178 Report on Calculous Affectwns. 



as there they will ever assuredly find judges both attentive and 

 competent. 



Medicine, in its extended signification, the appropriate labours 

 of which are difficult, tedious, without eclat, and without glory, 

 has too often sought to ally itself with the prevailing popular 

 opinions of the day. Thus at the present time there is an at- 

 tempt to apply statistics to a majority of the general questions 

 of therapeutics. But in this case statistics are nothing else in 

 truth but an application of the calculation of probabilities. In 

 statistics, in other words, the different attempts to appreciate 

 facts numerically, the first beyond all other cares should be to 

 lose sight of man considered individually, and to regard him on- 

 ly as a fraction of his kind. He must be deprived of his indi- 

 viduality, that we may arrive at the elimination of all that this 

 individuality may accidentally introduce into the question. In 

 practical medicine, on the other hand, the problem is always in- 

 dividual, and the facts present themselves for solution only one 

 by one. The physician has always to do solely with the perso- 

 nality of his patient, with a single individual with all his idio- 

 syncrasies. For him generalities usually have nothing to do with 

 the question. 



The commissioners then point out a number of minute cir- 

 cumstances, necessarily connected with medicine, which renders 

 the application of its facts to the doctrine of probability extreme- 

 ly difficult, if not impossible, for any practical result. They 

 conclude: — Calculation, in truth, cannot reach the minute de- 

 tails of combinations which are so variable, when they are mul- 

 tiplied and complicated beyond a certain point. When the ce- 

 lebrated Morgagni, with all the power of his genius, alike able 

 to collect facts, and to deduce from them the most judicious and 

 just general conclusions, remarked, Non nicmerandce sed per* 

 pendend^ observationes,—^acts are not to be counted but weigJir 

 ed^ — he energetically expressed one of the most important condi- 

 tions of the doctrine of probability as applied to practical medi- 

 cine. 



After these reflections the reporters add, We now hasten to 

 bestow upon M. Civiale that tribute of justice and praise which 

 be has already often merited and obtained in the Academie deg 

 Sciences. We have only now to add, that this new work will 



