A treatise on gout / Sir Dyce Duckworth.

  • Duckworth, Dyce, Sir, 1840-1928.
Date:
[1889]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on gout / Sir Dyce Duckworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Latham, of Cambridge, Dr. Ord, and many others, I am also under obligation. The chapters on Treatment have been expanded, to greater proportion than is common in treatises of this kind. I offer no apology for this, inasmuch as I conceive the duty of the Physician to consist as much in averting disease and treating his patient, as in discovering the nature of his maladies. Few can deny that studies in pathogeny, morbid anatomy, and diagnosis have of late years rather overridden those in practical thera- peutics. Progress is demanded in all, and not in one only; but it may be affirmed that the tendency in modern times is rather in the direction of a helpless expectancy than in a strenuous effort to apply, for the patient's comfort, the clinical art in treatment, an art which was, with some exceptions, in many ways better practised half a century ago. I am disposed, indeed, to think that Medicine as an Art is now in some danger of being lost amidst futile efforts to exalt it into an exact Science. I main- tain that a great Physician is, and must be, a great Artist. I must, further, acknowledge various kinds of help afforded me by Mr. D'Arcy Power in our Hospital Museum, and state that I have had the advantage of the skill of Mr. Mark, and of my present senior house-physician, Dr. Wynne, in illustrating this volume, their original drawings having been admirably engraved by Mr. Danielsson. In the preface to his famous Tradatus de Podagra, addressed by Sydenham two hundred and six years ago to the most learned Dr. Short, he remarked :— It is my nature to think where others read ; to ask less whether the world agrees with me than whether I agree with the truth ; and to hold cheap the rumour and applause of the multitude. . . . Why should I be anxious about the judgment of others ? Such words are rarely to be found in any modern preface, but they well-illustrate the moral elevation of that most eminent man, and convey a lesson which much needs to be learned by authors in our own time. I could wish to repeat every word of it in respect of this present effort;