Volume 1

The standard physician : a new and practical encyclopaedia of medicine and hygiene especially prepared for the household / edited by Sir James Crichton-Browne [and others].

Date:
1908-1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The standard physician : a new and practical encyclopaedia of medicine and hygiene especially prepared for the household / edited by Sir James Crichton-Browne [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    iH-ing irreparably damaged and cri})pled by loudly vaunted and costly but iulile specifics, and by cures that are no cures ; and untold suffering and misery are caused by the neglect of simple sanitary precautions and by the postponement ot medical treatment until the peiiod when it might have been eflicacious has ])assed. The corrective for all this is the diffusion of sound medical knowledge in words easy to be understood df the people. The teaching of hygiene and temperance, and of the rudiments of anatomy and physiology in schools, will lay a good loundation. Health visitors and leaflets and lectures will keep interest m these (piestions ahv’e, and it is hoped that these volumes will supply a standard by w’hich to test current medical theories and nostrums, and give trustworthy information in emergencies, and jiractical indications in these simple ailments, in w’hich the assistance of the doctor is unnecessary, as w'ell as directions for first aid in graver I maladies, at their outset, before the doctor’s assistance is available. It is ignorance and self-sufficiency that are the bane of medical science and ])ractice, and by hel})ing to dispel these The Standard Physician must conduce to a timely resort to skilled medical advice. It teaches that medical science is not a mysterious cult and happy hunting ground for the unscrupulous pretender, but is founded on physiological jirinciplcs that are intelligible to all, and that medical ju'actice cannot be conducted by rule-of-thumb, but only in accordance with a system of knowledge, accpiired by careful training and prolonged experience, and applied by judgment, insight, and technical skill, and under a sense of resjionsibility. It will discourage the rash and jiresiimptuous amateur by giving prominence to the jiroj^er limits of domestic medication, beyond which lies danger, and it will awaken to a jnster recognition of the part the medical man should })lay both in remedial and jirophylactic medicine. It will convince those who study it that the family physician, not in book form, but in the flesh, should be not merely the medicine-man in sickness, but at all times the medical ofhcer ot health and privy councilk')r of the household. A clear and rational comprehension of the nature of disease and of its antecedents, and of the preliminary measures by which its inroads may be resisted, must impart alike confidence and caution. Keleience to this work, which is simple and intelligible in style, whll in large degree prevent the misapprehensions that now' frequently arise