On the mortality of childbed and maternity hospitals / by J. Matthews Duncan.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the mortality of childbed and maternity hospitals / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Sterility have excited much attention from the medical and also from the general press, and this is the less to be wondered at, because the author has a very agreeable way of exjjressing himself, an art perhaps too little cultivated by members of the profession of medicine. The diseases of which the author speaks in this work are the occasion of much controversy among writers on the diseases of women ; and thus there is not as yet much known about them. . . . We recommend all students of diseases of women to read this admirable work. Fecundity, Fertility, Sterility, and allied topics. New Edition, revised, in Preparation. Prom the Lancet. We owe many apologies to Dr. Duncan for having so long delayed a notice of his most valuable and important work. The truth is, it contains so much matter needing calm and attentive study, that we have been waiting for leisure to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the three hundred and sixty pages devoted to the analysis of facts from which deductions of a very remarkable and interesting character, in reference to the laws affecting the reproduction of the human species, have been arrived at. In truth, every one of the numerous chajiters into which the author has classified his materials well merits distinctive critical analysis, and we are not without hope of so dealing with certain of them as opportunities may arise. . . . We have thus endeavoured to convey to our readers a general impression of the characteristics of certainly one of the most interesting contributions to medical statistics whicla we have ever perused. We are not prepared at the present time to discuss critically many points as to which difference of opinion will arise. Statistics, as we all know, have a name for being convertible according to the fancy of the manipulator ; and it might possibly appear on close examination that some of the data used by Dr. Duncan are rather more limited than we should consider safe for formulating laws on the abstruse and complicated functions of