On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Ralph Walter wrote:

> If Grant croaked there, it don't sound like Mt. McGregor was a very
> good place to recuperate.  Did they hush it up? Stuff (or more likely,
> pickle) him and pretend he was alive?

Very funny.  It only stands to reason that a place with a lot of sick
people will also have a higher than average death rate.

Some time ago, I noticed an interesting table in the Vital Statistics of
the U.S., comparing "deaths by place of occurrence" to "deaths by place of
residence."  Almost every place in Michigan had more of the latter than of
the former -- except here in Ann Arbor, where "deaths by place of
occurrence" greatly outnumbered deaths among residents.

That's because Ann Arbor has a famed university hospital complex, and
people tend to come here when they're seriously ill.  Some of those people
end up dying within our city limits.

I haven't looked at the numbers, but I suspect Rochester, Minnesota is an
even more extreme case, given the volume of the hospital traffic compared
to the small local population.  Would someone hesitate to go to the Mayo
Clinic because it's in a town with an extremely high death rate?

> Which reminds me....does it strike anybody else as suspicious that Grant died
> of throat cancer in 1885,

Hmm, wonder where you found that out.

> and that Kaiser Friedrich III died of throat cancer
> (rumored to have been contracted from a mademoiselle of the demimondaine at
> the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869) only three years later, in 1888?

Throat cancer was rumored to be contagious?

> Maybe some enterprising histo presto person ought to do a little
> investigative reporting and check into this apparent cancer cluster among
> 19th century military/cheif executives.   Any volunteers?

I guess I was the one generalizing from one example, so I should hardly
complain that you're doing it with two.

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com