THE SIXTEENTH DECENNIAL CENSUS IN 1940
PREPARED ESPECIALLY FOR THE JOURNAL BY THE BUREAU OF THE CENSUSThere is one division of the Bureau of the Census with which every doctor in America who has ever lost a patient or attended at the birth of a new one has had contact, whether he knows it or not, and that is the Division of Vital Statistics. Eventually, through one means or another—state bureaus of public health, usually—every birth and death certificate issued in America reaches the office of the division, where, along with the millions of others of its kind, it is added to the records from which our national birth and death rates are computed, the incidence of death from certain major diseases, which the division calls "The Killers," is ascertained, the frequency of death by accident, and what type of accident, is figured and a dozen or so other