On the physical exploration of the lungs / by George W. Balfour.

  • Balfour, George William, 1823-1903.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the physical exploration of the lungs / by George W. Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PHYSICAL EXPLORATION OF THE LUNGS. The great difficulty experienced by students in obtaining correct ideas of the condition of the lungs from physical explora¬ tion, depends mainly upon defective tuition. And tuition in this respect is faulty in two directions,—first, in that it makes use of expressions which have no meaning in physics, but are based on anatomy, conventionalism, or both; and, second, because too great a refinement in diagnosis is aimed at, and this leads to the adoption of terms which have no definite signification, and to which every teacher attaches his own. In the following pages, an attempt is made to simplify this tuition, and render it more exact, by employing only strictly physical terms as indicative of strictly physical conditions—terms which will be found as applicable to the investi¬ gation of all other bodies as to that of the human body, if their physical condition be similar—terms, therefore, which can never be mistaken or misunderstood. It is obvious that, to complete what we call the diagnosis of any case, it must be investigated from various points of view, and that, finally, all these different aspects must be duly considered from the standpoint of pathology, before we can arrive at any definite conclusion as to the actual nature of the disease, its present condition, or probable termination. In this completion of the diagnosis, however, physical exploration bears only a very subordinate part, and very much of the confusion and difficulty which prevails in regard to physical diagnosis has arisen from the attempts which have been made by successive teachers to employ its revelations as in themselves pathognomonic of certain diseases, instead of as only indicating certain physical conditions. Attempts which date from the time when every disease was thought to have