Volume 1

Modern medicine influenced by morbid anatomy an oration delivered at the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Medical Society of London. Also an apology for medical nomenclature / By Leonard Stewart.

  • Stewart, Leonard, 1797 or 1798-1849.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern medicine influenced by morbid anatomy an oration delivered at the fifty-seventh anniversary of the Medical Society of London. Also an apology for medical nomenclature / By Leonard Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    would be consequently purely conjectural— all practice, of necessity also, blind and em¬ pirical. And yet it is true, at the same time, that no two cases, on simple comparison, are precisely alike. Even where diseases are clearly made out and appreciated, there is some new proportion in their elements, or some difference, in kind or degree, in their circumstances, which prevents our regarding any one of these complex states as the exact duplicate of another. Nay, the very exist- ance of malady, considered as a matter of separate study and investigation, depends upon a departure from the indefinite and fluctuating bounds of a healthy standard; between which, however, and the many pre* ternatural modes into which the living system may pass, there exists no accurate line of demarcation. When, then, we are told, in the same breath, of the infinite variation and compli¬ cation in the particulars of disease, and the absolute necessity for method and arrang- inent, it becomes an important question to determine, what contrivance can ever recon-