A treatise on general pathology / by J. Henle ; translated from the German by Henry C. Preston.

  • Henle, Jacob, 1809-1885.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on general pathology / by J. Henle ; translated from the German by Henry C. Preston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    AUTHOR'S PREFACE. With this volume, I commence the fulfilment of a promise which I made implicitly more than six years ago, concerning my pathological investigations, and to which (with pleasure I confess it) since that time I have often, and from many quarters, been urged. This is an attempt to collect together into the same form, those physiological facts which the observations of diseased bodies have brought to light, together with the theories and hypotheses pertaining to them, which the systematic German mind demands, in order to point out their place in the embryonic history of the science. My first duty, I had thought, should be to introduce them to the Profession with an apology for their theoretic tendency. This, however, at the present day is unnecessary. It is the pre- vailing conviction that, as the old empirical, eclectic system of Medicine, against which we are struggling, is founded upon various hypotheses, so its foundation is the more insecure, the less its fundamental principles are connected, and the less it was considered, in the building up of the system, how much it would be able to support. The Science of Medicine is now aroused to such a degree of self-consciousness, that she has no superiority over other empirical knowledge; that she cannot take a step in advance, which she has not first marked out by an hypothesis. And this is well; for the day of the last hypothesis would be also the day of the last observation. For what other purpose do we collect experiences, than to support an opinion at the