ABSTRACT
Coronary heart disease changed from an unimportant cause of death in the early twentieth century to become a major cause of death in the 1930s. The new pandemic coronary heart disease was strikingly different from the normal disease. It produced much higher mortality rates in all adult age, sex, and race groups. Enumerations of the increases in mortality rates from coronary heart disease for all age groups during the early twentieth century pose several problems. They include the revisions in disease categories as well as the lack of availability of federal government vital statistics for the total population and individual population groups. An analysis of the increase in coronary heart disease mortality rates in the 1930s requires the use of two disease categories: the original "angina pectoris" category plus the additional new diagnostic category introduced in 1930, "diseases of the coronary arteries".
