Two lectures ... : being introductory addresses delivered in the University of Glasgow, and in the Western Infirmary, session 1877-78 / by W.T. Gairdner, Professor of Practice of Medicine in the University of Glasgow.
- William Tennant Gairdner
- Date:
- 1877
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Two lectures ... : being introductory addresses delivered in the University of Glasgow, and in the Western Infirmary, session 1877-78 / by W.T. Gairdner, Professor of Practice of Medicine in the University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![tlio most instructive of our bedside conferences have often arisen upon these late verifications, or corrections, of doubtful ])oints in tlie original record of a case. When, in the course of an oi'dinary ward visit, I personally dictate the report of a first or of any future obsei-vation, 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 necess(iry, duly insciibed, as such, upon the margin. Indeed it is in these very difficulties and fallacies of observation that we frequently find tlie 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 ])age opposite the beginning of the case, a summary of the wliole 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 temperature observations; on a fourth, urinary observations, &c., &c. Diagrams of physical diagnosis, sphygmograms, fee, 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 raw 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 togetlier 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 ho happened to be present at the time. And not unfrequently, the actual verification takes place, in the case of unusual, or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21464352_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
