Selected monographs.

  • New Sydenham Society.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    X PREFACE. health has hccome altered up to this point, by what secpience of phenomena the malady once constituted might pass over into conditions still more grave. This is, in fact, diagnosis and prognosis, that is to say, more than the half of medicine. But if we were hound to restrict ourselves to this rigorous order, medical language would be no longer possible, and it would be necessary to wait indefinitely until science should be constituted in all points. The best thing is, as a new variety offers itself for observation, to give it some name in accordance with the most striking characters, waiting for a future synthesis to suppress these provisional landmarks. This is what I have decided to do, not without some repugnance. I have yielded to the natural instinct which leads us to seek under the brute facts for the interpretation which is most satisfy- ing to the mind. It is hardly necessary to add that, if the future should demonstrate the falsity of my explanations, I hope that I should have enough enlightenment and sincerity not to attach any further importance to theoretical views inevitably more or less incomplete. It always obtains that facts are facts, and that there can be nothing but advantage in grouping them together into a picture.