Essays and papers on some fallacies of statistics concerning life and death, health and disease : with suggestions towards an improved system of registration / by Henry W. Rumsey.

  • Henry Wyldbore Rumsey
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays and papers on some fallacies of statistics concerning life and death, health and disease : with suggestions towards an improved system of registration / by Henry W. Rumsey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    curiously exemplified by the manner in which a well-intended advance of the board of guardians was received by the Asso- ciation. The board had passed a formal resolution request- ing the medical officers of the union to make returns of the cases coming under their charge for the use of the Association. But the secretaries of the latter body felt it incumbent on them at once publicly to disclaim the necessity for any ad- ministrative pressure on officers who were already assisting heartily, and deprecated any approach to a compulsory measure, which would only annoy the contributors by imply- ing a distrust in their willingness to supply the required information. The aid of the board was therefore declined. (4.) It is well to observe, in passing, the much greater quantity and smaller intensity of the sickness relieved at the public cost in London, as compared with that reported in the northern districts. The Manchester Association, being regularly supplied with monthly returns from Marylebone, published tables and charts showing the relative amounts and fluctuations of various diseases in the two places. Now, though the population of Manchester and Salford is to that of Marylebone as 2-4, to 1, the new cases of sickness registered in the latter generally, and sometimes very considerably, exceed those returned by the former.! (5.) The learned authors of the Manchester reports assume | a tolerably constant relation of sickness to mortality, and therefore suppose that this disproportion may be accounted for, either by the greater facilities which exist in London for obtaining gratuitous medical relief, or by the greater ex- 1 “The population of St. Marylebone, by the last census, is 161,609 ; that of Manchester and Salford, 390,815; yet the number of new cases of disease attended every month in St. Marylebone exceeds in the average those attended in Manchester by more than 1,600.’ [Analysis of Weekly Returns, page 6, Manchester Report, 1862.] In the quarter ending June 25, 1864, Marylebone had slightly the advantage, the monthly average there being 5,525, and in Manchester 6,030,
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