Volume 1

Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1903-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/234 page 9
    INTRODUCTION. Medical science and art has heretofore busied itself with three aspects or phases of disease: 1. With the patient's complaint upon the day of con¬ sultation, or during the time of the special illness. Rightly but crudely the primary function of the physi¬ cian is held to be to get the patient over his present trouble and let the future take care of the future illness. The average physician will hardly recognize the remote causes which brought about the present disease, its far-off results, and the multiform relations of this special condition with others, physiologic and patho¬ logic, and with the habits, duties, and necessities of social life; even if these subtle causes and relations were sought and considered the patient would not recognize nor appreciate the service, and certainly would not pay for it. “ Make me well again and quickly, is his sole demand, and hence this must be the physician’s task. 2. When the physician has succeeded, or perhaps has failed, in this special duty, he thinks how he may treat other patients suffering from the same complaint, and he writes of his experience and of his success or fail-
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