A methodical system of nosology / translated from the Latin of Doctor William Cullen ; by Eldad Lewis.

  • Cullen, William, 1710-1790.
Date:
[1808]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A methodical system of nosology / translated from the Latin of Doctor William Cullen ; by Eldad Lewis. 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.)

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    ical writers. I do not deny, that in those writings we may sometimes find the symptoms of diseases truly delineated ; but whenever passages of that kind occur, however highly they may be estimated by some Mod- erns, yet they certainly advance our knowledge but very little, and had perhaps wholly escaped us in reading, if before, by our own observation, we had not noticed the same things, Students seldom read the works of the Antients to obtain the first rudiments of knowledge ; but they are perused, for the most part, by those who have already made proficiency in the Art, that they may support, by such authority, their own discoveries and observations. Indeed I am persuaded, that almost all the histories of diseases, now to be found in antient writers, either respect dis- orders of countries very different from ours, and therefore of little use, or have been transmitted to us so mutilated and corrupted as to be of little advantage ; at least it must be allowed, that the knowledge of dis- eases to be obtained from the works of the Antients is totally insufficient to take away the ambiguity that has been mentioned Nor have the moderns turned their attention to the subject till lately, and their progress has been slow. In the sixteenth Century, the followers of Galen un- dertook to restore the learning of the Antients with good success ; but they were so wholly intent upon explaining and embellishing those writings, that they neither rectified nor enlarged their histories of disea- ses. Nor were the Chemical Physicians of the same age, those most bitter enemies to the Galenists, of more ad- vantage to the Art : constantly busied in discovering new medicines, and promiscuously administering them, no attention was paid to the nature of diseases. Hence it happened, that from the restoration of Learning in the fifteenth Century, to the time of Sy- denham, scarce any complete and accurate histories of