PREFACE. It is now ten years since I published some "Pathological and Practical Observations on Diseases of the Abdomen," a work in which I detailed the examination and investigation of numerous instances of disease; but it has since been intimated to me, that my own. experience, without these pathological observations, would be useful to the practitioner, and in the present small volume, the result of many years of experience in hospital, as well as in private practice, is placed before the notice of my readers. There are some truths which are continually impressed upon the mind of the physician, and perhaps none more forcibly than the importance of endeavouring to cure the patient, rather than of merely seeking to treat the disease. There is an unity of morbid, as well as of healthy action in the living organism, for one part cannot be affected without the sympathy of the whole; and thus, whilst the present work is exclusively devoted to some clinical observations upon gastric disease in its various forms, we have sought to regard it in its general relation to other parts of the system. The careful analysis of individual cases leads us spontaneously to follow that mode of grouping, which is both truthful in its character, and useful for diagnosis and treatment; and the experience of the author has led him thus to classify those forms of disease, which are naturally associated together. 22, Wimpole Street, Cavendish Square. W. |