Rational medicine, its position and prospects : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 15th February, 1860 / by Stephen H. Ward.

  • Ward, Stephen Henry, 1819-1880.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rational medicine, its position and prospects : an oration delivered before the members of the Hunterian Society, on the 15th February, 1860 / by Stephen H. Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    26/52 (page 26)
    action modified to suit altered circumstances; and by the deduction in reference to practice, that we must economize, not depress or exhaust the reparative powers of the system. The modern pathology of which he is the exponent, is the key to the presumed powers of Nature in the cure of disease. He begins by showing that a change has for some time silently, but certainly, been taking place in the treatment of disease, especially of inflammations j which change, although not yet reflected in systematic works, is everywhere clinically recognized. He proves, conclusively, as I think, that such change in treatment is not due to any alteration in the type of disease—inflammation being the same now as it always has been—but to altered views of the character of so-called morbid processes. More recent histological research,^^ he remarks, ^^by exhibiting to us that inflammation is, in truth, a disease of nutrition, governed by the same laws that determine the growth and functions of cells, as they exist in the embryo and in healthy tissues, has united physiology and patho- logy into one science, and has removed our present knowledge still further from the errors of the past.'' He shows, as an inference from such views, *^that in- flammation having occurred, the great work to be accomplished is an increased growth by cell-formation, whereby the exudation is to be broken up, the pressure it exerts on the nerves and blood-vessels removed, and the whole rendered capable of being eliminated from the economy, either directly, by discharge externally, or indirectly, first, by passage into the blood; secondly, by