On the influences of mechanical and physiological rest in the treatment of accidents and surgical diseases, and the diagnostic value of pain : a course of lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in the years 1860, 1861, and 1862 / John Hilton.

Hilton, John, 1804-1878.

Date:: 1863

Credit: On the influences of mechanical and physiological rest in the treatment of accidents and surgical diseases, and the diagnostic value of pain : a course of lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in the years 1860, 1861, and 1862 / John Hilton. 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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$I-.] the pathology and symptomatology of the most important surgical diseases. Histology, general anatomy, and physi- ology have been so perfectly elaborated here as to bring under your attention their most recent discoveries ; and it appeared to me that my forerunners had left to me, for the present, but one unoccupied department—namely, that of Therapeutics. By Therapeutics, however, I do not mean to imply the action of drugs, which more especially belongs to the department of the physician; but by this term I would imply the influence of what I may venture to call Natural Therapeutics in the cure of surgical diseases. The chief of these is one so apparently simple as to make me almost apologize to you for selecting it. It is Eest— Physiological as well as Mechanical Eest, which I hope to prove in the course of these lectures is so important as to demand the very serious attention of every practical surgeon. Eegarding this subject of Eest in its highest, closest, and best relation to mankind, and looking at it by the aid of my feeble penetration, I would, in all humility, remind you that when Gocl ordained that man should Eve by the sweat of his face, as a punishment for Iris disobedience, it pleased Him, in the plenitude of His unspeakable benevolence, to consecrate the mani- festation of His power and His goodness by permitting man's fatigue and temporary exhaustion to be followed by his greatest earthly solace,—the blessing of rest and repose, by calm and peaceful sleep ; a blessing which should be the immediate reward of his labour. Nature devoting her best efforts, during this period of rest and sleep, to repair those powers which may have suffered exhaustion, to renovate the bodily strength, and to restore the mental vigour, mitigates man's punishment by a source of real and refreshing enjoyment, enabling him to resume his labour in aU the delightful vigour of a re- newed existence. Entertaining, as I do, the most exalted admiration of Nature's powers of self-reparation, the thought has not \ unfrequently occurred to my mind, when watching cases of extensive local injury, What would have been the condition of man on earth, had it pleased the Creator to b 2$