Volume 1

Lectures on the principles and practice of physic : delivered at King's College, London / by Sir Thomas Watson.

  • Watson, Thomas, Sir, 1792-1882.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the principles and practice of physic : delivered at King's College, London / by Sir Thomas Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    105/936 (page 85)
    In our investigations into the causes of disease, great caution is necessary in order to avoid being misled by individual cases. The circumstances capable of influencing the bodily health are so various—so many of them are apt to be in operation at the same time—and so little power have we of excluding them, one after the other, so as to ascertain the exact efficacy of each—that our observations respecting their relative or their actual effects are open to much fallacy. We endeavour to escape this source of mistake by repeating and multiplying our observations. But it is by tracing diseases as they affect considerable masses of men, placed as nearly as possible under the same external circumstances, that we gain the surest and most satisfactory evidence in respect of the causes of disease. And hence it is that the experience of the medical officers of our fleets and armies is so valuable. Dr. Alison has well remarked, that all the circumstances of the whole number of men whose diseases fall under the notice of military and naval practitioners are, in many respects, exactly alike : the men are generally healthy adults in the first instance; the circumstances in which they are placed are thoroughly known to the observer, and indeed are often to a certain degree at his disposal; they are often suddenly changed also, and changed sometimes as to one poi-tion of the whole mass of individuals, while they remain unchanged as to another portion; so that his opportunities of observation partake in some measure of the nature of experi- ments, and being made upon a large scale, they are especially interesting and conclusive. In point of fact a great deal has been learned, with absolute certainty, upon this subject. Hitherto I have simply enumerated the principal causes of disease; but conceiving a bare enumeration of this kind to be of little use, I shall enquire somewhat more nearly into the nature and mode of operation of several of them noiv : of others I prefer to speak in connection with the particular diseases to which they give rise. You will not consider the enquiry superfluous. To know the cause of a disease is sometimes to be able to cure, often to be able to prevent it. In some cases the cause is beyond our power, but an acquaintance with its nature may teach us how to moderate or to remedy its consequences. There are many diseases over which medicine has very little control, but the causes of which, when ascertained, may be avoided, counter- acted, or extinguished. Such causes, when they do not happen to be removable by individual efforts, are often susceptible of