ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the data obtained on patterns of illness, a record of the incidence and prevalence of illnesses which, either acutely or by some marked alteration, interrupted the usual progress of people’s lives. We may now distinguish in terms of this classing of illness whether there are differences in the incidence of illness according to age and sex. Incapacity measured by restriction is therefore an unreliable guide to the objective severity of an illness; it may indicate either the patient’s interpretation of what he feels or what the illness forces on him, or both. By the same methods as used for pathological severity, to show the relative proneness of different segments of the population to different kinds of incapacity in illness. The record of duration can be used to calculate the amount of time lost through illness.
