Medical statistics : their force and fallacies : a lecture delivered in Park-Street School of Medicine, November 4th, 1846, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of physic / by James F. Duncan.

  • Duncan, James F. (James Foulis), 1812-1895.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical statistics : their force and fallacies : a lecture delivered in Park-Street School of Medicine, November 4th, 1846, introductory to the course on the theory and practice of physic / by James F. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    It is an admitted axiom, in such researches, that the larger the numbers they embrace, the less liable they are to error. Hence, returns for an entire kingdom possess a force that no local or limited ones can do. Yet it is often necessary, for scientific purposes, to compare the returns from one portion of a kingdom with another, or from two public institutions. But the greatest care should be taken to ascertain that the institutions, thus compared, should be exactly similar. Thus, to contrast the mortality in one of our workhouses with that of an hospital, would be incorrect, not merely because of the different classes they receive, but still more so, because the mode of admission is different. In the workhouse, no one labouring under disease and poverty, however hopeless his case, is rejected; but in the hospital, the physician or surgeon examines every applicant before admission, and rejects those whom he considers unsuitable. I have been told by the resident clinical clerk of one of our largest hospitals, that the instructions relative to the admission of patients, he received on obtaining his appoint- ment, were, that before signing an order for the admission of a patient, he should ask himself this question— Can I cure his disease ? and if not, he was to be rejected. Now, while a great deal may be said in favour of rejecting in- curable cases, on the ground that they occupy accommo- dation that might be more usefully employed in giving relief to others, especially now that the workhouses are open, it must be clear that the practice is capable of abuse, and that the unworthy motive of promoting personal reputa- tion, trumpeted forth as it often is, in the public reports of hospitals, under the convincing form of a large number of recoveries, and a small number of deaths, may occasionally operate to cause the rejection of some patients, capable of D