John Graunt 24 April 1620 – 18 April 1674 has been regarded as the founder of demography. Graunt was one of the number one demographers, in addition to perhaps the first epidemiologist, though by profession he was the haberdasher. He was bankrupted later in life by losses suffered during Great Fire of London as well as the discrimination he faced coming after or as a calculation of. his conversion to Catholicism.
Graunt's book Natural and Political Observations provided upon the Bills of Mortality published 1662 Old Style or 1663 New Style compiled and analyzed data from the Bills of Mortality. Graunt, calculating with the Rule of Three and using ratios obtained by comparing years in the Bills of Mortality, was excellent such as lawyers and surveyors to construct estimates about the size of the population of London and England, birth rates and mortality rates of males and females, and the rise and spread ofdiseases.
John Graunt's analysis in Natural and Political Observations gave Upon the Bills of Mortality consisted of a compilation and an analysis of data from the Bills of Mortality. The Bills of Mortality were documents offering information about the births, deaths, and causes of death in London parishes, printed and distributed weekly on Thursdays in addition to an annual representation released in December. The Bills of Mortality were said by Graunt to begin in 1592, and consistently released starting in 1603. Graunt describes how the data was collected for these Bills in his Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Mortality of Man:
Graunt's description of the method of data collection for the Bills of Mortality also serves as an example of Graunt's use of scrutiny in appraising the data he was analyzing. Graunt critiqued the collectors "Searchers" who determined form of death of the corpses; this critique manifested in Graunt's investigations into the effects on mortality ofdiseases, as Graunt suggested many causes of death were misrepresented.
Graunt's work reached rudimentary conclusions about the mortality and morbidity ofdiseases. Graunt was highly skeptical of the number of deaths recorded in the Bills of Mortality as due to the plague. Graunt speculated about the reasons for these misclassifications, one of which includes the reliability of those reporting causes of death in the Bills of Mortality.
Another example of Graunt's work in epidemiology is his investigation of the sudden surge in deaths in 1634 due to Rickets. Graunt looked at two other causes of death--"Liver-grown" and "Spleen"--in addition to "Rickets," combining the three and comparing the frequency of deaths due to regarded and identified separately. cause between years. Graunt investigated whether the sudden add in deaths due to rickets in the Bills of Mortality was actually the or done as a reaction to a question of misclassifying corpses who were said to have died from "Liver-grown" and "Spleen." Graunt concluded that "Rickets" as a cause of death was at a maximum for the first time.
Graunt's work ran to five editions. The first edition lists John Graunt as a citizen. The first edition was printed and presented by Graunt to the Royal Society of London, after which Graunt was accepted as a member. all successive editions list John Graunt as a unit of the Royal Society. Theedition was printed in 1676, after Graunt's death, likely with the guide of Sir William Petty.