Abstract
The health of a nation in any epoch is an object of study since it provides perspective on the era’s quality of life and social progress. Study of the matter is not easy since information before the present age tends to consist of little beyond recording plagues and natural disasters. Only since the seventeenth century has information existed in quantities sufficient to offer a basis for research; with publication of his analysis of the London Bills of Mortality in 1662 John Oraunt provided the first empirically-based commentary on the state of public health. Inrecent years historians have turned with increasing frequency to archives of height data on reasonably large samples of human beings. However, such data sets tend to be unrepresentative of populations in general but, when interpreted cautiously, can provide insights into the health of populations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aitken, W. (1862). On the growth of the recruit and young soldier. London: Griffin.
Army Contractor. (1817). Statement of the sizes of men in different counties of Scotland, taken from the Local Militia. Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 13, 164–260.
Birch, R. C. (1974). The shaping of the welfare state. London: Longman.
Bond, B. (1962). Recruiting the Victorian Army. Victorian Studies, 5, 331–338.
Brabazon, L. (1887). Decay of bodily strength in towns. Nineteenth Century, 21, 673–676.
Chadwick, E. (1842). Report on the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers, (Sessional Papers).
Crawford, T. (1887). Devolution and evolution. British Medical Journal, 2, 337–338.
Debates in the house of commons on the factory bill, 19 and 23 February, and 27 April 1818. (1959). In A. Aspinall & E. A. Smith (Eds.), English historical documents (pp. 1783–1832). New York: Oxford University Press.
Galion, F. et al. (1884). Final report of the anthropometric committee. Report of the fifty third meeting of the British association for the advancement of science. London: Murray.
Gattie, W. M. (1890). The physique of European armies. Fortnightly Review, i, 566–585.
Gilbert, B. (1965). Health and politics: The British physical deterioration report of 1904. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 39, 143–153.
Gould, B. A. (1869). Investigations in the military and anthropological statistics of American soldiers. New York: Hurd and Houghton.
Heade, T. (1983). Fighting fit: Military influences on boys’ physical education in the early nineteenth century. In N. Parry & D. McNair (Eds.), Fitness of the nation—physical and health education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leicester: History of Education Society.
Ikin, J. I. (1864). On the prevalent causes of rejection of recruits enlisted in the West Riding, and Northern District. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 8, 525–531.
Jordan, T. E. (1985). Technical report #47: The comparative influence of perinatal social class and menarche on selected adolescent personality traits.
Jordan, T. E. (2002). Queen Victoria’s Irish soldiers: Quality of life and social origins of the thin green line. Social Indicators Research, 57, 73–88.
Komlos, J. (1985). Stature and nutrition in the Habsburg monarchy: The standard of living and economic development in the eighteenth century. American Historical Review, 90, 1149–1160.
Komlos, J. (1986). Patterns of children’s growth for East-Central Europe in the eighteenth century. Annals of Human Biology, 13, 33–48.
Komlos, J. (1987). The height and weight of west point cadets: Dietary change in Antebellum America. Journal of Economic History, 47, 897–928.
Lane-Fox, A. (Pitt Rivers). (1875). Measurements taken of the officers and men of the 2” Royal Survey Militia according to the general instructions drawn up by the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 6, 443–457.
MacGrigor, P. (1857). On recruiting statistics. Lancet, February 7, (I), 146–147.
Marshall, H. (1839). On the enlisting, discharging and pensioning of soldiers (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Adam and Blank.
Maurice, F. (1903). National health: A soldier’s study. Contemporary Review, 83, 41–56.
Meath. (1904). The deterioration of British health and physique. Public Health, 16, 387–392.
Miles, D. (1902). Where to get men. Contemporary Review, 81, 78–86.
Mokyr. (1988). Personal Communication.
Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. (1904). House of commons. Sessional papers, 32, Appendix.
Robinson, T. (1995). Connemara after the Fan2ine. Dublin: Lilliput.
Rostow, W. W. (1948). British economy of the nineteenth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rumsey, H. (1871). On a progressive physical degeneracy of race in the town populations of Great Britain. Transactions of the National Association for the promotion of Social Science, 15, 466–472.
Sandberg, L., & Steckel, R. H. (1980). Soldier, soldier, soldier, what makes you grow so tall? A study of height, weight and nutrition in Sweden 1720–1821. Economy and History, 23, 91–105.
Shee, G. F. (1903). The deterioration in the national physique. Nineteenth Century, 52, 798–804.
Smyth, A. E. (1904). Physical deterioration: Its causes and the cure. London: Murray.
Springhall, J. O. (1971). The boy scouts, class and militarism in relation to British Youth Movements 1908–1930. International Review of Social History, 16, 125–158.
Stein, Z., Susser, M., Saenger, O., & Marolla, F. (1975). Famine and human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tanner, J. M., Whitehouse, R. H., & Takaishi, M. (1966). Standards from Birth to maturity for height, weight, height velocity, and weight velocity: British children, 1965. Part IL Archives of Diseases of Childhood, 41, 613–633.
Wachter, K. W., & Trussell, J. (1982). Estimating historical heights. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 77, 279–293.
Wise, D. (Ed.). (1962). Diary of William Tayler, Footman, 1837. London: St. Marylebone Society.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jordan, T.E. (2013). Mars and Hygeia: The Application of Victorian Army Data on Height to the Quality of Health in the British Population. In: Studies in the Quality of Life in Victorian Britain and Ireland. SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6122-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6122-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6121-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6122-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)