A treatise on the theory and practice of medicine / by John Syer Bristowe.

  • Bristowe, John Syer, 1827-1895.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the theory and practice of medicine / by John Syer Bristowe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    13/1296 (page 9)
    omission that I have only occasionally devoted a special paragraph to the differential diagnosis of diseases. It is so far an omission that I have been driven to it by the exigencies of space. But on the whole I do not regret it; for the distinguishing of one disease from another disease should depend not on the simple recognition of a few leading characters, which however carefully selected are apt not unfrequently to fail us, but on a honCificle and thorough acquaintance with the collective phenomena of diseases. The more a student is taught to rely on one or two criteria, the less likely is he to investi- gate diseases intelligently, and the more apt is he to be content with hasty and inaccurate diagnoses. In respect of the treatment of diseases, again, I may appear to have been in many cases less full and less specific than I ought to have been. The principles by which I have been guided in this matter are easy to explain. In the first place, it seemed to me that works upon the Materia Medica are the proper source from which to learn the doses in which medicines may be administered, and the best modes of combining medicines. And in the second place, in considering the details of treatment, as given in most works of medicine, it appeared to me that their authors had for the most part simply recommended those doses of drugs, those combinations of drugs, and those specific modes of administering them, to which they had accustomed themselves. I admit that the subject of my last objection will be regarded by many from quite an opposite point of view. Nevertheless, while, on the one hand, I should hesitate to force my own routine and trivialities of practice upon students, I should equally hesitate to force upon them those of other people. It seems to me best, having inculcated general principles, and pointed out the specific virtues of certain drugs, to leave the young practi- tioner generally as much unshackled as possible with regard to his choice of particular combinations and modes of administration. He is far more likely to make a thoughtful physician, and, as I think, to benefit his patient, if he adapts his drugs and his methods to the exigencies of cases as they present themselves before him, than if he follows the stereotyped procedure of some predecessor. From first to last I have carefully avoided quoting illustrative