A treatise on the principles and practice of medicine : designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine / by Austin Flint.

  • Austin Flint I
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the principles and practice of medicine : designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine / by Austin Flint. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    writer and teacher. While sentiments of affection and veneration have led the writer to take the responsibility of recording this history here, they have not carried him beyond the limits of accurate statement, or, he hopes, those of propriety and delicacy. In the Preface to the fifth edition the author tenders his thanks to the present publishers for a continuance of the courtesy and kindness which rendered most agreeable his relations, for a quarter of a century, with their predecessors, Blanchard & Lea and Henry C. Lea. Judging by the popu- lar criterion of commercial success, the publishers can certainly testily to the appreciation, on the part of the profession, of the completeness with which each one of the preceding five editions has been made to represent the actual condition of medical knowledge at the time of its publication ; and it may be safely asserted that during the last twenty years no systematic work on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, printed in the English language, has been more extensively circulated and read, and lias had a greater influence on the practice of English-speaking physicians, than has the present treatise. It is also safe to say that the work is now more carefully and thoroughly revised and rewritten, and is jn'esented in a better scientific and literary form, than any one of the former editions. While it is unnecessary to specify all of the changes which have been made in the Sixth Edition, it may not be out of place to indicate some that are important as tending to perfect its symmetry and to bring the matter closely up to the existing state of knowledge in the department of Practical Medicine. The most important of these additions and alterations are the following: Among the entirely new articles, special attention may be called to the following: Infectious Tumors; Syphilitic Disease of the Lungs; Cerebral Syphilis; General Considerations relating to Inflammatory and Structural Diseases of the Spinal Cord ; Spastic Cerebral Paralysis of Children ; Hered- itary Ataxia ; Myxoedema; Multiple Neuritis; General Pathology of Fever; and Milk Sickness. In addition to these new features, many articles have been entirely rewritten; and in nearly every article changes and additions, some of them very important, have been made. In certain parts of the work, especially in Section IV., articles have been rearranged so as to follow each other in a more rational and logical sequence than in former editions. As already stated, the Sixth Edition contains a full consideration of recent discoveries concerning the bacterial origin of various infectious diseases, as will be rendered evident by a consultation of the article on Vegetable Para- sites in the chapter on Etiology, and articles in the chapters treating of Tuberculosis, Typhoid Fever, Cholera, etc. Five diagrammatic engravings have been introduced, in connection with the nervous system, with the view of illustrating the descriptions involved in treating of the topical diagnosis of cerebral and spinal diseases. By careful condensation and rearrangement and by the rigid omission of obsolete matter the many additions contained in this edition have been accommodated without an increase in the number of pages, but in
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