Vallin Jacques and Nizard Alfred. ? Causes of Deaths in France. L An Attempt to Construct a Consistent Typology, applied to Deaths taking place between 1968 and 1974. For historical and practical reasons the International List of Diseases and Causes of Deaths is organized along certain lines. The disease process, the site of the disease, the circumstances leading to the death, and the symptomatology of the disease are all used, without any one of these criteria being dominant. It is not, therefore, possible to classify deaths by cause according to one consistent criterion. In this paper, two criteria have been used to classify deaths by cause : an aetiological criterion dividing deaths into seven categories, and one based on the anatomical site of the disease, consisting of twelve. All causes of deaths (coded by four digits in the International List) have been reclassified according to these two criteria. This avoids two different inconsistencies in the International List : diseases belonging to different aetiological or anatomical groups often appear in the same major disease group in the International List; on the other hand, one disease may be divided between different major groups. The differentiation used in this paper, whether by aetiology or by anatomical site, clearly shows up different age structures of deaths in the different groups. (Figs. 1 and 10). When both criteria are used together, the breakdown of deaths, though not unexpected, reveals certain useful details. (Fig. 14). ' Finally, an examination of the major disease groups in the International List in terms of our two criteria suggests that the List could, without great difficulty, be re-arranged to make a reclassification along the lines suggested possible. (Figs. 15 and 16).
