Symptoms and their interpretation / by James Mackenzie.

  • Mackenzie, James, 1853-1925.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Symptoms and their interpretation / by James Mackenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the standpoint of an experience gained in the hospital or consulting room; their authors necessarily see the more advanced cases, and do not realise sufficiently the class of patient which the general practitioner has daily to treat. The early stages of disease are, therefore, not fully appreciated, and can never be fully appreciated till the general practitioner takes his position as an investigator. I hope to show in the following pages that there is not only a wide field open to him for exploration rhat can be accomplished by simple • practical methods, but that the results that await his investigation are equal in importance to those acquired by the more recondite methods used in well-equipped hospital wards or laboratories. No one has such opportunities for the observance of the early symptoms in disease, and no one can so readily follow the changes that occur in the advance of disease. The nature of the early symp- toms and the prognosis of disease are amongst the least understood matters in medicine. The views put forth here are the outcome of an inquiry that has extended over twenty years. I have endeavoured to utilise the opportunities of a general practitioner to study the earliest symptoms of disease and the bearing of the disease upon the patient’s future life in times of suffering and of stress, as when affected by other illnesses, by pregnancy, or by hard bodily labour. A great deal of preparatory work had to he done to find out what symptoms were serviceable, and to understand the meaning and mechanism of these symptoms. In this work symptoms that had been overlooked or ignored have received special attention, and the