The Lettsomian lectures on the treatment of some of the forms of valvular disease of the heart / by A. Ernest Sansom.

  • Arthur Ernest Sansom
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Lettsomian lectures on the treatment of some of the forms of valvular disease of the heart / by A. Ernest Sansom. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    eclipsed, in numberless instances, as regards importance and usefulness the results obtained by those who might, from their mode of procedure, be deemed more practical men. But I dared not take a narrow path in mere hope. So I thought it best to review a subject which presents itself very frequently as a therapeutic problem to everyone who is daily occupied in the practice of medicine, and I chose the affections which my title indicates because for many years my thoughts have turned towards them. It seemed to me that it might fulfil a useful purpose if I reviewed our extant knowledge as to the treatment of valvular diseases of the heart, compared these with the results of my own experience, and made, perhaps, a few suggestions as to progress towards precision in the future. Then as to the point of view whence I could review the subject I felt some doubt. I could proceed from the thera- peutic agent to the disease, or from the disease to the agent. Here, with all my difficulty as to how to perform my task, I could not hesitate as to how not to do it. I would by no means enunciate a therapeutic dogma, crystallise it into a phrase, and marshal the facts in such wise as they should support it, and if they refused—so much the worse for the facts. Apart from the consideration that such dicta as Similia similibus curantur, Contraria contrariis, etc., present to my mind some of the most pernicious of hasty generalisations of our day, is the one consideration that they are based on the treatment of symptoms; and as I shall presently show that the diseases we are about to study are oftentimes accompanied by no symptoms at all, so the prac- tical application of the dogma becomes an impossibility, and its universality an absurdity. For many reasons I thought it best to consider the pheno- mena of disease first, and our treatment of them subsequently. My plan then will be to enunciate very briefly the bases on
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