An address to medical and surgical pupils, on the studies and duties of their profession; to which is appended, a case of caesarean operation / by James Barlow.

  • Barlow, James.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address to medical and surgical pupils, on the studies and duties of their profession; to which is appended, a case of caesarean operation / by James Barlow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/120 (page 19)
    must not forget that we are separating in idea only, and in words, what in nature is essentially one. In Anatomy, we study the structure in repose; in Physiology, in action. The function is not one thing, and the organ another, hut the function, is the organ itself in action. Hence it is obvious that Anatomy and Physiology, struc¬ ture and function should be studied together, lest, in considering the function apart from the structure, we should lose ourselves in meta¬ physical abstractions. Hence arises the important distinction between Anatomy and Physiology; for example, in disease of the lungs, we have as the consequence of disturbed function, all the painful effects of impeded respiration, and which at once point to the lungs as their seat; but, in addition, there are other symptoms which we may trace to some particular tissue, as their more immediate seat, and it is in these fluctuating symptoms, more particularly, that we mark out the origin, course, and probable termination of the disease, and the remedy best adapted to its cure. Hence the knowledge of general Anatomy may thus be said to furnish us as it were with an analytical instrument, by which we may decompose a disease into its simpler elements, or, in other words, resolve a group of symptoms associated by their common relations to the functions of an organ, into the minor groups which are dependent on the properties of the affected tissues.