A treatise on the principles and practice of medicine

Front matter

Class

Book

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Preface

So wide is the range of Modern Practice that an author who would cover it in a single volume, and a reader who would grasp it intelligently, must approach their respective tasks with the aid of thorough system. In the following pages an effort has been made to deal with the subject in this manner, from its main divisions, which follow the most rational classification, down to the subordinate paragraphs. Careful use has been made of types of various prominence to facilitate the finding of a topic and the appreciation of its importance. With the vast mass of material, an attempt has been made so to arrange the facts that the reader may grasp the process of reasoning.

Passing from these mechanical details to the characteristics which the author has endeavored to impress upon the book, it may be noted that, as far as possible, the causative pathology has been blended with the consecutive clinical features of disease, that reasons have been given for facts, that exceptions have been subordinated to what is usually found at the bedside, and that the allurements of typical clinical pictures and dogmatic generalizations have been avoided because they hold neither in practice nor at the postmortem table.

The author also conceives that a book on Practice should be welldirected, which implies that it should deal adequately with scientific theories and principles, but that it should recognize that the final object of its existence is the application of knowledge to the cure or alleviation ofjfiisease. Accordingly, an unusual amount of space has been devoted to'*treatmenfc, to the detailed consideration of drugs and to numerous formula? and prescriptions ready for the student to use or improve upon. The physiological action of drugs has been dwelt upon carefully because, in the writer's experience, the symptoms of disease are often confounded with those of the remedies exhibited for its cure.

The reader will also find a large number of tables giving the differential diagnosis of diseases likely to be confused, or in many instances, of entire subjects, such as those of the liver and kidney, the chief eruptive diseases and those of the typhoid group. They are practical though necessarily schematic. Nowadays the border-lines of surgery and medicine overlap, and the practitioner, internist and surgeon must

v vi PREFACE

be familiar with the province of each other. . For this reason, as far as the scope of the treatise admits, surgical indications and results are introduced.

The writer wishes to acknowledge the extremely careful attention bestowed by the Publishers upon every literary and typographical detail, and the assistance of Dr. F. G. Dyas and Dr. Milton Mandel in the proof reading.

A. R. E.

Chicago, 1907.