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JAMA. 2008;299(18):2220.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Of all the advances made in medicine during recent decades, no step has been more fraught with benefit to the common weal than the birth of a science of public health. The first step in this direction, and one that was absolutely essential to its development, was the institution of what is known as vital statistics, i. e., an efficient official registration of births and deaths, with the causes of the latter, and of infectious diseases. The science of epidemiology, also, itself a subordinate part of the science of public health, took its rise with that of vital statistics. In this country, until recently, very little effort was made, save in large cities, to establish an official statistical record. By the growth since 1895 of what is known as the registration area of the United States, the vital statistics now cover a total of 48.7 per cent. of the entire . . . [Full Text of this Article]