Epidemiological transition: a historical analysis of immigration patterns by country of origin (1861-1986) related to circulatory system diseases and all-cause mortality in twentieth-century Australia.

Background And Objectives: Circulatory system disease (CSD) patterns vary over time and between countries, related to lifestyle risk factors, associated in turn with socioeconomic circumstances. Current global CSD epidemics in developing economies are similar in scale to those observed previously in the USA and Australasia. Australia exhibits an important macroeconomic phenomenon as a rapidly transitioning economy with high immigration throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A mandatory intercalated degree programme: revitalising and enhancing academic and evidence-based medicine.

Background: Recruitment of medical graduates to research careers is declining. Expansion of medical knowledge necessitates all graduates be equipped to critically evaluate new information. To address these challenges, a mandatory intercalated degree programme was introduced as part of curriculum reform.

A health transition: birth weights, households and survival in an Australian working-class population sample born 1857-1900.

There is increasing interest in life course epidemiology. In this article we investigated the relationship between characteristics at birth and survival and year of birth and survival. We have detailed information about birth characteristics and cause of death for 8584 subjects from a cohort of 16,272 registered live births to European Australians in a charity hospital in Melbourne between 1857 and 1900.

Birthweight and coronary heart disease in a cohort born 1857-1900 in Melbourne, Australia.

Background: The widely observed association between birth size and risk of later coronary heart disease (CHD) has not been examined in an impoverished pre-20th century birth cohort.

Methods: Birth weights and maternal characteristics, for births between 1857 and 1900 in a charity hospital, were recorded from preserved ledgers. Names were linked to death certificates to determine age and cause of death.

Mothers' health and babies' weights: the biology of poverty at the Melbourne Lying-in Hospital, 1857-83.

Birth weight remains a major focus of medical research into the relationship between pre-natal growth and life course health, and historians have used mean birth weight to assess women's standard of living. However, there are intrinsic difficulties in inferring maternal health and nutritional status from birth weight, and some of the known data sets produce puzzling results. One rich data set comes from the Melbourne Lying-in Hospital, 1857-83, and the article discusses the complex institutional, social, and economic causes that may underlie its apparently counter-intuitive anthropometric results.

Trends in birthweight between 1857 and 1883, in Melbourne, Australia.

Epidemiological evidence suggesting that subjects with lower birthweight have an increased risk of adult cardiovascular disease has led to increased interest in factors influencing birthweight. We have documented large changes in mean birthweight over a relatively short historical period from 1857 to 1883. Mean birthweight declined progressively from 7.