of threatening contagion, sees fit also to require for a time a report of contagious diseases, it allows adequate compensation, and thus draws the line between a vital event and the incidents of sickness.

Formerly, it was required of ministers to register marriages in the