On the nature, treatment and prevention of pulmonary consumption and incidentally of srofula : with a demonstration of the cause of the disease / by Henry M'Cormac.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature, treatment and prevention of pulmonary consumption and incidentally of srofula : with a demonstration of the cause of the disease / by Henry M'Cormac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    however but one out of many who in the same profes- sion have become victims to consumption. I cannot entirely agree with Bacon, that medicine lies wholly in observation, ars raedica tota in observationibus. It must be observation doubtless, but also observation conjoined wnth rational inference. If observation alone had sufficed, we should not still have occasion to witness the insatiate ravages of phthisis, not only among the poor and miserable, but also among the intelligent, the wealthy, and the refined. Consumption, with all its frightful train, is simply, and trul}', and only, a violation of the physical laws of our being. Scrofula, observes Baudeloque, commonly, if not always, is the result of an infraction of some hygienic law, tres souvent pour ne pas dire toujours, la maladie scrophulcuse est I'elFet d'une infraction prolongee aux loix de I'hygiene. Here, as in other instances, medical men must lead the way to the better appreciation of those laws. Medicine indeed, must be studied by the light of experience, but we have also to add the light shed by a yet loftier science, the science which co-ordinates not merely medical phi- osophy, but the universal principles of all philosophy. The world desires to be informed on all points, des clartes de tout. It wiU require of medical men, as of others, a reason for the faith that is in them. Nature indeed is sparing in causes, but she is exuberant in results. If Van Oven and Flourens, in their recent works on human longevity, be correct in estimating the natural duration of man's life at one hundred years, un siecle dc vie ordinaire, in the words of Flourens,