The renewal of life. Lectures: chiefly clinical

Preface

THIRD EDITION.

In two former editions I named the selection of clinical observations which I laid before the public " The flenewal of Life," intending thereby to intimate what is more fully stated in the first and second introductory chapters, that the main point for the physician's consideration in disease is the deficiency of vital action, and that all successful medical treatment is a renewal of that vital action. To my regret the words have been found strangely " open to misrepresentation" by several of the literary men engaged in reviewing the work. Such a risk seems to outweigh the advantage of expressing in an epigrammatical form the principles advocated, and has led me to take the unusual course of leaving out a great part of the title. But I am more than ever impressed with the importance of these principles in practical therapeutics, and have enforced them anew by revising carefully the original matter, dovetailing into it many remarks made to my vi PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

class on recent passing cases, and adding twenty-three new lectures, three given at the College of Physicians, and the rest in my post as a teacher of medicine at St. Mary's Hospital.

The original first lecture was published as a field for the discussion of conflicting theories by those who did me the honor of criticism. That object having been attained, and answers given in a concluding essay, the greater part of it has been omitted, and the remains interpolated elsewhere.

It may be remarked that most of the "Lectures," as here presented to the reader, combine materials orally delivered at several, and often at distant, times. These are obviously short fragments of lectures, made still shorter by the omission of the elementary instruction on diagnosis. They are here united under subjects, and to avoid chronological confusion the dates of their viva voce production are set at the head of each. I trust the disjointed aspect thus given will be pardoned, as we pardon, in a portfolio of sketches made on the spot, roughnesses inexcusable in the finished works of the studio.

T. K. C.

Contents

LECTURE I.

DEATH AND LIFE.

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