The Cancer Mortality of Amsterdam, Holland, by Religious Sects

Through the exceptional courtesy of Dr. J. H. VanZanten, Director of the Municipal Bureau of Statistics for the city of Amsterdam, I have been furnished with manuscript data for each and every death from cancer in that city during the period 1920–1929, for the purpose of a more detailed analysis as to the mortality in the different religious sects, with due regard to sex and to organs and parts of the body affected. In the aggregate there were 9,405 deaths, which is sufficient for a study of the facts such as I do not think has heretofore been attempted. The returns as furnished in manuscript differ somewhat from the official figures appearing in the Statistical Year Book of Amsterdam. The numerical differences are shown in Table I. For the indicated differences in the returns, I am unable to give a satisfactory explanation except that it is quite probable that, in my own returns, deaths from sarcoma have been included, which have probably been omitted from the official publications. It is also quite possible that the person abstracting the manuscript data from the official death certificates used a somewhat different classification in cases in which cancer was associated with some other contributory cause of importance. The excess in the cancer deaths in my own returns is 299 for a ten-year period, while the figures are identical for the year 1929. The number given cannot be considered sufficiently impressive to indicate important errors.