A digest of the principles and practice of medicine : with a short account of the history of medicine, and tables of Indian materia medica / by Rustomjee Naserwanjee Khory.

  • Khory Rustomjee Naserwanjee.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A digest of the principles and practice of medicine : with a short account of the history of medicine, and tables of Indian materia medica / by Rustomjee Naserwanjee Khory. 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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    ]036 fully, and to practise with reputation. Or, on the contrary, how is it possible that he should do anything but trifle away his whole life in deceiving himself as well as others, who is vainly employed in con- triving those things that do not at all belong to practice. And as he would be no -very honest or successful pilot that should not bend his mind so much to know and avoid the shallows and rocks, as to contemplate the cause of the ebbing and flowing of a sea, which truly becomes a philosopher, but is not his business, who is only to secure the ship : So neither will the physician, who has no other province than that of curing diseases, be a true proficient in the art of physic, though he has good natural parts, who does not take so much pains in searching out that hidden and crooked method, whereby nature produces and nourishes diseases (on which also their history depends), and in procuring agreeable remedies for them ; as in nice speculations, which do not at all conduce to the rescuing of men from the jaws of death, which physic promises. And this trifling humour does not only deprive mankind of those great advantages which would accrue to it by the ingenuity of very many, but it makes also that which is called the art of physic rather a babbling faculty. At length it comes to this, that the patient must live or die, as a philosopher guesses right or wrong. A large part of Sydenham's works are occupied with accounts of the epidemics, which appeared every year in London in his time. His account of the gout, from which he suffered severely, is ad- mirable. The commonest and most regular epidemic disease of his time was smallpox, and his treatise on the confluent smallpox is considered by Trousseau as one of the brightest titles to fame of this great observer. He was, I believe, the first to observe ursemic convulsions in scarlet fever, and the first to distinguish peri-pneu- monia notha. Some traces of obsolete pathology do not prevent his works from being of the highest value at the present day, and no physician should leave them unread. I gave one passage as illustrating his medical system. I will conclude this account of him with another passage, which exemplifies his study and character. I am so made and disposed by nature, that what time others spend in reading books, I spend in meditation, and I do not so much inquire whether others are of my opinion as whether what I deliver be agreeable to truth : for I do not much esteem public applause ; and truly, what matter is it, if performing carefully the duty of a good citizen, and serving the public to my own prejudice, I have no thanks for my labour ? For if the thing be rightly weighed, the providing for esteem, I being now an old man, will be in a