Homœopathic hospital statistics / by W.T. Gairdner.

  • Gairdner, W. T. (William Tennant), Sir, 1824-1907.
Date:
[1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homœopathic hospital statistics / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vast majority of the cases were of the most trivial description, has a mortality of 6*26 per cent.; and that the interested partizans of the system therein pursued, demand for this result the palm of an unquestionable superiority, or (in the words of one of their leaders,) proclaim it “farbeyond the reach of any other known method of treatment.” To this it is enough to answer, that many hospitals in England have an average mortality much below that above mentioned; I have already instanced three of these, (Canterbury, 2*0 per cent.; Cambridge, 2'4; Exeter, 3*2.) I might add, that of eight district general hospitals in Scotland, noticed in the article by Mr. Thomson, already referred to, three have a smaller mortality than the homoeopathic institution, viz., Dundee, 5*10 per cent.; Aberdeen, 4*66 per cent.; and Inverness, 4*36 per cent. All of these hospitals are, like that of Edinburgh, recipients of a consideraole proportion of in¬ curable cases, and I do not believe that any of them admit 5 per cent, of cases of cynanche tonsillaris. I am not so well acquainted with the class of cases admitted into Eng¬ lish provincial hospitals ; but, in a list of thirty of these in¬ stitutions in the paper above referred to (from materials in the British Almanack for 1836-7,) there are only two whose mortality is not less than that of the Homoeopathic Hospital of Vienna, and the average mortality of the whole thirty (4*46) is less by nearly a third. So that the unprecedented success of homoeopathic treatment is not only a very ordinary and moderate success as compared with hospitals in general, but as compared with hospitals of the size of Fleischmann’s (fifty beds) it would be found to be a positive failure ; and doubly, trebly a failure, when we take into consideration all the facts revealed in the preceding part of this letter. Before concluding, I cannot resist alluding to one other subject,—I mean the proportion of cures. In the record of a death, it is impossible to show any bias, or in any way to deviate from accuracy without gross falsehood, with corre¬ spondingly great risk of detection. But, in the column of cures in this hospital may be read the character of the whole of its records. The alleged cures in the Vienna Homoeopathic Hospital are 92 per cent, of the whole cases ; and, as the deaths are 6*25 per cent., it follows that there is actually scarcely any medium between death and cure ! To any one who knows what hospital cases are, or should be