Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan.

  • Duncan, J. Matthews (James Matthews), 1826-1890.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    170/204 (page 154)
    it is well worth while to remark that the data of an hospital with well-kept records are far more valuable than those of home practice. If the hospital be large enough, its unmixed data, being sufficient alone, have a unity that cannot exist in a mass of little scraps of private practice sewed together to make a whole for fit comparison. Further, the whole of the hospital's results are to be got. A private practitioner may not be able to give the whole even of his small experience. The bad times of the hospital are recorded as well as the good. The private practitioner, who has had bad times in practice, has an indisputable tendency and an inalienable right to maintain reticence regarding them. The practitioner with fine results is not unlikely to give them to the world, whether he be asked to do so or not. The practitioner with bad results is not un- likely to keep them to himself, even when asked by a friend to give them up. The results of the home practice of midwifery may be arrived at in several ways. I shall describe them. They are all indirect and inexact when compared with the scrutiny of hospital books. First:—A lower limit can be got; that is, a figure which certainly indicates a less mortality than the real one. The value of this is easily shown; for, if an author make the mortality of his own practice, or of Ipng-in generally, under the lower limit, then it is certain that his own practice has been erroneously given, or is quite exceptional, or that his estimate of the mortality of lying-in generally is erroneous.