DUVILLARD DE DURAND, Emmanuel Étienne.

Paris: De l’Imprimerie Impériale, .1806

4to, 2 leaves (half-title and title) + 210 pages. Library stamp on title and inscription at top, some mild foxing. Contemporary half calf, spine gilt (neatly restored), boards a bit rubbed, and worn along the fore-edges. Bound in at the end of this copy are 8 leaves of printed notices on Duvillard and his works dated between 1790 and 1814.

SOLE EDITION. G&M 1695. By 1806 the universal benefit of vaccination was widely known and acknowledged, but only in general terms. Duvillard showed statistically not only the extent of smallpox among the population, but also among various classes of the population, and, most importantly, the effect of smallpox vaccination on the mortality rate and on life expectancy. This was the first important statistical study of the result of preventive measures on a particular disease (although Jurin in 1723 had shown statistically the difference in mortality rates between natural and inoculated smallpox). Duvillard was head of the statistical department of population in the French Ministry of the Interior, and had good information from which to work. “It was not his principal aim to calculate a life-table but only to obtain means for a comparison of the effects of vaccination, and in this respect it would probably serve fairly well. Unfortunately, several authors who afterwards criticised Duvillard have only had this table in view, without thinking of the problem under discussion. As stated his book is, on the whole, very little known, and only very few copies seem to be preserved” (Westergaard, Contributions to the history of statistics, 94–95).

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