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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2016
In the last number of the Assurance Magazine (April, 1861), there appears a letter from Mr. Gompertz, in which reference is made to his and my claims to the discovery of the law, or part of the law, of human mortality. In this letter, Mr. Gompertz declares that my claim cannot interfere with his claim, because I had acknowledged the priority of his discovery. I admit the truth of this declaration, and can add thereto, that I also am able to declare, with equal truth, that his claim, as now described by himself, cannot interfere with any claim hitherto advanced by me. The law of human mortality, now claimed to be discovered by Mr. Gompertz, differs materially from the law which I have declared to exist. The two laws are in accordance with one another only at one period of life (extending, say, from the age of 15 to the age of 55 years), and then only in a partial degree. It is in this partial agreement, at this particular period of life, that the priority of Mr. Gompertz's discovery consists. The description of the law of human mortality, as now believed by Mr. Gompertz to exist, is contained in a paper, referred to in the letter above mentioned, and since published (page 454) in the Appendix to the Report of Proceedings of the Fourth International Statistical Congress, held in London in the year 1860.