Morbidness

MORBIDNESS, is often identified with "incidence," however, the modern study of both phenomena, in connection with the implementation of social and preventive measures of public health, requires a clear distinction between these concepts. Statistics of "incidence" study the phenomena of population pathology from a dynamic point of view; its subject is the emergence of diseases in a given population, the detection and recording of the latter over a certain period of time; the unit of observation serves as a "new disease," never recorded before and registered now only for the first time; the statistical form of registration is the "general statistical card," established for the registration of population morbidity. Statistics of "morbidness" (or, according to S. M. Bogoslovsky, "pathological prevalence") has as its subject the same population pathology, but from a static point of view, investigating the pathological state of the population at a given moment or period, similar to how a population census operates with its material in general demography; the unit of accounting here is an individual affected by a disease or bearing its consequences; the statistical form of registration is the so-called "personal sanitary journal," as well as corresponding programs for group sanitary examinations of the population (students, professional working groups, etc.). The theoretical distinction between these concepts does not, however, prevent the fact that both methods are practically in the closest organic connection with each other. The current registration of population incidence leads to highlighting the most affected social groups in one respect or another, and this entails, for the purpose of prevention, the need for detailed one-time examinations of these groups and determinations of their pathological prevalence and its conditions. Likewise, one or another one-time determination of the morbid state of a given professional group, carried out for the purpose of practical measures to improve its sanitary conditions, naturally leads to subsequent current observation of the nature and strength of its incidence. The most complete unification of both directions of research on incidence and pathological prevalence is carried out in the methods and programs of dispensary care for individual groups of the population. The latter is characterized by the desire to capture within the circle of its supervision those individuals who are, even to a slight degree, defective in the sense of pathological prevalence and morbidness, before signs of incidence are discovered in them on this basis. Thus, the development of statistics of morbidness, in the strict proper sense of this concept, is linked to the development of dispensary care and the methods of research of the latter. Modern programs for the study of morbidness, in the most complete, albeit general, form, are set out in the forms of the so-called "personal sanitary journal." In addition to general information about the subject, this program contains an anamnesis, anthropometric data, status praesens (by organ), results of laboratory studies, medical conclusion, and data from subsequent studies. Processing follows the methods of processing "sanitary journals." For details on methods of studying morbidness, see the articles Dispensary Care and Incidence.