Volume 1

The cyclopædia of practical medicine : comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc. etc. / edited by John Forbes, Alexander Tweedie, John Conolly.

Date:
1833-1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cyclopædia of practical medicine : comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc. etc. / edited by John Forbes, Alexander Tweedie, John Conolly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    PREFACE. The Editors have at length the gratification of laying the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine before the public in a completed state. During the three years which its publication has occupied, it has been their continual care to carry into effect the intentions professed at its com- mencement ; and although in the execution of a performance of such extent, the work of so many writers, many of whom resided in parts of the kingdom remote from the Editors and from the Publishers, and most of whom were much engaged in practical duties, unavoidable delays have taken place, and occasional modifications of the original design have been adopted, a strict general adherence has been preserved to whatever experience proved to be practicable as well as useful as the work proceeded through the press. It is impossible for the Editors to look at the list of the Contributors by whose assistance this work has been accomplished without a deep-felt satis- faction ; distinguished as that list is by so many names of celebrity in modern medicine, and including so many of the professors and teachers in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Glasgow, whose reputation conveys a high and just authority to their doctrines. To have directed some part of the scientific exertions of such writers to the pages of the Cyclopsedia, and, also, to have elicited from not a few of the most accomplished among the provincial physicians of the empire, numerous and valuable contributions which but for the comprehensive plan of this work might never have been communicated to the profession, is a result to which the Editors must ever feel proud and gratified to have conduced. With such efficient aid in all the parts of their undertaking, they have spared no personal pains, in the hope by uniformity of plan, simplicity of arrangement, and the harmony and consistency of its several portions, to make the Cyclopaedia fully and fairly to represent the state of Practical Medicine at the time of its appearance. From innumerable foreign and domestic sources the scattered knowledge which has so fast accumulated since the commence- ment of the present century has thus been gathered together, and placed at the command of every reader of the English language. Those acquainted with the actual limitation of such knowledge before the appearance of this work, and who have opportunities of knowing how slowly even valuable novelties are diffused in a form giving any assurance of their worth, will best be able to appreciate the importance of the extensive means of reference