Manual of pathology containing the symptoms, diagnosis, and morbid characters of diseases. Together with an exposition of the different methods of examination, applicable to affections of the head, chest, and abdomen ... / translated, with notes and additions, by Jones Quain.

  • Martinet, L. (Louis), 1795-1875.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of pathology containing the symptoms, diagnosis, and morbid characters of diseases. Together with an exposition of the different methods of examination, applicable to affections of the head, chest, and abdomen ... / translated, with notes and additions, by Jones Quain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as it is, by hypotheses, and we should possess a suffi cient body of materials to enable us to establish sound general principles. 3. Though clinical studies are necessarily long and laborious, still they should not discourage the young observer; they will amply requite him foi his pains. Let it not, however, be supposed that observation is to be confined to the mere acquisition of facts, it will be of comparatively little value unless directed by re- flection. To observe nature is not enough ; she must be interrogated, if we wish to wrest her secrets from her, and acquire at the same time the means of com- municating to others the result of our researches. 4. The improved means of investigating diseases which have been devised of late years, by rendering the methods of examination more strict and rigorous, have given a very decided impulse to medicine. Pathological Anatomy has raised it to a level with the descriptive sciences, when considered in reference to organic alte- rations, and the “ Auscultation Mediate,” has placed it amongst the physical sciences, so far as the doctrine of symptoms is concerned. Every well informed per- son now admits that the discovery of Laennec has ef- fected for medicine, what Petit and Desault has already done for surgery. For if a catheter, introduced into the bladder, gives an assurance of the existence of a foreign body in that viscus, pectoriloquy is a no less decisive test of the presence of a preternatural excavation in that part of the lung in which it is perceived. 5. But, notwithstanding the advances that have been made in the investigation of diseases, particularly those of the brain and its investments, and those of the chest and digestive organs,—notwithstanding the im- provements that have followed the researches of Laen- nec, Broussais, &c. &c., we cannot deny that many points remain immersed in obscurity, and that several questions of primary importance continue undecided. As, however, it is by observation alone that these and other difficulties can be removed, it cannot fail to he