Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 55-56. (Budapest, 1970)

TANULMÁNYOK - Mádai Lajos: Semmelweis és a statisztikai tudomány (angol nyelvű közlemény)

Semmelweis rightly recognized one of the basic requirements of statistical research, namely that the phenomenon under examination must be analysed in its development and interrelations, in longer perspective. That is why he paid such great attention to the study of the nearly hundred year long time-sequences of the English and Irish hospitals, and made similar comparisons between the dynamical series of the Paris maternity hospitals and the tendencies of maternity-statistics in Vienna. The analysis of timesequences in monthly breakdown were very important already in the phase of cause-research; they provided an exact explanation on the cause of the disease, in proving the hypothesis of contact infection. The decisive aspect of statistical methodology is to select the essential criteria of the mass of data under examination and their scientific, many-sided arrangement. The scientific value of Semmelweis's statistical conceptions is best proved by his arrangements revealing the regularities in the time-sequences examined. The maternity-statistical data arranged in a varied and oroginal way, the conclusions reached, and his reasoning all reflect his excellent logic. Professor Erna Lesky, the Austrian medical historian, also strongly emphasized that posterity looks up to the force of Semmelweis's logic; his intellectual greatness and originality are best manifested in his way of reasoning. (9) His Aetiology proves that the leading factor in his logical methods was not the speculative and the deductive but the systematization of the facts obtained in an empirical, inductive way. The connection between statistical arrangement and logic — on which Kislégi-Nagy collected many modern examples — manifested itself in originality of Semmelweis. (10) The next table and diagram bring out Semmelweis's masterly arranged data on the years 1784—1848 and show the qualitative changes following the discovery of the cause of puerperal fever. % 1093 765- I f321- j 1734-7622 1023-7032 1st clinic ms-mo mt-me 7340