Probabilities

How can we best know the probable result of operations in the varied and complex conditions in which patients present themselves? It is patent to everyone that if in any case we should fail to determine this point with a reasonable degree of definiteness, we will be operating more or less at random. Such a course of procedure cannot be too strongly condemned. This is perhaps no easy question to solve; indeed, cannot always be correctly solved by the most able among us. But the degree of our knowledge of the cases presented, and the extent and accuracy of our own observations, combined with a just estimate of our own