Notes of lectures on the American practice of medicine : delivered in the American Medical College at Cincinnati, O. / by S. Hollister Potter.

  • Potter, S. Hollister.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes of lectures on the American practice of medicine : delivered in the American Medical College at Cincinnati, O. / by S. Hollister Potter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    14/322
    picture of each disease in all its bearings will be presented to the student, without dissecting what he will be compelled to put together again in practice. There are, however, many points in pathology and therapeutics, which are common to numerous diseases, and may with propriety be treated of in general. This will render the subsequent investigation of particular diseases more easy, and remedy the necessity of tedious repetition. It is proposed to present in the first part of these lectures, principles and facts of extensive application, which have be- come well established, avoiding speculation, without stopping to discuss the many hypotheses which have risen, strutted for a time upon the stage and disappeared in rapid suc- cession. Disease, is a derangement of the organization or one or more of the functions of the body. It is any state of the living body in which the natural functions of the organs are interrupted or disturbed, either by defective or preternatural action, without a disrupture of parts by violence, which is called a wound. There is much diversity in the performance of every func- tion and in the condition of every organ within the limits of health; and a condition of things which, if continued, would constitute disease, may be so fugitive as not to merit the name; so that, both in point of degree and duration, it is often impossible to say, of any particular variation from the ordinary condition of the system, whether it is healthy or morbid. Perfect accuracy of distinction is unnecessary for practical purposes. Derangements usually pass beyond the boundary between health and disease before they are brought to the notice of the physician. Division of the subject.—I shall first speak of the constit- uent forms of disease, which are those derangements that by their various combination, constitute diseases as we ordi- narily see them. 2.—Etiology, which treats of the causes of disease gener-