Wilkinson's botanico-medical practice : in six parts / by G.E. Wilkinson.

  • Wilkinson, G. E.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wilkinson's botanico-medical practice : in six parts / by G.E. Wilkinson. 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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    '• Our misfortune proceeds from our having long since forsaken our skillful guide, Hippocrates, and the ancient method of cure, founded upon the knowledge of conjunct causes, that plainly ap- pear, insomuch that the art which is this day practised, being invented by superficial reasoners, is rather the art of talking than of healing. lb. page 14. Dr. Eeerle says, (Prac. Med., preface, page G.) It is now generally and very justly believed, that the artificial, classic, ordi- nal and specific distinctions of nosology, [the forte of Dr. Good,] have an unfavorable influence on the progress of comprehensive and philosophical views in pathology. Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, late Professor in the Medical Col- lege in New York City, in his preface to Darwin's Zoonomia, says, After the different projects for methodizing this depart- ment of knowledge, [medicine.] which have successively been offered to the public, with so little advancement to true science, the friends of medical improvement will joyfully accept of some- thing that promises to lead them from arbitrary system to natural method. Page 29. Dr. Rush says, in his Lectures in the University of Pennsyl- vania, 1 am insensibly led to make an apology for the instabil- ity of the theories and practices of physic. Those physicians gsnerally become the most eminent, who soonest emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the schools of physic. Our want of success is owing to the following causes: 1st, Our ignorance of the disease. 2d, Our ignorance of a suitable remedy. p. 79. Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University of Pennsylvania, remarks: Consulting the records of our science, we cannot help being disgusted with the multitude of hypotheses obtruded upon us at different times. No where is the imagination displayed to greater extent; and perhaps so ample an exhibition of human invention might gratify our vanity if it were not more than counterbalanced by the humiliating view of so much absurdity, contradiction and falsehood.—Therapeu- tics, vol. 1, page 47. To harmonize the contrarieties of medi- cal doctrines, is, indeed, a task as impracticable as to arrange the fleeting vapors around us, or to reconcile the fixed and repulsive antipathies of nature.—lb. page 23. As it is, we are plunged