An oration on the classification and nomenclature of diseases, with remarks on diseases due to treatment / by H.D. Rolleston, M.D., F.R.C.P., senior physician to St. George's Hospital; physician, Victoria Hospital for Children.

  • Rolleston, Humphry Davy, Sir, 1862-1944
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An oration on the classification and nomenclature of diseases, with remarks on diseases due to treatment / by H.D. Rolleston, M.D., F.R.C.P., senior physician to St. George's Hospital; physician, Victoria Hospital for Children. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of these four classes was subdivided into orders and these again into sections, genera, and species. Thus in the class fevers under Order III., exanthemata, the genus variola has two species, discrete and confluent. Subsequent noso- logists—Young and Mason Good—severely criticised Cullen’s confusion of genera and species. Cullen fully recognised the limitations of methodical nosology, and admitted that he could not surmount some of the difficulties by appending, after the four classes, a catalogue of diseases which for various reasons had not been allotted a place in the fore¬ going nosology. He, however, not unnaturally argued that, just as the earlier attempts at methodical classification in the natural sciences, particularly in botany by Ray, were unsatisfactory, but by subsequent elaboration became suc¬ cessful, so in course of time a perfect nosological classifica¬ tion should be attained. South of the Tweed the most important work on the subject was probably that by John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S., a Fellow of this society, and one of the most encyclopaedic and prolific medical writers of the past, who, as it seems to me, has been undeservedly somewhat forgotten. He has, indeed, sometimes been thought to be an American, because on the title-page of his works he describes himself as Mem. Am. Phil. Soc., and F.L.S. of Philadelphia. He was not on the staff of any hospital, but was in general practice in London, and is said to have translated Lucretius in the course of his walks to his patients. His “Physiological System of Noso¬ logy, with a Corrected and Simplified Nomenclature ” (1817), which met with the approval of the Royal College of Physi¬ cians, was based on symptoms, as were the previous classi¬ fications of Sauvages, Linnmus, and Cullen. He considered this to be the only method worthy of attention, and remarks epigrammatically that “of the seat of diseases we often know but very little ; of their causes far oftener still less. In this connexion it is interesting to note that after much discussion the committee of the first official nomenclature jof the Royal College of Physicians (1869) decided that the proposed classification should be based upon anatomical considerations. Good also wrote a “ Study of Medicine ” in 1822 in four volumes which, in a posthumous fourth edition (1834), was expanded into five volumes under the supervision of Samuel Cooper, a well-known surgeon to University College Hospital. The classification given in this work differs much from that of Cullen. Good gives six classes (I.) Coeliaca; (II.) Pneumatica, Diseases of the Respiratory System ; (III.) Hmmatica, Diseases of the Sanguineous Function, including the specific fevers, visceral inflamma¬ tions, suppurations ; (IV.) Neurotica, Diseases of the Nervous Function ; (V.) Genetica, Diseases of the Sexual Function ; and (VI.) Eccritica, or Diseases of the “ Excernent Function; included under this last head are corpulency, dropsy, tumours, and skin diseases. Each class has orders,.