Observations relating to the science and art of medicine / by William Wegg.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations relating to the science and art of medicine / by William Wegg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    20/286 (page 4)
    we should be guided when we employ them. With- out these the physician hesitates, doubts, despairs; and often ends in thinking, that it is better to leave nature to herself, than to embarrass her with needless, and perhaps mischievous, interference. Thus he sinks into inaction; congratulating himself that he is just as successful as heretofore : and so, perhaps, he is. But such knowledge as he possesses may be worse than none; such treatment as he indicates may be worse than useless. Men of this sort, if they con- tinue to practise after having lost all confidence in themselves, should place some reliance on the better informed and more earnest members of the profession, and not regard them as dupes of a system—of a system, too, which numbers among its defenders living men of the highest abihty and worth, and was founded, and has been sustained and amplified, by some of the greatest sages that the world has seen. In this volume my object is to look, as it were, into the mechanism of disease; to see where its main- spring lies, how its action is carried on, and how remedies may be made to counteract or direct its agency. Without such investigation, the value of the most efficient remedies will be uncertain and dis- puted ; because, principle being absent, the remedies will often be used improperly and therefore be found to fail.