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    i&vt& of Hiiman life , ahd with no other end whatever . But we d 6 know that the Government grant annuities on lives of every age khd afcX , at twenty-five different rates of interest , which we |* f&jitime must have beeti previously computed by him and his assistants , aiid we also know that the Government grant

    annuities Oh thfe longest of any two proposed lives at every combination of age and sex . Thus , let two persons be aged 61 and 31 , they th&y be father and son , mother and son , father and daughter , mother and daughter ; in each of those cases , although tlife ages be the same , the annuity has a different value , and aeience is indebted to Mr Finlaison for being the first who ever showed this difference ; every preceding calculator , including Mr Milne , has considered the distinction of sex of no

    value in the price of annuities on joint lives ; but that there is a v £ rv considerable difference is now a matter of demonstration . If the editors of the ' British Medical Almanack * do not know ivhat is the meaning of a table of joint lives , we will beg leave to irifohn them , that where one sex and one rate of interest only is concerned , there must be 90 tables for the combinations of

    age . Where the sexes are in a quadruple series as above , there must be four times as many , or 360 tables , and where there are five rates of interest , there must be five times this product , or 1 ^ 800 tables , which we really incline to think a very considerable labour . That Government has not thought fit to incur the expense of publishing them , but is content with the use and

    bBhefit bf them , is scarcely a reason for inferring that such tables are not in being , and we cannot help wondering that such a man as Mr Milne should assume , upon no better authority , thiat no such tables were computed . This remark applies particularly to another part of the perverse article before us . Thfe Writfet states , that Dr Southwood Smith furnished Mr

    FinlaiSon With many facts on the statistics of fever , but that the l&ttetf , &s usual , only gave the results , and not the facts ! Now it ib feaj > petis that we have seen , in another quarter , this unptlblished work on the Statistics of Fever , which contains not btxfy dll the facts , but many luminous views of a most important medicsll question . It is true that Dr Smith , for his immediate ptiirposfe bnly , published a short extract from that paper *

    Sdfttaimrig , hbwever , a new and most important discovery , viz , thit tfie mortality in fever follows a law increasing in intensity ftccbtflirig to tMe age of the person attacked . For the discovery W'e AH indebted to Mr Finlaison , and it is not a little Quriou ^ toUhthfevfety ' BHtish Medical Almanak / at page 137 , there i& ahbtfier pdjp ^ i- 6 n Medical Statistics , which pronounces this iitMiii cbpyirig it vferbktim , to contain " the most important littttedtft Wmth UV 4 yfet befeii made to Medical Statistics . ^

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    46 LiUrul MitheMatiert

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 46, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/48/