Heart disease : with special reference to prognosis and treatment / by Sir William H. Broadbent and John F. H. Broadbent.

Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heart disease : with special reference to prognosis and treatment / by Sir William H. Broadbent and John F. H. Broadbent. 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. This book is, for tlie most part, a reproduction of lectures on Prognosis in Valvular Disease of the Heart, delivered before the Harveian Society in 1884, and of the Lumleian Lectures at the Eoyal College of Physicians on Prognosis in Structural Diseases of the Heart, delivered in 1891. The prognosis of heart disease already engaged my attention when I was house-physician under Sibson at St. Mary's Hospital, and my first paper on this subject was read before the Harveian Society in 1866. Up to that time there had not, so far as I am aware, been any systematic study and exposition of the indications by which the probable course of disease of the heart in different cases might be foreseen, and ideas which tended to obscure the interpretation of the symptoms and physical signs were held by physicians of great experience and authority. Traces of the controversies of those days will still be found in the present work. They have lost much of their interest, but references to them could not well be entirely omitted. The prognosis of heart disease is worthy of special study, not only on account of its inherent importance, but also because the knowledge which enables the medical man to forecast clearly the course of the disease constitutes the best preparation for its treatment. The subject of treatment did