Principles of medicine : an elementary view of the causes, nature, treatment, diagnosis and prognosis of disease : with brief remarks on hygienics, or the preservation of health / by Charles J.B. Williams.

Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of medicine : an elementary view of the causes, nature, treatment, diagnosis and prognosis of disease : with brief remarks on hygienics, or the preservation of health / by Charles J.B. Williams. 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.

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    PREFACE. In this work the attempt is made to place the practice of Medicine on a footing somewhat corresponding with that of Physiology, Chemistry, and other sciences which equally depend on the accurate observation and rational arrange- ment of facts. If our knowledge of the healthy body, and of its parts and functions, be exact, it ought to be our best guide in the stud}^ of the same parts and func- tions in a state of disease. Yet the habit has long pre- vailed, and even still has its avowed advocates, of regard- ing the phenomena of disease as a new and separate order of things, the character and laws of which are to be investigated by themselves, and without reference to the standard of health from which they deviate; as if diseases were independent entities, and as if the body under their influence ceased to possess the same structures and func- tions which it has in health. Happily, however, such irrational dogmas do not now find much favour with the members of our profession, who, in proportion as they become more enlightened by sound physiology, recognise in it, when combined with careful clinical and patho- logical observation, the best guide to the understanding and treatment of disease. b