Original cases with dissections and observations illustrating the use of the stethoscope and percussion in the diagnosis of diseases of the chest : also commentaries on the same subjects selected and translated from Avenbrugger, Corvisart, Laennec and others / by John Forbes.

  • Forbes, John, Sir, 1787-1861.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Original cases with dissections and observations illustrating the use of the stethoscope and percussion in the diagnosis of diseases of the chest : also commentaries on the same subjects selected and translated from Avenbrugger, Corvisart, Laennec and others / by John Forbes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    he can bring the evidence of dissection to confute or confirm his judgements. In regard to this latter circumstance, how- ever, I think it due to the good sense of the lower classes in this country, to declare it as my own opinion, that there is much less difliculty in obtaining permission to inspect dead bodies, than is commonly imagined. In proof of this, perhaps, I may be allowed to instance the dissections recorded in this volume, together with many more,—all performed (with two exceptions) by myself, in a provincial situation, in private houses, and within a period of little more than two years. It is more especially in a comparison with those of M. Laennec, that the deficiencies of my cases will appear; and had it not been from a conviction produced by my own obser- vation, and strengthened by the concurring opinions of many friends, that/ in the present state of the public mind, original English Cases are absolutely necessary to produce the proper impression in favour of the stethoscope, I should never have presumed to publish my own at full length, while the greater number of M. Laennec's are still untranslated, or only given, in my translation, in a greatly abridged form. Although I am well assured that almost all the records of disease in the present volume are deficient in many essen- tial points, I think it probable that my readers (they more es- pecially who have not previously studied the subject of Aus- cultation) will be more disposed to condemn the extreme pro- lixity of my cases, than to blame their incompleteness. To the charge of prolixity, as well as of defectiveness, I must plead guilty; but I can exculpate myself from the former much bet- ter than from the latter. In publishing my cases, I felt that the diagnostic measures employed in them must be new to the greater number of my readers, and that it was, on this account, absolutely necessary, that the detail of these should be as full as possible; that it should be, in fact, such as constituted the identical grounds on which I myself (a scholar like them) had come to the conclusions therein recorded, respecting the na- ture and event of each particular case. And I would fain