Remarks, preliminary to the exhibition of Dr. Phelps' practically established Arcanum.

Date:
[1828?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks, preliminary to the exhibition of Dr. Phelps' practically established Arcanum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    liididru, without principle, is an bumble art, and a degrading occupation.—Rush. REMARKS, PRELIMINARY TO THE EXHIBITION OF DR. PHEL.PS' PRACTICALLY ESTABLISHED A R C A N U Hb who lias, for many years, exclusively directed his mind to the investigation of a particular and favourite science, with reluctance would persuade himself, that his pow- . ever feeble, had been employed in vain, since the faintest rays, when collected into a focus, can produce some degree of illumination. The science of medicine is not ! upon the results of accident, nor is its temple adorned with the oblations of the empiric The avenues to this edifice are open to all who strive to strew with i lie thorny ways of truth. Knowledge and the intellectual faculties are, in the mind of an enlightened physician, in a constant state of action and reaction, and k cording to an immutable law of nature, increase the energy of the thinking principle. I might, in tins place, paint, in the glowing and never-fading colours of truth, the great intellectual dignity of our art, and enumerate the high and lofty cessary to the successful and honourable pursuit of the practice of Physic. But in this I have long since been anticipated by the eloquence of a Rush, and other immortal Sydenhanis of our country. It only remains for me, therefore, to make a few observations immediately connected with my object. The whole human •ystem is compounded of minor systems of tissues and organs, whose natural and animal functions, in health, tend to one common felicity. The general health of tho body, therefore, depends upon the harmony of these lesser systems, constituting tha whole ; and any deviation from this concert of actions is denominated disease, which ii at first local, and becoming general in proportion to the violence of the cause, tho it ibility and predisposition of the system to its action ; and which, if not timely arrested by the countervailing efforts of nature or art, puts an end to the life of the part, or the whole. If I were to assert, as does a certain German philosopher, that the whole human body is nothing but a crystal, the reader might, in truth, suppose me in error; but if I were to maintain that A mummy is a mere hydrate of humanity, he nught also suppose me equally erroneous, until he informed himself to the contrary. n a thorough knowledge of the anatomy of the human body, no man can con- scientiously attempt to practise the healing art, or prescribe remedies for disease, have induced mo to prefer the anatomical to the mere symptomatica! description of diseases. The former method has the advantage of brevity, perspicuity lainty. It is, for example, much easier to describe tubercles in the lungs, and he signs of them, than to define the disease by the external symptoms only, and to arrange its varieties according to their causes. Emphysema of the lungs consists in an alteration of parts, which can bo described in a few words, and of which the signs cJn •*■ ■ I ; while in studying asthma, according to the ancient method rtaining the character of this disease, we should be obliged to write a volume we could arrivo at any thing positive. It will, perhaps, be ob- ih al method has the disadvantage of founding its species on dis- rs of which can only be obtained after death : hut this rits reflation. We might as well say, that it is useless for lu to make any distinction between dislocation of the femur, or arm-bone, and