The principles of theory indispensable to sound observation in the practice of medicine : a lecture introductory to a course of materia medica / by William Seller.

  • Seller, William.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of theory indispensable to sound observation in the practice of medicine : a lecture introductory to a course of materia medica / by William Seller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    on a level with the man who has made progress in allied parts of knowledge. We see here also why the man of previous acquirements is possessed of so much advantage over the other: it is not because his senses are more acute—it is not because he has become endowed with mental faculties of which the other is destitute, but because he has surveyed nature more exten- sively, he has laid up a store of knowledge drawn from her numerous departments, he has made progress in penetrating the general plan on which her laws proceed ; and this preli- minary preparation enables him to resist the inclination of his mind to connect successive events in the relation of cause and effect, unless when the inference is in conformity with the scope of the laws which he has before made the subjects of his study. It would be superfluous to proceed to show how closely these general reflections apply to the particular subject of Medicine. No one can consider for a moment how complex medical phenomena uniformly are—how little experiment is admissible in medical treatment—and how seldom any two cases of disease are exactly alike, without feeling the force of the application. In every part of Practical Medicine, it is easy to see, in the discrimination of diseases, as well as in the estimate of the results of treatment, there is a continual exercise of judgment in regard to the relation of cause and effect amidst phenomena not easily unravelled, and seldom recurring in exactly the same form. But to be imbued with the spirit of Physiology in its largest acceptation, is to enter into the plan on which health proceeds, on which diseases originate, and on which remedies operate. Without such a preparation there can be no sound observation in Medicine.
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