A treatise on the nervous diseases of women ; comprising an inquiry into the nature, causes, and treatment of spinal and hysterical disorders / By Thomas Laycock, M.D.

  • Laycock, Thomas, 1812-1876.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the nervous diseases of women ; comprising an inquiry into the nature, causes, and treatment of spinal and hysterical disorders / By Thomas Laycock, M.D. 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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    Scientific medicine has a much wider range of immediate practical usefuhiess and prospective benefit than this mere practical medicine. Its rules are less applicable to individual diseases^ than to the infinite variety of individual cases. It gladly makes use of empiricism; but it studies symptoms to demonstrate their causes, and relieves the former by removing the latter, or counteracting their efiects. And v^^hen science fails to guide, it is still able to apply empirical knowledge with precision and effect. Nothing can be more dignified and ennobling than the science and practice of Medicine combined. The science is a concentration of human knowledge on the study of man ; the practice, a daily going about to do him good. However the scientific physician enlarges the sphere of his inquiries, the good of man is his great object,—the end of all his labours being to prevent moral and corporeal disease, to alleviate pain, to restore health. He turns his attention to the mutual action of mind and matter, that metaphysics may become a tangible and practical science, applicable to the moral infirmities of mankind. He makes general physiology and the physical sciences subservient to the advancement of human physiology, that human physiology may extend the powers and range of medicine. To medical practitioners of this class, the daily routine of their professional labours can never be what Dr. Samuel Johnson defined it— A melan- choly attendance on misery; a mean submission to peevish- ness ; and a continual interruption of pleasure. They feel, it is true, that they have the melancholy privilege of studying man dissected by infirmity and anguish ; but also that they are thus enabled the better to perform their duty, and to aid him in the time of his distress. And what can be less melancholy, less mean, more pleasurable, nay, more godlike, than this ? At the risk of being charged with presumption, I avow that