The Monthly Cyclopaedia Of Practical Medicine 1904 Vol 18 Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Monthly Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine The successor of the "Annual," the "Analytical Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine," was framed with the same underlying thought as guide. It is not within our power to state whether these purposes have at all been attained, or whether, apart from their immediate usefulness to the practicing physician, these works have ever opened new channels of thought; we can say, however, that we have always deemed it our duty to closely follow the development of the various branches of medical science as the yearly panorama passed before our eyes, in the hope that we might eventually collate the necessary elements for a more solid foundation than Medicine now possesses. The present volume is submitted to the profession as the result of our efforts in this direction. The pre-eminent impression which has been our beacon in the preparation of this work differs somewhat from the interpretation of the status of medical science published by the distinguished authors mentioned, in that we have been led to regard the majority of hypothetical conceptions now interspersed throughout the many subdivisions of medical science as temporary, though artificial, factors. Our knowledge of a given disease, for example, might, as viewed from our standpoint, be compared to a chain in which the majority of links are of gold and the rest of lead, pending the acquisition of sufficient gold to replace the lead. Thus construed. Medicine seems to us to acquire its proper position among allied sciences, while the many investigators who have devoted their life to its welfare and progress also find their labors fitly represented in its annals. Indeed, the list of these patient workers should be greatly increased if the views submitted in this volume are sound, for the data contained therein - the very ones that have presented the strongest claims to recognition - were found in literature of the kind that often lies dormant many years before its true worth is brought to light. That thousands of such contributions exist we were able to ascertain: an auspicious feature of our earlier work, which showed that we were not dependent upon the "observations and experiments" the future alone would contribute to begin the elimination of "theoretical systems" and replace them, if possible, with others of a more durable kind. Our earlier investigations included a careful review of prevailing doctrines concerning the nature of vital processes, particularly in respect to the physiological chemistry of cellular metabolism. Notwithstanding our intense desire to acquire elucidative data from the existing literature of the subject, we found it impossible to advance one step beyond the position taken by Professor Foster in 1895 when he wrote: We cannot trace the oxygen through its sojourn in the tissues. 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."