Causa mortis and mortality rates: historical aspects coming from death certificates, 1916-1929

Abstract

The studies of obituary books with a historical approach reveal everyday details that are non-existent in other types of official documentation. Besides having some information that enables the elaboration of mortality rates and the respective causa mortis, it is possible to deduce about the number of physicians who certificated deaths in a given place and space of time, as well as about the places where these deaths occurred and about the official aspects related to civil registration of natural people. This paper results from the analysis of 443 death certificates from Marques de Souza, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, over a period that goes from July 1916 until December 1929, registered at the C-1 book which belongs to the Registrar's office of Marques de Souza city. The theoretical and methodological basis of this research is based on historical demography. The results identify death causes that affected Marques de Souza population, the medical care daily routine and the death proportion during the study period (1916-1929). We face the problem of "natural" causa mortis, which is found in most of the records (70,66%), as a strong indication of the precariousness and lack of adequate medical and registrar's services, but are part of a specific socio-historical context.