Notes on the Medical Treatment of Disease (Classic Reprint)

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Notes on the Medical Treatment of Disease The aim of this little work is to impress upon the student and young practitioner the broad principles of the medical treatment of the sick, and to urge the importance of method in dealing with patients. In the teaching of clinical medicine, the need of system in physical examination is fully recognized - thus the student is early taught to work in the order of inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation - but this system is sometimes lacking when one comes to treatment. No attempt is made here to discuss all treatment of all diseases. This would be manifestly impossible in the space, and, moreover, would defeat the end in view. In a volume of this kind, details and special treatments must be largely omitted or only hinted at. The student will get much minute instruction during his courses in the special branches of medicine, but it is hoped that what is here given may serve as a foundation upon which he may build that which he will gain from teachers and writers specially qualified to impart such information. All along, the effort will be made to impress upon the reader that we are not in practice dealing with disease, but rather with diseased individuals, which is quite a different thing. The question should not be, "what is the treatment of (let us say) pneumonia?" but rather, "how can we best care for the patient so that he may weather the pneumonic storm?" The ever-growing importance of the science of pharmacology is evident, and drug therapy is based upon it almost as much as is medicine upon physiology and pathology. At the same time, it must be conceded that we are still ignorant of how many of our best remedies act and, while always hoping and striving after a reasonable explanation of their modus operandi, we can only in the meantime use them because they have been found to do good. If a treatment called "X" tends to relieve a condition called "Y, " it is the duty of the physician to employ it even if he cannot yet give the values of "X" and "Y." Much of our best therapy is still empirical and must necessarily remain so for long. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.