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Matos, P. T. de & Paiva, D. (2025). GREATLEAP Workshop Exploring Sources and Databases on Causes of Death in Historical Societies (1800-1950). Individual-level causes of death in Portugal, 1834-1910. Their potential and pitfalls for studying health inequalities.

P. D. Matos and D. F. Paiva,  "GREATLEAP Workshop Exploring Sources and Databases on Causes of Death in Historical Societies (1800-1950)", in Individual-level causes of death in Portugal, 1834-1910. Their potential and pitfalls for studying health inequalities, Bolonha, 2025

@misc{matos2025_1769120746908,
	author = "Matos, P. T. de and Paiva, D.",
	title = "GREATLEAP Workshop Exploring Sources and Databases on Causes of Death in Historical Societies (1800-1950)",
	year = "2025",
	howpublished = "Outro",
	url = "https://eshd2025.eshd.eu/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - GREATLEAP Workshop Exploring Sources and Databases on Causes of Death in Historical Societies (1800-1950)
T2  - Individual-level causes of death in Portugal, 1834-1910. Their potential and pitfalls for studying health inequalities
AU  - Matos, P. T. de
AU  - Paiva, D.
PY  - 2025
CY  - Bolonha
UR  - https://eshd2025.eshd.eu/
AB  - Public health acquired a prominent role in Portugal in 1834 with the establishment of
Liberalism. Following European trends, the "statistical liberalism" strengthened the
Portuguese State, with numbers underpinning political decisions. In 1837, the
Council of Public Health required that all burials should be carried out in public
cemeteries. Therefore no one (at least in theory) could be buried without a certificate
(bilhete de enterramento) signed by a doctor and stating the cause of death.
This article aims to catalogue and analyze the main documentary corpus on
individual-level causes of death produced in Portugal between 1834 and 1910, when
the Republican regime was implanted leading to the formation of the civil register in
1911. In a second phase, we use samples of the individual records to understand
their quality in terms of territorial coverage and the quality and systematization of the
information on causes of death. At this point we particularly aim to recognize whether
the declaration of diseases followed the official nomenclature or whether doctors
used their own classifications. It is important to mention that one of the samples is
the city of Oporto for which our team has worked extensively.
To analyze the quality of the sources, we make use of a wide set of information, such
as parish death registers, population statistics charts, aggregate charts of causes of
death, legislation and official correspondence.
ER  -