Metodología bioestadística para médicos y oficiales sanitarios

Abstract

We analyze the book by D. Marcelino Pascua Martínez (1897- 1977), Biostatistics Methodology for Medical and Sanitary Officers. The work was published by Paz Montalvo in 1965. His author represents the culmination of the form of thinking of the Spanish epidemiologists that from the 19th century had been concerned about the use of the statistical method in the resolution of sanitary problems. The book approached is the final legacy of the key man in that trend of thought. The text is divised in to seven chapters, two appendixes and four statistical tables. The set of technical, demographic, mathema- tical statistics and of studies design applied to the sanitary investigation contained in this text is not usual in the Biostatistics handbooks, not only at that time, but also nowadays. The book presents the contents of Statistics, always with great quantity of examples of the sanitary area. The first part is devoted to the Demografic Sanitary, where it is pioneer. The rest of the topics by chapters are: Descriptive statistics, correlation, probability theory, samples and inference, the Chi-square distribution, the analysis of variance and a series of appendixes on curves adjustment, contrasts in the biological trials. The text ends with the presentation of the statistics tables but customary.