A system of clinical medicine / by Robert James Graves.

  • Graves, Robert James, 1796-1853.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of clinical medicine / by Robert James Graves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    splendid exceptions, this interesting and innocent controversy- has been carried on by other countries, while Ireland has put in no claim for a share of the literary honours awarded to the efforts of industry or genius. But, gentlemen, I hope that this state of inaction, this state of mental torpor, has ceased, and that the time has passed away when we could not point out among our brethren any who had advanced the boundaries of the medical sciences, and thus promoted the interests of humanity. Now we can enumerate many whose names form a cata- logue the subject of congratulation for the present, of happy augury for the future, for cold must be the breast of him who will not hail with joy every symptom of our country's literary regeneration, dead the feelings which are not elated at the boon conferred on our species by every advance made by those who devote themselves to the grand, the noble, pur- suit of relieving the suffering, of healing the diseased; but time bids me stop, I shall, therefore, conclude by observing that the attention lately devoted to the distinctions between real and pseudo-morbid appearances, the diligent cultivation of morbid anatomy by men not the slaves of preconceived opinions, the abandonment of all systems whose baseless fabric rests on the phantoms of vital physiology, the importance now justly attached to medical statistics, to the study of endemic and epidemic maladies, to the operation of morbid poisons ; these, and various other circumstances, give us reason to hope that the progress of the human mind in investigating the means of preventing and curing diseases, will not be less rapid than it has been in the other departments of knowledge; and thus it will be proved that if man has passions which impel him to the destruction of man, if he be the only animal who despising his natural weapons for attack or defence, has devised new means of destruction, he is also the only animal who has the desire or the power to relieve the sufferings of his fellow-creatures ; the only animal in whom the co-existence of reason and benevolence attests a moral as well as an intellectual superiority. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. Session 1837-38 To-day, gentlemen, we commence our labours for the winter session. I hope you will manifest a steady and sustained dili- gence in your hospital attendance, observe carefully the various forms of disease submitted to your inspection, and accurately note the symptoms, together with the effects of the remedial measures. As usual, I have allotted the cases at present under our management to the more advancod students; it is their duty