Lectures: chiefly clinical.

  • Chambers, Thomas King, 1818-1889.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures: chiefly clinical. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    45/664 (page 17)
    DISEASE AND CURE. What is cure ?—Classification of disease, for therapeutical pur- poses into deficiencies of growth and deficiencies of moult- ing—Deficiencies of growth from Chossafs observations— Analogous natural states in disease—Deficiencies of moult- ing—True and apparent—Mixed lesions—Natural cure and artificial cure—Cure originated by the healthy parts of the body—Classification of means of cure — Constructives — Destructives—Arresters of construction—Aiiresters of de- struction. [Introductory, St. Mar-y's, October 5, 1863.) You are entering tlie hospital wards to study Disease—tliat fitful twilight coming between the glad radiance of life we call health, and death, the drear darkness of its departure. You see the gloom sometimes irrevocably deepen, more often melt back again into the beams of returning day; and you would fain learn how to aid this joyful event which we hail as cure. To minister to it is to be the business of your lives; and there- fore time cannot be wasted in first thoughtfully considering what it is. Healthy life consists in a continuous and equally balanced repetition of the two necessary parts of the renewal of the body, constructive and destructive assimilation, in other words, growing and moulting. The essential nature of disease, that which makes it disease, is a deficiency of health, a deficiency of either construction or destruction in one or more points. The cure of disease, natural or artificial, consists in a new birth or renewal of the deficient life. The practitioner, to whose mind the cure should be the ever 2