Dr. Hooper's Physician's vademecum, or, A manual of the principles and practice of physic / [Robert Hooper].
- Robert Hooper
- Date:
- 1842
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Dr. Hooper's Physician's vademecum, or, A manual of the principles and practice of physic / [Robert Hooper]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![11 acquired, and select from it sucli parts as liave tlie most immediate and useful bearing on the new studies in which he is about to engage. For this purpose he will select from his anatomical and physiological knowledge those facts which are most nearly allied to, and throw most light upon, the alterations of structure and function occasioned by disease. In like manner he will endeavour to recall some of the more striking symptoms of disease with which the lectures on the practice of medicine have made him familiar, as well as the methods of examination by which he may determine their exact value as signs. And, lastly, he will endea- vour to cull from the lectures on materia medica and therapeutics, such general principles of treatment, and such directions as to the administration of remedies, as may stand him most in stead in the treatment of disease. To understand its nature, he must add to this knowledge an acquaintance with morbid anatomy. The combina- tion of the sciences just named constitutes the science of patho- logy—of disease in all its bearings—its symptoms, its seat, its nature, its causes, its consequences, and its treatment. In the suc- ceeding chapters an attempt will be made to bring together, in a short and concise form, some of those points most necessary to be borne in mind at the bed-side, and most likely to prove of use to the student as well as to the practitioner. CHAPTER III. ON HEALTH AND DISEASE. Health admits neither of definition nor description ; of none, at least, which can be applied to any useful purpose. If we define it as the integrity of every structure, and the perfect and harmoni- ous play of every function, we give a true definition, but not a use- ful one. The more lengthened description in which some physio- logists have indulged, answers no better end, for it establishes no standard of comparison, and that is what we are in want of. Per- fect health, like perfect beauty, is perhaps an ideal compounded of the perfections of many different individuals ; or if it exist, it falls to the lot of few, and its phenomena have met with no accu- rate description. Health, in its more usual acceptation, is a vari- able condition, and differs widely in different persons, and in the same person] at different times. The terms “ perfect,” “ good, “ strong,” “ feeble, “ robust,” &c., applied to health, show how generally this difference in degree is recognized. But there are also differences in kind as well as in degree. The dif-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28708635_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
