Age Incidence of Specific Causes of Illness Found in Monthly Canvasses of Families: Sample of the Eastern Health District of Baltimore, 1938-43

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Abstract
This study is based on a 5-year survey of sickness in a sample of the Eastern Health District of Baltimore, involving monthly visits to households to record facts about illness. The covered population afforded 21,505 fulltime person-years of observation. The study revealed the following relationships of sickness to the age of the individual. Seven charts and two tables are included. In terms of cases, acute illnesses are important, particularly in the younger ages. Case rates for chronic diseases are overshadowed by the much larger numbers of acute cases. In terms of days of disability (inability of the patient to be about his or her usual duties) per person under observation (sick and well), the chronic diseases are the overwhelming factor in the total sickness picture of days lost from work or other usual duties. This situation results from the long durations of disability per chronic disabling case. The durations of the few chronic cases in the younger ages are also long, but the numbers of such cases are few. The heavy load of disability from all causes per person under observation (sick and well) in the older ages is largely due to change in the kind of diseases that attack older people, rather than to longer durations of diseases similar to those that are frequent among younger people. Prevalence of illness from all causes shows about the same relative age picture as days of disability per person observed; this is necessarily true because prevalence represents a sample of the days of sickness related to the total persons observed. The age selection of the different specific diagnoses varies so widely that any broad group as well as all illness combined represents a crude average of widely varying data for specific diagnoses.

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