Climate, Air Pollution, and Mortality

Seasonal variation in disease has attracted the interest and speculation of writers since the days of Hippocrates More recently Farr, in the course of his wide-ranging researches on 19th century vital statistics, published several studies relating to medical meteorology and drew attention to the excessive mortality that often occurred during periods of very low temperature During the 20th century other workers have demonstrated the close nature of this association between temperature and mortality, and the London fog disaster of 1952