Dissertations on the question How far are the external means of exploring the condition of the internal organs to be considered useful and important in medical practice? : for which premiums were adjudged by the Boylston Medical Committee of Harvard University, 1836 / by Oliver W. Holmes, Robert W. Haxall, and Luther V. Bell.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Date:
- 1836
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Dissertations on the question How far are the external means of exploring the condition of the internal organs to be considered useful and important in medical practice? : for which premiums were adjudged by the Boylston Medical Committee of Harvard University, 1836 / by Oliver W. Holmes, Robert W. Haxall, and Luther V. Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![as it still is, the most important subject of medicine* We can hardly conceive of a state of medicine so imperfect or of society so rude, but that the study of symptoms must have preceded the study of curative indications. And did the occasion or our prescribed limits warrant, it would be an interesting subject of research to examine how far the suc- cessful cultivation of the true end of medicine, the means of treating disease, has kept pace with the art of detecting simi- larity of internal changes, by the correspondence of external symptoms, and whether the true and valuable application of remedial agents is not grounded solely upon the basis of symptoms and experience. To arrive at the ability to judge of the identity of internal alterations and conditions through their external signs, and thus to obtain the data for the application of former ex- perience, is the end of the science of symptomatology. It is, in short, the learning to understand the obscure lan- guage of disease, without rightly interpreting which, its calls cannot be attended and supplied. The division of symptoms into vital or physiological and physical, is a sound one. Though the judicious student of diagnosis will never allow the advantages which might accrue from the duo consideration and combination of both, to be lessened by over partiality for either, it may still be asserted that the latter are the more constant, and of course less likely to mislead ; and it is upon them that the distinctive characters of disease will be most certainly decided. Amongst individuals affected with entirely different organic * Puisque le diagnostic n'est autre chose que la connaissance exacte d'un 6tat morbid present, il est facile de scntir toute son importance, son utilite, et meme son indispensable nfeceeste pour le medecin practicien, et d'apprecier sa grand influence sur la traitement des maladies. En effet, comment osera-t-on d( terminer un mode curatifavant d'avoir fait un seve're cxamen des signes diagnostiques, de sYtrc bien assure du siege du mal et d'en avoir rcconnu l'ei „ses, les eftets ? C'est ici quil faut dire avec Baillou : Mtequam de i, „,,,,, /#, lmum constarc f)])orM . ^ 1ms, ct quae morbi wum: atioque irndiHs opera, inutile omne consilium -](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21129253_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
