Correspondence between Dr. Simpson, Dr. Ramsbotham and Dr. Lee in relation to uterine hæmorrhage from placental presentation.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence between Dr. Simpson, Dr. Ramsbotham and Dr. Lee in relation to uterine hæmorrhage from placental presentation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/8
    From the London Medical Gazette, October 17, 1845. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN DR. SIMPSON, DR. RAMSBOTHAM, AND DR. LEE, IN RELATION TO UTERINE HAEMORRHAGE FROM PLACENTAL PRESENTATION. Note by Dr, Simpson. It has already been shown (see Ga¬ zette for October 10) that Dr. Lee, while anxious to criticise others for statistical mistakes regarding placental presentations, has himself committed and published no small variety of nu¬ merical errors respecting the limited portion of placental cases that have occurred in his own practice. Thus, first, in his Clinical Midwifery, he states his recorded cases as 35 instead of 36; secondly, in one part of his “ Lectures,” he states the cases there tabulated as 36 instead of 38 ; thirdly, in the Medical Gazette for Sept. 19, the sum total of his placental cases should be 44 instead of 43 ; fourthly, in the Gazette of last week, the ulti¬ mate case should be numbered 46, in¬ stead of 45 ; fifthly, all the eight num¬ bers attached to his table of eight cases, in the Gazette for Sept. 19, are indi¬ vidually wrong; sixthly, among his placental cases, in his Clinical Mid¬ wifery, he has omitted any case under No. 290; seventhly, out of exactly the same 36 cases, he makes in his Clinical Midwifery 11, and in his Lectures 13, be complicated with rigidity of the os uteri, &c. These errors, however, are trivial in degree compared with a strange and unfortunate statistical mistake which Dr. Lee has committed in the last week’s Gazette.* He has there published the results of 89 cases of placental presenta¬ tion that have occurred in the practice of the respected Dr. Merriman. In a table which Dr. Lee gives of these cases, he makes Dr. Merriman lose 67 mothers out of the 89, or about 3 in 4; and save 22, or 1 in 4. The opposite, how¬ ever, must evidently be the truth—-that 22 of the mothers died, or 1 in 4; while 67 recovered, or 3 in 4.* These and the various other numeri¬ cal inaccuracies which Dr. Lee is well known to have published in regard to the placental cases of other authors, will, it is hoped, render him in future a more charitable critic on this subject, seeing he is himself so very far from being infallible. No. 1.—Letter from Dr. Simpson to Dr. Ramsbotham. Stafford House, London, Sept. 20,1845. My dear sir,—-I have had sent after me to London a collection of letters which had come to Edinburgh after my depar¬ ture. Amongst them I find onef from you in reference to the report which I have given (in the March Number of the Edinburgh Monthly Journal) of the maternal mortality amongst the pa¬ tients of the Royal Maternal Charity in cases of unavoidable haemorrhage. I hasten to assure you that it gives me much pain to think that any uninten¬ tional mistake of mine should have * See Correspondence, p. 1080. The error was in Dr. Merriman’s manuscript, from which the table was printed.—Ed. Gaz. t The tenor of Dr. Ramsbotham’s letter was of the same nature as that of his two notes to Dr. Lee, published(p. 896) in the Medical Gazette for 19th September; and, in the same way, stated the number of maternal deaths at the Maternity Charity from placental presentations to be 15 only out of 50 cases; while the number of chil¬ dren lost was 32. lie mentioned, also, as in his notes to Dr. Lee, that the 44 cases of unavoidable haemorrhage spoken of in his work on Obstetric Medicine, were all cases of partial presentation of the placenta. To save repetition, Dr. Ramsbotham’s first letter is not given. The letter bearing upon the subject will be found at p. 12. * Page 1021.