Symptoms and their interpretation / by James Mackenzie.

  • Mackenzie, James, 1853-1925.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Symptoms and their interpretation / by James Mackenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from a delay in operating on appendicitis, so that they strongly recommend that all suspect appendices should be removed. The result of such a procedure is that a great many people are subjected to the operation when there is no disease of the appendix. This is simply due to the fact that medical knowledge has not advanced so far as to interpret correctly the symptoms of appendicitis, nor to understand their significance, so that large numbers are operated upon unnecessarily. Anti-toxin is believed to be such a potent remedy in diphtheria that, as a matter of routine, every one who contracts this disease is given it. We know that diphtheria in the great majority of cases is not a serious disease, yet because of an absence of knowledge of prognosis, the remedy is given indiscriminately to every one. It will be said, of course, that in the cases of appendicitis and diphtheria it is impossible to fortell which case will become dangerous, but that is merely stating in another way the fact that medical knowledge has not yet advanced far enough to understand the prognostic significance of certain symptoms. Not only has medical knowledge not advanced so far as to permit a prognosis in such instances, but it has not gone so far as to recognise either the importance of the subject or the manner in which the knowledge can be acquired. A little consider¬ ation will reveal that this knowledge can only come from long experience, yet in matters dealing essentially with prognosis, such as in life insurance examinations and in recruiting, a medical qualifica¬ tion is deemed to carry with it the ability to give