A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow.

  • Barlow, George Hilaro, 1806-1866.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of the practice of medicine / by George Hilaro Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    theory of medicine must, in fact, still be regarded as an inductive science of itself; though we are at liberty to take for granted the established truths of those to which we have alluded, and in the following pages shall rarely enter into any examination of them. The practice of medicine, is an art, of which this science is the basis. Physiology, or the science which treats of, the offices and functions of the different organs and tissues of the body; and anatomy, wliich describes their form and structui-e, furnish the standard of comparison whereby to estimate disease. Thus, if there is disturbed or difficult respiration, we know that there is functional disease of the lungs or air-passages; but if, by methods to be explained hereafter, we ascertain that the lung has lost its spongy texture, and become solid, we know that there is also structvu:al change. Hence we perceive, that, as in the study of the healthy body there are two branches of knowledge, anatomy and physiology, of which the former is subsidiary to tlie latter; so also, in the study of the system under disease, we have the morbid, or pathological, anatomy, and, pathology, which bear the same rela- tion to each other as do the two first mentioned. They are, indeed, often confounded; and this confusion leads to much practical misapprehension. Pathological anatomy treats only of form and structure, and is perhaps hardly to be called a science ; whereas, pathology, or the knowledge of the laws of structural and functional change, is, in the highest sense ot the word, an inductive science ; a large proportion of the materials for the induction being furnished by pathological anatomy; but, of which the general laws could no more have been inferred from pathological anatomy alone, than could the idea of digestion have been suggested by the simple contemplation of a stomach. Disease has been described as—a deviation of the system, or any part of it, from its normal anatomical and physiological con- dition- but the human frame is exposed to various agencies- which tend to disturb that condition, and these are termed causes of disease-not that we are able, in eveiy case, to assign the cause: for this may have been too remote in its operation, or too subtle in its character to be detected by our investigations ; and therefore disease is sometimes said to be of a spontaneous or idiopathic character, though this is but a form of coufessmg our ignorance of its origin. , , f a;^ There are, however, some generally admitted causes of dis- ease of which we now proceed, to speak.