A dissertation on the importance of physical signs in the various diseases of the abdomen and thorax / by Robert W. Haxall.

  • Haxall, Robert W. (Robert William), 1802-1872
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on the importance of physical signs in the various diseases of the abdomen and thorax / by Robert W. Haxall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    by every medical observer. As diseases were consequently viewed in different ways by differently educated and original intellects, we have an additional explanation for the many and diversified systems which have shared the common fate of a short-lived reputation. The man who wishes to bestow a lasting benefit upon the science, must enter upon the examination of disease with a determination to doubt every thing which cannot be proved ;—hypothesis must cease to be the groundwork upon which medicine is to rear her shrine, and the deductions which ought to be esteemed legit- imate, should be those only which can be drawn from incontrovertible analysis. We are constrained to admire, it is true, the graphically descriptive histories of Sydenham, and to yield an assent to the inductive reasoning which he institu- ted in opposition to the authoritative dogmas of the schools. Considering the condition of medicine at that period, it undoubtedly became indebted to him for a greater usefulness and extension of its resources ; and in questioning Nature, as he seems most diligently to have done, had he passed beyond the threshold of her temple and found his way into its more secret and intricate recesses, he would have remained a prominent example of one of the greatest reformersin medical opinion. the lose observation of general symptoms, or Strang. function, (we mean such as may be con- the physical signs hereafter to be noticed,) b practical importance to the physician, yet ^ they ch of their real value if they cannot be ultimateb ] to the pathological condition or lesion from Inch they proceed. The simple phenomenon of fever for example, maj .elong to an inflammatory state of various organs and were there not other signs existing to locate the diseased viscus, the probability-that a correct diagnosis would be made, or a successful treatment instituted, would be slender mdeed. Were it the case, however, on the other band, that this same phenomenon of fever was always and