Operative surgery in the Calcutta Medical College Hospital : statistics, cases and comments / by Kenneth McLeod.

Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Operative surgery in the Calcutta Medical College Hospital : statistics, cases and comments / by Kenneth McLeod. 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.

    9/404
    PKEFACE. The Statistics of Surgical Operations are peculiarly liable to fallacies. As usually presented, they are compila- tions either of cases or of collections of cases, published in periodicals or in the form of monographs. They are then the outcome of work by different men, under different circumstances, and according to different methods. The single cases are most frequently the more striking or successful in tlie practice of the reporter, who does not consider it necessary to report the more commonplace or unfortunate. Successes are apt to be readily chronicled and failures left unrecorded. Statistics based on data of this kind are simply untrue as representatives of the results of the particular operation whose instances are tabulated. Again, the operator, who pays special attention to one class of cases, has perhaps acquired special dexterity in their management ; or, guided by liis earlier experiences, he has practised some principle of selection which is not employed by others. There is such a thing, too, as a run of luck, a succession of fortunate cases, and these may be published alone, the preceding and succeeding less favour'^ able results being wittingly, or unVvittingly, suppressed.