The rate of living : being an account of some experimental studies on the biology of life duration / by Raymond Pearl.

  • Pearl, Raymond, 1879-1940.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The rate of living : being an account of some experimental studies on the biology of life duration / by Raymond Pearl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the more spectacular achievements of some of his col- leagues, notably the bacteriologists, he has really been the balance wheel of that complex piece of social machinery which now so effectively protects us against the environ- ment, and, in some measure, ourselves. So self-effacing and useful has he been that he has suffered the enormous misfortune of being taken for granted. Nearly everyone has forgotten, or failed ever to think, that the matters with which biostatistics concerns itself constitute some of the most fundamental and important problems of pure biol- 3,od certainly the most neglected ones from anything but the completely practical aspect. The existing struc- ture of the organic world is that of a vast congeries of mutually interacting and integrated groups of living things. Its status at any given moment is the resultant of the forces of mortality and natality which exist, and have existed in the past, in all these groups. The most elemen- tal y and gentle application of logical thought would lead to the conclusion that it must be impossible to dis- cuss organic evolution intelligently without chiefly talk- ing about birth rates and death rates. But the plain fact is that evolution is now, and always has been, discussed with only the slightest and most casual consideration of these important elements in the case. It is another sad ex- ample of the slight influence of logic upon human be- havior. I wish in these lectuies to state and defend the thesis that biostatistics, so far from being merely a useful tech- nical handmaiden to preventive medicine, is in fact the