Laennec, his life, labours, and influence in medicine : being the address in medicine delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Cork, August, 1879 / by Alfred Hudson.

  • Hudson, Alfred, 1808-1880.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Laennec, his life, labours, and influence in medicine : being the address in medicine delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Cork, August, 1879 / by Alfred Hudson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    “For the first time almost in the history of medical inquiry, he insists on examining every organ, as well as the one suspected to be chiefly implicated ; not only so, he marshals with the ut- most care from his own experience and that of his predecessors, all the instances in which the symptoms have existed apart from the lesion, or the lesion apart from the symptoms. He dis- cusses each of these instances with severe exact- ness in the interest of truth, and only after an exhaustive investigation will he allow the infe- rence either that the organ referred to is, or is not, the seat of the disease. “ And in like manner in dealing with causes : a group of symptoms may be caused by certain or ganic changes—it may be even probable that it is so—but, according to Morgagni’s method, we must first inquire into all the lesions of organs which occur in connexion with such symptoms : in the second place, we must know if such lesions ever occur, or occur without the symptoms ; and, again, if such symptoms can be attributed in any cases to other causes in the absence of such lesion.” Did time permit, I would fain add to Dr. Gairdner’s illustrations some examples of the glimpses of facts pointing to future observations and discoveries which are scattered through the portion of Morgagni’s work relating to Thoracic diseases. Such are his remarks on the connexion between disordered states of the nervous sys-