THE VALUE OF OLD STATISTICS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 301, 20 December 1937, Page 6

THE VALUE OF OLD STATISTICS

■JHE danger of relying upon out-of-date statistics is well illustrated by a passage from a recently published book entitled “Bushveld Doctor,” by C. Louis Leipoldt (Cape). Twenty-two years ago this doctor left London to become Medical Inspector of Schools in the Transvaal. Before he left London the only available statistics were contained in the General Census Report for 1911 and this report “led one to believe that, notwithstanding the three war years of 1899-1902, that province was either blessed with an astounding recuperative capability, or that its juvenile population was extraordinarily sound and vigorous. Taking the age-groups of seven to fifteen years, there were only 19 blind, 54 imbecile and feeble-minded, 58 deaf and dumb, 35 epileptic, 40 paralytic, and 162 deformed children! These figures were so astonishing that one could not accept them as reliable indices of the extent of juvenile invalidity in the province. I may say at once that my first year’s experience showed that they were an absurd under-estimation of the extent and severity of juvenile invalidity in the schools. That first year’s inspection gave a percentage of 59 defective children for all schools examined ’’