Lectures on the elements of pathology, and on the theory and practice of physic : exhibiting the causes, symptoms, prognosis, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, including typhus, scarlet, and puerperal fevers, and diseases of children / by John Armstrong ; edited by Thornton G. Thompson.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the elements of pathology, and on the theory and practice of physic : exhibiting the causes, symptoms, prognosis, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, including typhus, scarlet, and puerperal fevers, and diseases of children / by John Armstrong ; edited by Thornton G. Thompson. 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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    INTRODUCTION. his fellows, and is consequently distinguished above them; and by such occurrences, in process of time, the foundation is at length laid for erecting physic into a separate profession. History informs us that, at a more advanced sera, the priests generally became the physicians. In ancient Egypt we find, that they had sacred books, written in hieroglyphics, containing what- ever medical knowledge they possessed; and while some applied the remedies, others prophesied and performed magic rites in their temples, the strong holds of ancient superstition and decep- tion. In the time of Herodotus, a change seems to have taken place, for he remarks that a division of labour then existed, some practitioners having been confined to the treatment of the affec- tions of the head, some to those of the eye, and some to those of the liver ; and we find a similar but voluntary division now in the British metropolis, where, in particular, so many practise hepati- cally, according to the prevailing fashion. The Greeks, who were the followers of the Egyptians in almost all departments of art and science, borrowed also their super- stitions, and, in like manner, had their pre.siding divinities, their temples, and their imposing services ; but, true to the Egyptians, they left the cure principally to nature, attending, however, to air, rest, diet, drinks, and the management of the mind. Hippocrates is said to have been the first man who separated physic from religion, and by thus divesting it of the superstitious adjuncts then in use, he set a distinguished example of studying physic in the right way. Praxagoras, Chrysippus, Hierophilus, and Erisistratus, pursued nearly the same path, and endeavoui-ed to extend their researches ; but still, like Hippocrates, they retained many prejudices descended from past times ; for the mind takes a tinge from surrounding circumstances, as light does from the mediiun through which it passes. The school founded at Alexandria was modelled after the Hippocratic method, and thus physic was dinded into the dietical, medicinal, and chirurgical, a much more rational division than the modern one of physic and surgery, since the science is one and the same. The empirics and dogmatists soon afterwards appeared, the one sect depending entirely on obscn-ation or
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