Thoughts on the value and significance of statistics / by Daniel Noble.

  • Noble, Daniel, 1810-1885.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on the value and significance of statistics / by Daniel Noble. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and the later one to have been a period immediately succeeding the accomplishment of great improvements in these respects. In cir- cumstances of this kind, it may be found that in the first period a high death-rate had been prevalent; and that in the second the mortality had been much reduced. If comparisons of this kind bring out such results, the inference ordinarily drawn is, that the lower death-rate is exclusively attributable to amelioration in the so-called sanitary condition of the district. And yet such an inference very often is a great deal too precipitate. It may have happened, and such a thing sometimes does happen, that the beneficial changes in the physical condition of a neighbourhood have brought to it a better and more provident class of inhabitants, less characterised by thoughtless and early marriages, productive of offspring born but to die. Or it may have been that at the earlier period an exceptionally high mortality had obtained from epidemic or seasonal causes, whilst at the later one these may have ceased to operate; and it is familiar experience, that a reduced death-rate systematically ensues upon the abatement of such intercurrent agencies, quite irrespective of im- provements as to ventilation and cleanliness. At any rate, before decisive conclusions can be established by such statistics, these possible sources of fallacy must be looked to and vigilantly eliminated. But in no department of statistics, probably, are there more sources of fallacy than in Medical Statistics. Cases of disease will sometimes be grouped under one designation that, in regard to intimate nature and curability, have but little in common; and that little very likely accidental rather than essential. Then the comparative sequences of different modes of treatment, as tried upon given numbers, will be shown in statistical tables; the facts dealt with, all the while, being quite devoid of all just comparability. And yet such sequences are often published to the world as scientifically-noted results and consequences. Before a general auditory tike the present, I cannot with propriety engage in any close discussion of this subject, nor yet furnish any