Essentials of the principles and practice of medicine : a handbook for students and practitioners / by Henry Hartshorne.

  • Hartshorne, Henry, 1823-1897.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essentials of the principles and practice of medicine : a handbook for students and practitioners / by Henry Hartshorne. 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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    downward, had more confidence in the truth-corapelUng powers of their own reason ; and even Hippocrates himself often forgot his own maxims, and became dogmatic beyond liis knowledge. It is not my purpose here to go into any historical discussion of philosophy ; which would be inappropriate in this place. Nor will I attempt to croAvd into a few pages the history of medicine itself. But it appears to me that I cannot better occupy space, in this introduction, than by endeavoring to place before the mind such a succinct view of the most essentia' phases and mutations of medical opinion, in tunes past and present, as will enable us to apprehend all that bears upon the aspects and prospects of the theory and practice of Medicine. In the midst of the multitude of authors who have written upon medicine, in every age which has possessed a literature, the num- ber of cardinal ideas, of distinctive methods, opinions, or prin- ciples, has not been great. Those who may be considered to have been original thinkers or leaders in medical philosophy have been few ; or, if we cannot refuse to a larger number the credit of originality, yet that of actual novelty is not often theirs, as they have merely started anew an idea, a principle, a system, or the- ory, which had long ago its propounders, its advocates, and its opposers, although it may have been again forgotten. Yet, few as these essential ideas have been, it will be impossi- ble to do more than mention them, as it were, in catalogue, at present. A work, for example, might be, and more than once has been, written upon the doctrines of Hippocrates, and of the writings classed under his name alone. Suffice it for us to recollect, that the leading idea of this greatest of physicians was reliance upon, and observation and imitation of nature. Yet he theorized upon health and disease, upon the four elements and the four humors, and his system has, therefore, been styled Dogmatic. To him, also, is traced the principle of medication by contraries ; ra havria rov kvavr 07V enrtv Ir/yarr. The greatest value of the Hippocratic writings undoubtedly consists in their numerous and admirable descriptions of the symptoms of disease, and of the relations of symptoms to prognosis. The study of hygienic laws and influ- ences also received from his school much attention. Contrasted with the Hippocratic reflective or dogmatic method of stud3dng nature, was the more detailed and less systematic plan of the contemporaneous Cnidian school. Later, with Philinus and Serapion of Alexandria, the dis- tinctly Empirical method was promulgated ; in which observa- tion, and this alone, especially as to the use of remedies, was urged. ISTo reasoning about why or h'.iD., but only 'what., engaged the minds of these industrious men ; whose materials thus accu- mulated only too fast for their limited powers of classification Their most elegant writer was A^retseus, who is not always cred- ited to them, but whose descriptions of disease have seldom been equalled, even down to our own day. It is less easy to characterize, in a few words, the school curi- ously called Methodist; which originated with the opinions of