Comment Comparing eras (Score 1) 291
All we need are dissection records or dissection of well-preserved corpses from the era, so as to examine the state of organs.
The few remaining corpses of people 100+ years dead will most likely not give you the information you seek. There simply is not enough material remaining even among that which is well preserved to make authoritative claims regarding entire populations. At best we might get some hints and get some limited insight but there will be pretty sharp limits on making serious comparisons. Furthermore, I don't know how much time you've spend working with medical records but I've spent a lot of time with them in my professional life. Even modern medical records can be pretty bad. Medical records from 100+ years ago are very difficult to glean useful information from in a lot of cases. Not saying it can't be done but our understanding of medicine has advanced rather a lot since then.
Finding the source material is difficult.
That's putting it mildly. It's an interesting project you propose but you seem to be making it sound much easier than it is. That is a very challenging study.