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For over 100 years, however, there has never been consensus about disease categories or about the process of collecting data. So one culture sees spirit possession as a valid cause of death, another ridicules this as superstition; one medical specialty sees cancer as a localized phenomenon to be cut out and stopped from spreading, another sees it as a disorder of the whole immune system that merely manifests in one location or another. The implications for both treatment and classification differ. Trying to encode both causes results in serious information retrieval problems. |
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In addition, classifications shift historically. In Britain in 1650 we find that 696 people died of being "aged"; 31 succumbed to wolves, 9 to grief, and 19 to "King's Evil." "Mother" claimed 2 in 1647 but none in 1650, but in that year 2 were ''smothered and stifled" (see figure I.3). Seven starved in 1650 (Graunt 1662), but by 1930 the WHO would make a distinction: if an adult starved to death it was a misfortune; if a child starved, it was homicide. Death by wolf alone becomes impossible by 1948, where death from animals is divided between venomous and nonvenomous, and only dogs and rats are singled out for categories of their own (ICD-5 1948, 267). |
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