Scrofula : its nature, its causes, its prevalence, and the principles of treatment / by Benjamin Phillips.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scrofula : its nature, its causes, its prevalence, and the principles of treatment / by Benjamin Phillips. 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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    But this general acknowledgment is insufficient to express the obligations I have incurred to particular individuals; and I am hound to mention how, specially, I am indebted to Lord Aberdeen, to the Poor Law Commissioners, to Dr. Baly the able medical officer of the Millbank Penitentiary, to Mr. C. R. Hall, to Dr. T. Smith of Leeds, to Dr. D. Griffin of Limerick, to Dr. S. Jackson of Philadelphia, to Mr. W. T. Kaye my former pupil now assistant surgeon of H.M.S. Tyne, and in an especial manner to Messrs. Horner and Sanders the Inspectors of Factories, to Messrs. Dai- ry mple and GuUiver, and to Mr. Neison. In conclusion, it seems to me desirable that I should explain the plan which has been followed to obtain the information upon which the opinions hereafter expressed are mainly based. At an early period I became fully sensible of the necessity of introducing a more precise method of conducting the inquiry than any which had been previously adopted. To say that Scrofula is extremely frequent in one place, and rarely seen in another, is to make a statement which has no absolute value, because, so far as I know, it has always been made without particular observation or accurate comparison, and yet it is upon such statements that theories are con- structed. To determine, from an examination of a particular district, that a given agent is the cause of Scrofula, because such agent IS there found in connexion with the disease, whilst in another district, from which such agent is absent, the disease prevails to nearly the same extent, is a mode of investigation which has been adopted by persons, who have treated ex-professo of the disease, but cannot satisfy the wants of the present day. Early impressed with the fact that what was alleged as the cause by one author, was proved to be no cause by another, though the features of the disease might be equally well described by both, I determined to accept no statement of the causes, the prevalence, or the treatment of the disease.