On concussion of the spine : nervous shock and other obscure injuries of the nervous system in their clinical and medico-legal aspects / by John Eric Erichsen.
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On concussion of the spine : nervous shock and other obscure injuries of the nervous system in their clinical and medico-legal aspects / by John Eric Erichsen. 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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![Falls from horses 14. .died 1. ..recovered 6...disc]iargc(l 7 Simple foils . . . . 15 „ 1 )» 6 „ 8 Struck by branches . 4 „ 0 )) 4 „ 0 Blows from muskets . 3 „ 0 it 1 „ 2 Eailway accident 2 „ 0 jt 1 „ 1 Bacon has truly said, ' They be the best physicians which, being learned, incline to the traditions of expe- rience, or, being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.' The same remark is applicable to surgeons, and that observation is as true at the present day as when it was made, nearly three hundred years ago. Yes, truly, Gentlemen, if you are ' empirics,' in- cline to the methods of learning. Do not trust wholly to your own ' empiricism;' in other words, to your own individual experience ; but learn what has been seen by others of equal, perhaps of greater, expe- rience than yourselves ; as accurate in observing, and as truthful in recording. The study of the works of such men is not a vain and futile learning, but one replete with valuable results. In reading their works, you feel that you come into direct communion with these great men,—with the Boyers, the Bells, and the Coopers,—and from them you will learn many a lesson of practical wisdom, the direct result of their accurate observations. But you may go further back than the writings of these great men, and you will find scattered here and there throughout medical literature some most in- teresting cases that bear upon this very point. You will find much in this literature that anticipates what are often erroneously supposed to be more recent dis- coveries. Many a man, imagining that he has struck out a new vein of truth, has found that years ago it had been explored and the ore extracted by his pre-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21950441_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
