Cause-of-Death Statistics in Sweden During the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Wegelius Journal From Röbäck Hospital

Abstract

This article examines cause-of-death statistics in Sweden during the Finnish War of 1808–1809 through an in-depth analysis of the so-called Wegelius Journal from the military hospital in Röbäck, near Umeå. Kept by the physician Jakob Esaias Wegelius, the journal constitutes a rare and detailed individual-level source documenting admissions, diagnoses, medical outcomes, and deaths among soldiers treated during the final phase of the war. The study situates the journal within the broader Swedish tradition of population registration and mortality statistics, particularly the work of Tabellverket, while emphasising its complementary character as a source based on contemporaneous military hospital records. The historical context is the large-scale evacuation of sick and wounded soldiers from Finland to northern Sweden in the autumn of 1808, which overwhelmed local infrastructure and resulted in extremely high mortality. The journal contains more than 1,100 admission records from soldiers belonging to over 30 Swedish military units, many from the eastern parts of the realm that after the war became Russian-ruled Finland. Analysis of the material shows that epidemic diseases, especially typhus and dysentery, accounted for the majority of illness and death, far exceeding battle-related injuries, although war wounds were more common among those early admitted. A central contribution of the article is its detailed description of the digitisation process. The handwritten journal was transcribed, structured, and standardised into a research database while preserving the original content of the source. Dates, regimental affiliations, and diagnoses were harmonised, and medical terminology was mapped both to the historical disease categories used by Tabellverket, the Swedish agency responsible for population statistics, and to the ICD10h classification system for historical causes of death. An additional category was introduced to better identify combat-related injuries to the Tabellverket categories. The digitised database enables fine-grained analyses of military morbidity and mortality during the crisis. As such, it makes the Wegelius Journal readily usable for research in fields such as historical demography, military medical history, and historical epidemiology.