Volume 1

Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton.

  • Hirsch, August, 1817-1894.
Date:
1883-1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    AUTHOR’S PREPACE. In laying down, now twenty-five years ago, a plan to be followed in the preparation of a Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology, I was fully aware of the difficulties that attended both the execu- tion of the work and the introduction of it to the professional public; and, in the preface which I issued with the first part of the book, I spoke of these diffi- culties plainly and without reserve. The task that I had imposed on myself was not merely to collect and reduce to order an almost unmanageable heap of materials—for the most part a rudis indiges- taque moles—and to test critically their authenticity and fitness; but it more particularly involved the founding according to a design, and the building up according to a system, of a discipline which had been the subject of but little labour before, and had still to make good its right to a place among the Medical Sciences. I he misgivings which these difficulties gave rise to in me as I approached the execution of my task proved to be only too well justified, in one direction at least, as the work proceeded. Notwithstanding the quantity of material that I had collected, there were considerable gaps which it did not cover; and, more-