Differential Diagnosis and Treatment of Disease: A Text-Book for Practitioners and Advanced Students (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Differential Diagnosis and Treatment of Disease: A d104-Book for Practitioners and Advanced Students

To bring the broad domain of practical medicine fairly within the grasp of the family physician, and to assist the advanced student in acquiring a clin ical foundation has been my aim.

The general practitioner, representing the unity and connection of the various branches of medical practice, must grasp the practical details of his art in order to be useful at the bedside; and a book to be of value to the family physician should convey clinical experience Without the exhaustive and often purely theoretical details to be found and sought for in monographs. Such a work I have endeavored to write.

It has been my desire to reestablish the relations of internal medicine, surgery, and the several specialties; for this reason I have presented special istic methods from the view - point of the general clinician. Disease is neither medical nor surgical nor does it hover on the border lines, but the treatment of disease has become more surgical and the arbitrary division into medical and surgical disease is no longer tenable. This unitarian principle should not be ignored in the presentation of disease, and many methods of diag nosis and treatment originally worked out by the specialist have become, or should become, common property.

Drugs no longer dominate our therapeutics; therefore the prominence given to hygienic, prophylactic, dietetic, hydrotherapeutic, and physical methods of treatment. At the same time Well-tried and valuable formulae are distributed throughout the book.

In prescription writing the apothecaries' weight and not the metric system has been used. However, simple rules for converting one into the other are given.

The special chapters on the Technique of Diagnosis and Laboratory Aids, on Paediatrics, and the various specialties, on diseases of the Osseous, Muscular, and Articular System, on Nutrition and Diet, on the Management of Dropsy and Effusion, on Massage, Vibration, Dry Hot Air Treatment, Poisons and Anaesthesia, it is to be hoped will not be an unwelcome addition to a book on practice. Each chapter is prefaced by a synopsis of its contents and by brief introductory remarks on the clinical pathology of its subjects.

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.