Epidemiology of Town and Countryside: Mortality and Causes of Death in East Belgium, 1850-1910.
The mortality analysis in East Belgium during the second part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century reveals a deep disparity between town and countryside, which however disappears at the end of the period. Although its interpretation is difficult, the statistic of causes of deaths locates the original gap in the context of an epidemiological depression which affects the urban centres between 1830 and 1870. Beyond, the decrease of the mortality differential between town and countryside appears as the local component of a world scale phenomenon, the epidemiological transition.