Manual of pathology containing the symptoms, diagnosis, and morbid characters of diseases. Together with an exposition of the different methods of examination, applicable to affections of the head, chest, and abdomen ... / translated, with notes and additions, by Jones Quain.

  • Martinet, L. (Louis), 1795-1875.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of pathology containing the symptoms, diagnosis, and morbid characters of diseases. Together with an exposition of the different methods of examination, applicable to affections of the head, chest, and abdomen ... / translated, with notes and additions, by Jones Quain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    22. We may here conclude these remarks, by saying a few words on the demeanour which ought to be ob- served towards sick persons in order to gain their con- fidence, and obtain the disclosures which are necessary to form a proper decision on their cases. The physician should be calm and conciliating, should hear with at- tention the communications which his patients make, should put his questions to them with mildness, listen kindly to their complaints, and never fail to demon- strate an active interest in their welfare. OF OBSERVATION IN GENERAL. 23. The basis of medicine, says Baglivi, rests altoge- ther on observation.—Ars Medica est totain observati- onibus. But the facts which observation presents should be collected with care, method, and discrimination. According to the object which an inquirer proposes to himself, observation may be geneial or special. It is termed general, when directed to ascertain the general phenomena ; forinstanee, of sporadic, endemic or epi- demic diseases; and special, when confined to single cases, collected at the bed-side of the patient; it is to this latter that our attention for the present is directed : the former shall be treated of when we come to con- sider the subject of medical constitutions. 24. Special observation has this marked advantage, that when a number of cases are detailed with judgment and fidelity, and every circumstance of them carefully noted, they present to us the different characters which a disease puts on in several individuals, which will always give to Monograph Works a decided advantage over general treatises. 25. In drawing up a case, it should always be recol- lected that it is done with the view to convey to others an exact representation of the facts which wc have ob- served. In order to effect this, the words used, and their various shades of meaning should be carefully consider- ed, so that they may convey to the mind of the reader the facts as they really existed, without adding or sup-