Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg: Die internationale Commission zur Revision der Nomenclatur der Todesursachen in Paris 1900 (1900)

Inama-Sternegg’s report documents the Paris commission’s effort to make national mortality statistics internationally comparable through a common classification of causes of death. Writing as Austria’s government delegate, he traces the initiative’s institutional history, records the commission’s agreement, explains Austria’s reservations, and describes the adopted classifications. Its central concern is the practical reconciliation of international uniformity with established administrative requirements and statistical continuity.

The historical account begins with the international statistical congresses of 1853 and 1855 and the competing nomenclatures of Marc d’Espine and William Farr. It then follows the International Statistical Institute’s renewed initiative in 1891, when Jacques Bertillon was commissioned to prepare classifications at different levels of detail. These nested schemes were intended to permit aggregation without sacrificing the distinctions required by more detailed statistical work. Their growing adoption in the Americas and parts of Europe provided the basis for French governmental intervention and the Paris meeting of delegates from twenty-six states in August 1900.

The resulting convention joined a proposed adoption date of January 1901 to a mechanism for periodic revision. Uniformity was thus conceived as a maintained institutional arrangement, not a permanently fixed vocabulary:

Sie anerkennen, dass es wünschenswerth sei, dass diese Nomenclaturen alle zehn Jahre revidiert werden; die erste Revision soll im Laufe des Jahres 1910 stattfinden.

English translation: They acknowledge that it is desirable that these nomenclatures be revised every ten years; the first revision is to take place in the course of the year 1910.

The delegates committed themselves to recommending the classifications to their governments, rather than directly imposing them. This distinction becomes especially important in Inama-Sternegg’s account of Austria. Its Supreme Health Council had recently established a classification of diseases that already considered Bertillon’s schemes, but hospital statistics required finer distinctions and continuity with existing practice:

Immerhin hat die neue österreichische Nomenclatur der Krankheitsformen, welche für die speziellen Bedürfnisse der Krankenanstalten berechnet ist, sich weiter in Detailunterscheidungen einlassen müssen, als das Bertillon'sche Schema 3, und hat sich auch an die bisher bei der Spitalsstatistik angewendete Nomenclatur möglichst anschliessen müssen.

English translation: Nevertheless the new Austrian nomenclature of the forms of disease, which is designed for the special needs of the hospitals, has had to enter further into detailed distinctions than Bertillon's scheme 3, and has also had to conform as far as possible to the nomenclature hitherto employed in hospital statistics.

Here the report exposes a substantive limit to standardization: categories suitable for recording deaths need not suffice for recording illness in hospitals. Moreover, changing categories could interrupt the comparability of Austria’s own statistical series. A forthcoming Austrian mortality classification would consider the international decisions, but some deviations were expected. Inama-Sternegg therefore could not yet sign the convention. Vienna’s municipal delegates did sign, explicitly undertaking to recommend the schemes to their city administration, while Prague had accepted the general programme but reserved its final decision.

Es wird daher in erster Linie von der Haltung des Obersten Sanitätsrathes abhängen, inwieweit die neue österreichische Terminologie der Todesursachen mit dem von der internationalen Commission empfohlenen Bertillon'schen Schema in Uebereinstimmung gebracht werden kann.

English translation: It will therefore depend in the first place upon the attitude of the Supreme Sanitary Council how far the new Austrian terminology of causes of death can be brought into agreement with Bertillon's scheme recommended by the international commission.

This conclusion locates implementation within domestic administrative authority. The contrast between governmental and municipal responses shows that international agreement depended on several distinct levels of institutional assent.

The report then turns to the proposed machinery for sustaining cooperation. On Huizinga’s initiative, the commission resolved that an international demographic statistical bureau in Paris, headed by Bertillon, should compile standardized mortality statistics, oversee uniformity in morbidity statistics, collect criticism, and prepare decennial revisions. Classification was thereby linked to continuing coordination and the organized evaluation of experience.

Finally, Inama-Sternegg specifies the adopted schemes: a detailed mortality classification of 179 positions and a short classification of 36, with the intermediate scheme rejected as unnecessary. A hospital morbidity scheme contained 198 positions, supplementing the mortality categories with diseases not relevant as causes of death; a separate stillbirth nomenclature contained fourteen. The report closes by reproducing the short mortality scheme in French. Its lasting significance lies in this conjunction of classificatory design and administrative negotiation: comparable statistics required shared categories, differentiated uses, recurring revision, and governments willing to reconcile international standards with existing records.