There has been a growing recognition of the importance of mathematical and statistical methods in the history of medicine, particularly in those areas where statistical methods are a sine qua non such as epidemiology and randomised clinical trials. Despite this expanding scholarly interest, the development of the mathematical and statistical technologies in the biological sciences has not been examined systematically. This collection of essays aims to provide a broader overview of this field, and to explore the use of these with the use of these quantitative technologies in medical and clinical cultures from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
Table of contents:
Contributors
Eileen MAGNELLO and Anne HARDY: Preface
Philip KREAGER: Death and Method: The Rhetorical Space of Seventeenth-Century Vital Measurement
Andrea RUSNOCK: 'The Merchant's Logick': Numerical Debates over Smallpox Inoculation in Eighteenth-Century England
Edward HIGGS: The Annual Report of the Registrar General, 1839-1920: A Textual History
John SENIOR: Metrological Awakenings: Rationalising the Body Electric in Nineteenth-Century Medicine
Eileen MAGNELLO: The Introduction of Mathematical Statistics into Medical Research: The Roles of Karl Pearson, Major Greenwood and Austin Bradford Hill
J. ROSSER MATTHEWS: Almroth Wright, Vaccine Therapy and British Biometrics: Disciplinary Expertise versus Statistical Objectivity
Index
Table of contents:
Contributors
Eileen MAGNELLO and Anne HARDY: Preface
Philip KREAGER: Death and Method: The Rhetorical Space of Seventeenth-Century Vital Measurement
Andrea RUSNOCK: 'The Merchant's Logick': Numerical Debates over Smallpox Inoculation in Eighteenth-Century England
Edward HIGGS: The Annual Report of the Registrar General, 1839-1920: A Textual History
John SENIOR: Metrological Awakenings: Rationalising the Body Electric in Nineteenth-Century Medicine
Eileen MAGNELLO: The Introduction of Mathematical Statistics into Medical Research: The Roles of Karl Pearson, Major Greenwood and Austin Bradford Hill
J. ROSSER MATTHEWS: Almroth Wright, Vaccine Therapy and British Biometrics: Disciplinary Expertise versus Statistical Objectivity
Index