Observations and essays on the statistics of insanity; including an inquiry into the causes influencing the results of treatment in establishments for the insane: to which are added The statistics of the Retreat, near York / [John Thurnam].

  • Thurnam, John, 1810-1873
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations and essays on the statistics of insanity; including an inquiry into the causes influencing the results of treatment in establishments for the insane: to which are added The statistics of the Retreat, near York / [John Thurnam]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    observer and the analyst, such numerical statements, re- ceived as provisional approximations, and used only as such, may serve to guide our steps, where even an imperfect light would otherwise be denied us. The greater value to the observer, as well as to the reader, of facts of whatever kind, even if more or less ambiguous, carefully registered and expressed in numbers, as compared with the same facts loosely registered in the memory, and still more loosely ex- pressed in general terms, ever varying with the varying tem- perament of the observer, will hardly be denied. Taken for their real value, the statistics of insanity will not be unduly depreciated on the one hand, nor unduly exalted on the other. Though the inferences deduced from them furnish us with no absolute test of the character of different establish- ments, they still supply us with the only test within our reach which, however unintended, is not obviously lable to per- version and exaggeration, from the passions and predilections of those who furnish it. Meagre and partial numerical state- ments have, however, little value. The statistics of asylums, to be useful, should be extended and varied; and should afford us the opportunity of testing one numerical statement by another, and so enable us to avoid hasty and erroneous inferences. It is thus that statistical reports will command that confidence in their accuracy, which can alone make them really valuable. Whilst I contend for the utility, present and prospective, of carefully reported numerical statements of the results ob- tained in asylums and hospitals for the insane, I freely admit that the way in which tables are frequently presented in re- ports, as proofs of certain conclusions, is empirical and un- sound. ‘The statistical returns form only a part of the data necessary for a right comparison of the results obtained in different establishments; and the circumstances which re- main unfigured would doubtless, if obtained, in many in-