A treatise on fever, or, Selections from a course of lectures on fever : being part of a course of theory and practice of medicine / delivered by Robert D. Lyons.

  • Lyons, Robert D. (Robert Spencer Dyer), 1826-1886.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on fever, or, Selections from a course of lectures on fever : being part of a course of theory and practice of medicine / delivered by Robert D. Lyons. 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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    emulate tlieir learning and zeal, and their devotion to tlieir art. And truly a great task lies before you, great in its purposes, noble in its ends. It ranks second to but one : that which ministers to the glory of our Maker. By far the most important of the duties to which you will be called, when you pass into the world as practising physicians, no matter in what chme your lot may be cast, will be those which will devolve on you in connection with the treatment of fevers. Et profecto hand oscitanter impugnandum est hoc morborum tarn pestiferum agmen, quod nuUo non diecrun genere humano bellumgerit internecmu.m atque aa-irov'^ov et cujus tehs duo ad minimum homi- num trientes (si eos demas qui violenta morte peri- muntur), confossi quotannis occumbunt, In the words which I have here quoted from Sydenham, that great observer states, that excluding deaths from violence, fevers constitute nearly two thirds of all the diseases by which mankind perishes annually. And I believe that this statement is hardly in any way to be regarded as an exaggera- tion for his day. It is not perhaps in the generations of men that pass silently away by disease, as it invades the homes of the poor year after year, that its effects are most terribly felt, and most strikingly manifested. It is in the midst of war's mingled triumphs and alarms, when the false pride, or the insulted honour of nations, or the love of conquest, pits against each other the flower of their youth on the battle-field, that disease, and pre-eminently febrile disease, makes its most deadly havoc. To take no other example, I think I should be justified in saying that considerably more than half of the whole deaths