The Albany Medical Annals 1896 Vol 17 PDF Download

Excerpt from Albany Medical Annals, 1905, Vol. 26: Journal of the Alumni Association of the Albany Medical College One member of the French school of the past century, Louis, famous on account of the introduction of a new method of scien tific observation, is of particular interest to us on account of his influence upon American medicine. His new method, now one of the commonest, was that of reaching conclusions by numerical analysis. As the result of this system he was the first to demon strate the futility of indiscriminate bleeding and blistering; but is probably best known for his great work on fevers, especially typhoid fever. At the time (1829) this last appeared the Paris school was in great favor with American students; Osler6 has col lected definite records of thirty-seven who afterwards attained more or less prominence at home. To several of these (gerhard, James Jackson, Jr., George C. Shattuck and Alfred Stille), stirnu lated by the influence of Louis's teaching, is due the credit of distinguishing between typhoid and typhus fevers and of definitely establishing the pathology of each - one of the most brilliant pieces of work based on close observation and correct deduction of which we have record in clinical medicine. To complete this sketch we must take a glance at therapy, the ultimate object, it must be admitted, of all investigations in medi cine, though curiously enough the advance in therapeutics has never been commensurate with the general progress. Until a hundred years ago therapy varied according to the prevailing school or system, always, however, with venesection as its sheet anchor and obscured by polypharmacy. This is not surprising, however, when we consider. That treatment was limited almost entirely to drugs - the old hygienic teaching of the early Greek physicians was now forgotten - and that the use of these drugs was almost entirely the result of chance, tradition or even of supersti tion. The manner in which many therapeutic measures arose is indicated in the following summary of Oliver Wendell Holmes' which refers to a few specifics which our art did not discover, and is hardly needed to apply. 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.