The works of Thomas Sydenham, M. D. on acute and chronic diseases : with their histories and modes of cure ; with notes, intended to accommodate them to the present state of medicine, and to the climate and diseases of the United States / by Benjamin Rush.

  • Sydenham, Thomas, 1624-1689.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Thomas Sydenham, M. D. on acute and chronic diseases : with their histories and modes of cure ; with notes, intended to accommodate them to the present state of medicine, and to the climate and diseases of the United States / by Benjamin Rush. 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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    ter from the sameness of the. diet and manners of the iu habitants of Great Britain about the middle of the 17th century, and of the present inhabitants of the United States. They arc moreover composed of such numerous quotations from medical books, as to render them a sys tern of the practice of physic, rather than short and prac- tical illustrations of the truths and errors of the author. The principal errors in this work appear to be the fol lowing : 1. A general belief in the salutary operations of nature in diseases. 2. A belief in morbific matter as the cause of diseases, and in the hypothetical doctrines of fermentation, ebullition, digestion, separation, u despuma tion, and u expulsion, of this morbific matter, in order to cure those diseases. 3. A belief in the practicability of dividing and dis- tinguishing diseases by certain marks, such as charac- terize plants and animals, and which have since been at- tempted by Vogel, Segar, Linnseus, Sauvage, and Cullen. Happily for our science, the doctor has furnished us, in his history of the combinations of epidemicks, and of the changes of diseases into each other, with a complete refu- tation of this error. 4. I consider our authors's definition of a disease to be erroneous, viz. that it is a vigorous effort of nature to throw off morbific matter, and thus to recover the patient; instead of which I believe a disease, to use the definition he has rejected, to consist in the confused and irregu- lar operations of disordered and debilitated nature.