YEARS OF LIFE LOST AND OTHER MORTALITY INDICES

measure of the toll of largely preventable disease; that changes in this total year by year would maximize the improvement gained by curative and especially preventative medicine. The aim, therefore, was to consider the years of life lost by each death rather than simply to count the number of persons whose lives were terminated; the underlying concept being that a man dying at the age of say 30, might but for the 'accident' of death have lived to the remainder of his normal span, and that it might be a greater achievement to prevent his death than to save the life of a man aged 90, who cannot have much longer to live. There was the problem of the choice of the 'normal span of life' to be used in measuring years lost on death. There was no precise or absolute measure, since a current life table was necessarily based upon the mortality of the lives then dying