Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc / By J.Y. Simpson.

  • James Young Simpson
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anaesthesia, or the employment of chloroform and ether in surgery, midwifery, etc / By J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I shall heres take the liberty of premising a few observations upon this mode of inquiry. I have already stated, that the great and leading principle upon which all statistical inquiry is grounded, consists in the fact, that in unities or entities of a doubtful chance, while the result, or event, in individual instances, is ever variable and uncertain, the result, or event, when calculated from, or upon masses of instances, becomes comparatively certain and in- variable. I shall show the truth of this abstract remark, in the form of illustrations, of a few of the fundamental principles or propositions upon which the doctrine of medical statistics is founded, and this more especially with a view to the bearings and important advantages of the statistical or numerical method of inquiry as applied to questions in surgery. First Proprosttion.— The absolute number of deaths from all causes, in a given time, in a given population, is always nearly the same. The probability of life or death to individuals within the limits of a given period, is proverbially uncertain. Nothing is more uncertain, for instance, than the number of individuals that will die in the currency of a single year in any particular family, street, or village in England and Wales. But nothing could be more certain than, ceteris paribus, the number that will die during the currency of a single year in the whole of England and Wales. Estimating, for instance, as we do in all modes of reasoning and philosophizing, from the experience of the past what will be the experience of the future under similar circumstances, we may state beforehand as certain, that in 1845 (the results of which have not yet been published) the total number of deaths in England and Wales amounted to about 350,000. For the returns of the Registrar-General for England and Wales bave now been collected and published for seven years,—viz., from 1838 to 1844 inclusive, and the total numbers that died during each of these years were fixed and determi- nate, to the extent shown in the following table :— No. I.— Table of Absolute number of Deaths in England and Wales, and of the per-centage of deaths among the whole popula- tion during Seven successive years, from 1838 to 1844 inclusive. Year. Absolute Number of |Per-centage of Deaths among Deaths. the Population. 1838 342,547 2:2 in 100 1839 338,979 21 in 100 1840 359,634 2:2 in 100 1841 343,847 2-1 in 100 1842 349,519 2-1 in 100 1843 346,446 2:1 in 100 1844 356,950 2-1 in 100
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