Now, let's do the time warp again, back to 1915 in the United States.
All causes of death 815,500 recorded deaths. Rate of deaths per 100,000: 1317.6
According to http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm, the US population was 100,546,000 in 1915.
Top ten causes of death US 1915
1. Diseases of the heart: 101,429
2. Pneumonia (all forms) and influenza:90,330
3. Tuberculosis (all forms):86,725
4. Nephritis (all forms):62,841
5. Intracranial lesions of vascular origin: 58,460
6. Cancer and other malignant tumors: 49,935
7. Accidents excluding motor-vehicle: 42,500
8. Diarrhea, enteritis and ulceration of the intestines: 41,771
9. Premature birth: 27,712
10. Senility : 11,555
Premature birth is on this list, at a rate of 2.6% of all the deaths. Heart disease is at the top of the list, though pneumonia and influenza take over the top of the list in 1918 and stay at the top for a while. We have not had an influenza that deadly since then, but it looks like we will.....
The 1915 list used the Fifth Revision of International Lists. This changes as I go through the table of death causes and rates, the International Classification of Disease is used, the Ninth Revision in 1975 and the Tenth Revision in May of 1990. The Eleventh has a release date of 2018. The US goes to ICD 10 on October first, but not the same ICD-10 as the rest of the world. Ours has 48,000 diagnosis codes. The rest of the world uses one with 14,000 codes. So senility had a different definition than Alzheimer's.
http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/