271 B24 1862 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE very early period at which a call has been made for a Second Edition of this Manual has prevented my attempting anything in its revision beyond verbal alterations and minor additions: in its plan and details the work remains the same. The rapid sale of the first edition proves that I was not in error in supposing that such an aid to clinical study would be acceptable to the younger members of the profession. And while I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for the hearty good-will with which my effort to supply an acknowledged deficiency has been received, and for the kindly tone of all the criticisms which have reached me; I cannot but feel that it owes its success more to the earnestness of purpose which characterizes the students of the present day than to any merit of its own. Conscious of its many imperfections, I hail its success as an omen for the future of yet higher aims and nobler efforts to place the science of medicine on a sure and solid foundation; and it will be my greatest reward to have contributed in any way to make its study more methodical, more exact, more logical, and thus to give stability to its doctrines and certainty to its practice. A. W. B. BRUTON-STREET, BERKELEY-SQUARE, |