Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures : I. Lectures, books, and practical teaching ; II. Clinical instruction / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the most instructive of our bedside conferences have often arisen upon these late verifications, or corrections, of doubtful ]joints in the original record of a case. When, in the course of an ordinary ward visit, I personally dictate the I'eport of a first or of any future observation, it is similarly authenti- cated, and equally open, as in the case of the report of a junior, to future criticism or correction; and many of you can bear me witness that I never hesitate in allowing: an error, or a doubtful expression, to be fully and deliberately discussed, and the correction, if necessary, duly inscribed, as such, upon the margin. Indeed it is in these very difficulties aud fallacies of observation that we frequently find the best materials for our clinical lectures. Finally, after a certain period of observation, and after a certain number of presumably exact details have been inscribed, we make upon the first blank page opposite the beginning of the case, a summary of the whole observations, which in many cases, but not always, includes also a definite diagnosis, or at least the materials of one. On a second blank page we inscribe a connected statement of the details of treatment; on a third, the whole series, or a carefully-constructed abstract, of temperatui-e observations; on a fourth, urinary observations, &:c., &c. Diagrams of physical diagnosis, sphygmograms, &c., are in- serted as required in the journals; and thus after a while there is built up gradually a completed record of the case, up to the moment of dismissal from the hospital, or of death. 6. Such are our hospital journals, the I'aw material, so to speak, of our clinical lectures and instructions. It is clearly and manifestly impossible that all the members of a clinical class shall be even present, much less participate in the obser- vation and verification of each individual fact; but our aim is so to work together in all things, and so to record the results of our work, that every member of the class shall feel, as it were, with the force of personal conviction, that the statements so recorded are such as he might possibly have verified, had he happened to be present at the time. And not unfrequently, the actual verification takes place, in the case of unusual, or