A brief and intelligible view of the nature, origin, and cure of tubercular or scrofulous disease, illustrated by numerous cases : including, also, a manual for the application of electro-magnetism in this disorder / by John Fondey.

  • Fondey, John.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief and intelligible view of the nature, origin, and cure of tubercular or scrofulous disease, illustrated by numerous cases : including, also, a manual for the application of electro-magnetism in this disorder / by John Fondey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    as those which physicians occupy, should have depended so much upon the experience of their ancestors, and have exer- cised so little the judgment with which they themselves had been endowed by a benignant Creator. How degraded the condition of one who claims the possession of intelligence, and yet refuses to exercise that reason with which °he is' favoured, but relies wholly upon authority for his opinions, and no matter how contrary such opinions may be to the de- cisions of enlightened judgment, who, rather than appear singular, prefers to carry out the opinions and dicta of others; of those who having perhaps flourished long before him, have been placed in the temple of his reason as gods; before whom he bows down; and whose decisions, as though in- spired, have with him, apparently, all the sanctions of Divinity. These remarks apply in a special sense to the men of past days: in a lesser degree they apply to many of the present time, who, occupying the responsible position of medical ad- visers, have not as yet given up their blind deference to human authority, but pursue a course of professional effort, remarkable only for the amazing fidelity with which they carry out a plan of treatment, which some venerable and re- nowned Hippocrates of former days may have urged as that which was the be3t adapted for the removal of human dis- order; and which, no matter how unsuccessful in its results, they feel themselves bound at all hazards to conform to. ^ Medical mind has, however, like other mind, felt the ge- nial influence of the spirit of inquiry, which is so character- istic of the action of intellect during the present century; and bursting away its shackles, has darted forward on its path of independent and fearless investigation. The opinions of antiquity, when subjected to the test of reason, which has desired only the evolution of truth, if found to be in accord- ance with that reason, have been retained, and still more ar- dently venerated; while those whose value has only been de- rived from the fact of their antiquity, have been abandoned and discarded with as little regret, as a garment marred and worthless; their antiquity rendering them, so discordant were they with truth, only the more odious and repulsive. Not the least important field which medicine has presented^, for the investigation of this awakened medical mind, is that which has reference to Tubercular disease. Nor is this strange,