Clinical observations on functional nervous disorders / by C. Handfield Jones.

  • Jones, C. Handfield (Charles Handfield), 1819-1890.
Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical observations on functional nervous disorders / by C. Handfield Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    PREFACE. This work professes to contain little more than a truthful record of experience and an endeavour to view that experience in the light of scientific research. Though I have cast it in the form of a trea- tise on nervous disorders, I regard it, of course, as a mere and very imperfect contribution to the literature of so great a subject. I have only touched on those points which seemed to me to have most bearing on practice, but have endeavored as far as possible to indi- cate general principles both in pathology and treatment. I am not without hope that the reviewing of a number of cognate affections may be of advantage to the reader, as showing how close a family resemblance prevails among them, and how the phenomena of one often elucidate those of another disorder. I have necessarily been led to set much value on the results of treatment as indications of the essential nature of disease, in which I am supported by no less a name than Gooch, and this will explain why 1 have recorded few cases except those in which some definite conclusion can be drawn from the actions of remedies. Having myself generally derived most profit from the records of cases, I have used this method of illustra- tion freely, and I trust not unprofitably. There is this value in authentic histories of disease that they represent actual occurrences, and are always available for any future inquirer as evidence of the writer's views, which can hardly be said of abstract descriptions. I do not think it so necessary, as some consider it, to be accurately acquainted with the natural history of disease, for the reason that I believe it impossible in most cases to ascertain it. The attempt recently made by Flint to determine the duration of acute rheuma- tism, no real treatment being adopted, gives in thirteen cases the sufficiently wide variation of from twelve to fifty-six days. I believe with most diseases except the exanthemata it would be nearly the same. In fact I am more and more convinced that we ought not to