The principles of medicine as applied to dynamical therapeutics / by Herbert T. Webster ; designed as an introduction to the study of eclectic medicine.

  • Webster, Herbert Tracy, 1836-
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of medicine as applied to dynamical therapeutics / by Herbert T. Webster ; designed as an introduction to the study of eclectic medicine. 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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    annotation of isolated facts, which may sometime serve as links in a completed chain of reliable data. Until then it may be best for medical men to regard the present knowledge in a candid light—thankful for what has been acquired, though the information already possessed may seem but as a series of uncertain glimpses into an endless field of supply. f Do the best we can, there is more or less uncertainty l/)Ai^0rCi^^ about the practice of medicine.,/ Careful grouping of agents according to the part or function impressed nar- rows the field of uncertainty down to a point much short of older methods of gross empiricism, but not enough is yet known that a drug may always be adapted to a given case on first trial. In order to overcome such objection, a number of agents should be at command; we should be able to draw upon a list of several remedies /i./ similar in action, but each possessing some individual merit and peculiarity; then if one should fail we are not at loss for other means. RELATION OF PATH0L0OY TO DYNAMICAL THERAPEUTICS. Investigation of the nature of disease has advanced the standing of medicine greatly in modern time. The •post-mortem study of diseased structure—pathological anatomy—has done much toward affording clearer ideas of morbid processes and suggesting rational methods of treatment. Better and more appropriate classification of disease has been the result of added pathological knowl- edge, and it has moreover cleared up some obscure phases of etiology, thus affording important assistance in the adaptation of remedies to abnormal states. Knowledge of pathology is an important aid to the therapeutist. Take, for example, such a disease as ty- phoid fever. Here we may have a variety of therapeutic indications manifested during an epidemic, or even during the progress of a single case, but in all a knowledge of the