In the late 1960s and early 1970s the gender divide in American higher education narrowed rapidly as women shifted their aims from homemaking to careers. The dynamic-social-norms hypothesis explains why we observe unexpected and rapid rather than gradual change in women’s education and employment. The explanation draws on a theory of social change developed by Timur Kuran that predicts revolutionary rather than incremental shifts in social norms. Critical to the argument is the claim that in some settings the choices of individuals depend in part on the choices of others. In the presence of interdependencies, the potential exists for unexpected and rapid transformations, such as that occurring in higher education between 1965 and 1975.

For nine weeks during the 1866 cholera epidemic, the registrar general for England and Wales published details of more than 13,000 deaths in London. Although the names of the deceased and the informant were withheld, all other information available from the death certificate was reproduced in the capital city's Weekly Returns, including registration district and subdistrict, precise address (house number and street, or institution), sex, age (sometimes down to hours for infants), occupation, cause(s) of death, and duration of final illness. Since historians’ access to original death certificates in England and Wales is restricted, this source presents an opportunity to analyze systematically the practice of cause of death certification in the middle of the nineteenth century, albeit during a period of mortality crisis. Variability of diagnostic “depth”—that is, the listing of multiple causes and duration of final illness—is considered for three major causes: cholera, diarrhea, and respiratory tuberculosis. Deaths in workhouses and general hospitals were chronically underdocumented compared to home deaths. This finding supports the notion that the institutionalization of sickness in the nineteenth century was accompanied by a loss of the “patient narrative” and also points to the entrenchment of institutional cultures of record keeping and administration.

Outmoded terminology, inconsistent usage of terms, and lack of specificity are routinely encountered in death records, making integration of past causes of death difficult. This article summarizes problems encountered during large-scale analysis of nineteenth-century causes of morbidity and mortality. Tuberculosis is likely the most problematic cause of death that is routinely encountered; the different manifestations of this disease, depending on which part of the body it infects, mean that it can have quite diverse pathologies, each accorded a separate term. Following this terminology, changes in tuberculosis among soldiers in the British army from 1830 to 1913 are investigated. Morbidity shows a large contribution by scrofula to the total tubercular diseases from 1830 to 1870. Phthisis, the pulmonary form of tuberculosis, dominates mortality.

The lack of a standardized cause-of-death nomenclature poses certain challenges for historical and demographic research of nineteenth-century mortality trends. Efforts to standardize disease and cause-of-death terminology did not successfully take place on an international level until the late nineteenth century. While many disease terms were in common, their diagnostic applications were not. This study examines the relative impact that standardized nomenclature had on cause-of-death reporting in western Massachusetts from 1850 through 1912. I analyze the effects of one specific international influence on late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century grammars of death, namely, the organized efforts of European and American medical professionals to instruct physicians in proper nomenclature through explicit references and sanctions in the 1900 International Classification of Diseases (ICD). My analysis focuses on the problematic usage of two diagnostic terms in particular: puerperal fever and inanition. The qualifying instructions for these diseases are particularly important for U.S. studies, because they targeted U.S. physicians for correction and provide further insight into the institutional efforts to effect conventional, diagnostic usage on both an international and a local level. I show that the ICD‘s effect on cause-of-death reporting in Holyoke and Northampton was modest at best. The ICD correctives in question were not unilateral directives from the European medical establishment but in fact originated in the United States. The ICD developed as a collaborative endeavor, enlisting the efforts and interests of participating countries to help create a mechanism for implementing a standardized cause-of-death nomenclature capable of addressing international and local public health concerns.