Introduction to medical biometry and statistics / by Raymond Pearl.

  • Raymond Pearl
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Introduction to medical biometry and statistics / by Raymond Pearl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    has been very ably discussed by Theodore Merz in the second vol- ume of his History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, and we cannot do better than follow his development of the matter. Speaking of the origin of statistics, Merz says (loc. cit., pp. 554, 555): “That which everywhere oppresses the practical man is the greater number of things and events which pass ceaselessly before him, and the flow of which he cannot arrest. What he requires is the grasp of large numbers. The suc- cessful scientific explorer has always been the man who could single out some special thing for minute and detailed investigation, who could retire with one definite object, with one fixed problem into his study or laboratory and there fathom and unravel its intricacies, rising by induction or divination to some rapid generalization which allowed him to establish what is termed a law of general aspect from which he could view the whole or a large part of nature. The sci- entific genius can ‘stay the moment fleeting’; he can say to the object of his choice, ‘Ah, linger still, thou art so fair’; he can fix and keep the star in the focus of his telescope, or protect the delicate fiber and nerve of a decaying organism from succumbing to the rapid disintegration of organic change. The practical man cannot do this; he is always and everywhere met by the crowd of facts, by the relentlessly hurrying stream of events. What he requires is grasp of num- bers, leaving to the professional man the knowledge of detail. Thus has arisen the science of large numbers or statistics, and the many methods of which it is possessed.” Further on the same author says of the origin of the science of probability (loc. cit., pp. 567, 568): “The necessity of having recourse to elaborate countings, to registrations of births, deaths, and marriages, to lists of exports and imports, to records of con- sumption and production of foodstuffs and many other items, forced upon those who were intrusted with the gathering and using of these data the observation that all such knowledge is incomplete and inaccurate. Owing to the variability, within certain limits, of recurring events and the errors of counting and regis- tration, we have to content ourselves always with approximation instead of certainty. Error bulks very largely in all statistics, and vitiates them; and as regards coming events, our minds are in a state of expectation rather than of assurance. But events can be more or less probable, errors can be greater or smaller, cumulative or compensatory, and our expectations may be well- or ill-founded. And so there has arisen the science of Probabilities and of Chances, and the Theory of Error, two subjects intimately interwoven. The former arose in the seventeenth century out of the frivolous or vicious practice of betting and gambling, whilst the latter was founded when astronomical observations accumulated, and the question presented itself how to combine them so as to arrive at the most reliable result.” Now from these two quotations, which may certainly be con- sidered as fairly stating the case, it is apparent that those circum-
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