My original intention was to write a history of medical statistics, used in its prewar sense, expanding the writings on the subject by Major Greenwood, from which I formed many of my ideas in the early days immediately after the Second World War. In later years, I decided that the scope of his works was narrower than what I think is appropriate now, for he was writing in an era before the acceptance and use of the Fisherian methods and he was probably not aware of the mathematization of many parts of biological theory. Further, the boundary between the medical and biological sciences has...

Destined to become a classic epidemiological study, EXPECTA- TIONS OF LIFE surveys world mortality, describing and ex- plaining the declines of mortality which have become especi- ally evident in this century.