On the treatment of pulmonary consumption : by hygiene, climate, and medicine : with an appendix on the sanitaria of the United States, Switzerland, and the Balearic Islands / by James Henry Bennet.

  • Bennet, James Henry, 1816-1891.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of pulmonary consumption : by hygiene, climate, and medicine : with an appendix on the sanitaria of the United States, Switzerland, and the Balearic Islands / by James Henry Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    12/332
    ascended many Alpine ranges, it often strikes me that man's mental vision as he advances in life may be compared to the ocular vision of the traveller who ascends a mountain. He starts, at early dawn, full of life, strength, and enthusiasm, but at first, at the base of the mountain, he sees but little, only what is near and around him. Thus he makes many mis- takes, falls into many quagmires. As the day pro- gresses he rises higher and higher, and simultaneously his vision expands. He no longer merely sees the objects just around him ; he grasps those far off—the road he has traversed, that which he has still to encounter, the ravines and dangers passed, and some —and some only—of those that have still to be met. But the higher he gets, the more he sees, the more his strength flags. So it is in Medicine. As our experience of disease increases, when we have followed its developments in several generations of human beings, we learn bo take more comprehensive views, to attach less im- portance to local morbid manifestations, more impor- tance to general laws, to hereditary, constitutional, social, hygienic conditions. It is, after all. bo this comprehensive clinical experience of disease thai we must appeal in such discussions as the one which is ]v\ iewed in t his essay. Tin Ferns, Wi j bridgi . Surrey, Oct. 1871.