Volume 1

An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology, intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation. / By Thomas Young.

  • Young, Thomas, 1773-1829.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to medical literature, including a system of practical nosology, intended as a guide to students, and an assistant to practitioners. Together with detached essays on the study of physic, on classification, on chemical affinities, on animal chemistry, on the blood, on the medical effects of climates, on the circulation, and on palpitation. / By Thomas Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that genius, without which all possible knowledge is insuf+ ficient to make a genuine and complete physician. “ A man ‘‘ can be neither a philosopher nor a physician,” says Herz, “by imitation or by rules, but by native genius alone.” ~The inestimable advantage of a naturally acute judgment and delicate discrimination is no where more striking, as Freind has remarked, than in the profession of physic. <¢ 3, Of all this the most convincing proofs will imme- diately occur to us. Medicine not only comprehends so very extensive a range of knowledge, but its truths are often so profound and so much concealed from a cursory inspection, so intricate, so much disguised, distorted and obscured by a multitude of delicate and invisible causes, that nothing less than the all commanding eye of the most enlightened under standing, than the all penetrating and all searching power of genius, can possibly recognise that which is hidden in dark- ness, can follow that which is remote into the last traces that it imprints, can distinguish certainty from opinion and probability, cau separate the essential from the accidental, aud finally can analyse and develope every subject of inves- tigation so completely, as to leave no further doubt respect- ing any of its properties, which are cognisable by human means. ‘¢ 4. Nor does any art, except that of war, require so much intrepidity, courage, and promptness in judging and in acting, as the art of physic. How often does the life of a patient depend on the decision of a moment! This precious moment, the timid physician, who is discomposed, aud stupefied, and confused, by the unexpected appearance of danger, by unforeseen circumstances of doubtful import,