Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche.
- René La Roche
- Date:
- 1854
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![bearing on the question at issue, derived from reliable sources in various sections of the globe, and from the results of my own per- sonal observation ; for having examined, to the best of my ability, the subject in all its bearings; for having demonstrated, in as for- cible a way as I have been able, that the idea of the identity under consideration is founded on insufficient and incorrect data, and is, in fact, little more than a dream of the imagination; and, at the same time, for having proved that etiologists who regard the various forms of autumnal fevers as due to the action of particular poisons floating in the dtmosphere of specific localities, have just cause for entertaining that belief. This, I repeat, is all I have attempted to perform. Nature has, I think, given me a decided taste for certain inves- tigations—a large share of power of application—some degree of aptness, as I have been told, to observe and reason correctly. At the same time, cii'cumstances have often been such as to allow me leisure to indulge my inclination for research; while, during the third part of a century that I have been attached to the medical profession, my opportunities for observation have neither been few nor neglected. But to originality of thought, or the ability to make striking discoveries, I can lay no claim. Indeed, were I so gifted, I am not sure that I should not endeavour to restrain the exercise of these powers, for fear of entering into the boundless field of hy- pothesis. On this subject my mind has long been made up; and from all I have seen, I can entertain no doubt, that more good is to be effected by a patient accumulation and comparison of im- portant facts, and by endeavouring to draw from the whole correct philosophical deductions, than by adopting a different course, too common among the professional writers of this country and else- where ; who, discarding the results of the experience of former and present times, and relying exclusively on their own too often scanty observations, make up for their other deficiencies by an mdulgence in theoretical explanations; and sneer at the patient, slow, and cautious observer, and the erudite student. That the tendency to the course here adverted to is displayed by a goodly number <g physicians among us is, as you know full well, too true to be denied. It has long been to me, and to others on whose natural good sense, sound judgment, and medical scholarship we ]nay rely, a source of deep solicitude; threatening, as it does, if allowed to eontmue unchecked, to affect injuriously our literary and scientific](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2474945x_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
