A contribution to the study of post-nasal catarrh / by Beverley Robinson.

  • Robinson, Beverley, 1844-1924.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A contribution to the study of post-nasal catarrh / by Beverley Robinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    regard is paid to the anatomical investigation of the primary affection. So we find that our knowledge of this special catarrhal trouble is necessarily imperfect, and if we have not, as yet, determined where the seat and wliat the nature of the malady really are, our dearth of pathological instruction will afford a partial explanation of it. But, we ask, has clinical observation afforded all the results which it is capable of giving ? For our part, we can hardly believe it. Modern medicine, we all know, has advanced with rapid strides in various directions, and in none more than in that where insight of the intimate growth and structure of our organs is found. This is true without modification for every part of the body, when considered in its normal state. In a diseased condition, organic tissue is not altogether so well known. Nor, in fact, has it been so exhaustively explored in every particular. There still remain here and there gaps to be filled up, and the want can be supplied only by new and more ample opportunities of study and research. One example of this has already been given. Others might be added, were not a general statement quite sufficient to render it acceptable. So long, then, as facts are needed, pathology cannot be con- sidered as a perfect science, nor fixed upon an immutable basis. Fresh data will still be acquired, and following close upon the discovery of these, other interpretations of familiar symptoms of disturbed function will be adopted. But while this view makes us augur well for the future, attendant dangers should not be completely lost sight of. Many physicians of our day, and especially those who are too ardent devotees at the shrine of Germany, are prone to attribute to every clinical fact ob- served only that importance which, after close microscopic study, appears to belong to it. The general pathology or philosophy of medical science is much ignored, and everywhere we find an evident desire to localize agencies which are at work, and to limit their action and effects to some one particular tissue or organ. This is espe- cially true of catarrhal affections ; for without much regard to attendant circumstances, their presence is frequently accounted for by the infiuence of agents acting topically. They are then very naturally considered to be the offspring, as it were, of