PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE. AN ELEMENTARY VIEW OF THE CAUSES, NATURE, TREATMENT, DIAGNOSIS AND PROGNOSIS OF DISEASE. PRINCIPLES OF MEDICINE. AN ELEMENTARY VIEW OF THE CAUSES, NATURE, TREATMENT, DIAGNOSIS AND FROGNOST: WITH BRIEF REMARKS ON HYGIENICS, OR THI PREFACE. In this work the attempt is made to place the practice of Medicine on a footing somewhat corresponding with that of Physiology, Chemistry, and other sciences which equally depend on the accurate observation and rational arrangement of facts. If our knowledge of the healthy body, and of its parts and functions, be exact, it ought to be our best guide in the study of the same parts and functions in a state of disease. Yet the habit has long prevailed, and even still has its avowed advocates, of regarding the phenomena of disease as a new and separate order of things, the character and laws of which are to be investigated by themselves, and without reference to the standard of health from which they deviate; as if diseases were independent entities, and as if the body under their influence ceased to possess the same structures and functions which it has in health. Happily, however, such irrational dogmas do not now find much favour with the members of our profession, who, in proportion as they become more enlightened by sound physiology, recognise in it, when combined with careful clinical and pathological observation, the best guide to the understanding and treatment of disease. It must be admitted that there remain considerable doubt and obscurity in many subjects, both in Physiology and in Medicine, and the science of one and the art of the other must, therefore, still be acknowledged to be imperfect; but no one can dispassionately look back on the progress which has been made in both departments within the last thirty years, without being encouraged to hope for increasing precision in the science and greater success in the art. For an additional proof of the existence of a growing interest and confidence in rational medicine, I may perhaps be excused in referring to the success of the former editions of this work. When first I communicated to my publisher my intention of bringing out a work on the Principles of Medicine, I was by no means encouraged by the intimation that books on that subject did not |