The anti-toxin treatment of diphtheria : in theory and practice / by Walter R. Hadwen.

  • Walter Hadwen
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anti-toxin treatment of diphtheria : in theory and practice / by Walter R. Hadwen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Sir,—Dr. Hadwen, in your last issue, had recourse to a very typical ruse with regard to the figures I quoted on the 18th ult. Because the figures were in columns he imagines your readers will be satisfied if he subtracts the bottom from the top on each side to get a comparison of results. He carefully subtracts 12°01 from 22°55, which was an anti-toxin year, whereas if he had been fair he should have subtracted it from 29°64, which was the year before anti-toxin treatment came in ; this would have given him 17°63, not 10°54. This was artifice number one. His next is equally futile. In his previous letter he says : ‘ Anti-toxin drops in in the middle of a great downward statistical curve.”’ In reply, I said from the figures quoted I failed to see that curve, so he kindly assists me by quoting the anti-toxin year figures to support his pre-anti-toxin year’s assertion. If Dr. Hadwen will plot a curve from 1891 till 1894 he will find there is no downward movement, whereas from 1895 onwards there is a continuous drop, but let him remember that it is due to anti-toxin treatment, or, at least, let him be fair and not “ juggle ”’ with the figures. My reply to his attempts to explain away the sudden rise in death-rate in Berlin, when anti-toxin ran short, by the various possibilities he suggests is: “* Pigs might fly, but they are rather unlikely birds.’””—Yours faithfully, MEDIcO. September 1, 1906. ee en ee Sir,—‘‘ Medico ”’ still avoids compliance with my repeated request to “ prove the assertions he has made, and explain the facts I have adduced.”’ He now accuses me of having “had recourse to a very typical ruse ie and forthwith professes “to fully show up my methods.” I can quite believe your correspondent to be perfectly honest in supposing that I have “juggled the figures,” owing to the fact that he has copied his statistics from the work of another writer and does not himself understand their purport. In the first place, let me point out that statistics are value- less unless they are built upon a reliable basis. The real force of my arguments has been to show that the basis of the Metro- politan Asylums Board’s figures is unreliable, and any deduc- tions therefrom are, in consequence, misleading, My arguments in support of my contention “ Medico ” declines to face, but yet wants to draw his own conclusions in his own way from the figures themselves, before he has substantiated their claim to recognition,
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