The principles of theory indispensable to sound observation in the practice of medicine : a lecture introductory to a course of materia medica / by William Seller.

  • Seller, William.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of theory indispensable to sound observation in the practice of medicine : a lecture introductory to a course of materia medica / by William Seller. 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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    Hygiene belong to the province of Forensic Medicine, or of General Pathology. The course of study which we are now entering on is a rery mixed branch of Medical knowledge, so that some principle must be sought, as a guide to determine how much of each of the included topics belongs to it of right. While, then, the subjects of this course fall conveniently under the two heads of Hygiene and Therapeia, neither Hygiene, in its reference to the circumstances essential to health, nor the physiological action of the agents which be- come remedies (that is their action during health), though a principal part of Therapeia, is here studied for its own sake, but only because it is impossible to ascertain the effects of such circumstances, and of such agents, in disease, with- out a previous knowledge of their general mode of acting in the healthy state. The application of both to the cure of disease is the ultimate object of our department—the study of their effects in health one of the means for the effectual attainment of that object. In like manner we avail ourselves of the knowledge sup- plied by Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, and Chemistry, for the description, preparation, and identification of the several articles that have obtained a place in this subject, studying the necessary parts of these sciences, not for their own sake, but for the purpose of applying the means of treatment, during the actual presence of disease, with greater certainty. The principle, therefore, to be kept steadily in view, for conducting a course of this description, as apportioning its due place and weight to each of the multifarious topics pressed on our attention, is the subserviency of everything besides to the one purpose of placing within the reach of the Practitioner, in their most effective form, the available remedies, of whatever kind, against the progress of diseases.