Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / by James Hamilton ... ; from the fifth Edinburgh edition.

  • Hamilton, James, 1749-1835.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / by James Hamilton ... ; from the fifth Edinburgh edition. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    dictated by the Physician to his clerk, who at the time enters them into the journal-book. All these proceedings take place in public, in the presence, and in the hearing, of a number of young Gentlemen, who attend the Hospital, many of whom are competent judges of what is going forward. Thus, the Physician must include, in his reports, all the circumstances, as they arise in particular cases; circumstances over which he has no control, and which must inevitably direct his practice. Further, the Physician of the Royal Infirmary, in consequence of his attendance every day, is enabled to follow out his practice with peculiar precision and accuracy ; to do which he is also stimulated by the interest which he cannot but take in his patients, not unfrequently friendless strangers ; and, by the unavoidable publicity of his whole procedure respecting them, which places him often in delicate and trying situations. Cases then of this description, which, in their pro- gress, cannot be perverted to particular purposes, and which cannot afterwards be altered, by any retrospec- tive emendation of the practitioner, possess an authen- ticity peculiar to themselves; and, in the establishing of medical facts, may be produced as an authority, that cannot be controverted. Indeed, I esteem myself fortunate in having documents of this kind to adduce, in support of a practice which may be thought to re- quire all the confirmation which the most incontro- vertible evidence can afford. These cases, inserted in