Volume 1

The surgical works of John Abernethy.

  • Abernethy, John, 1764-1831.
Date:
1815-16
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The surgical works of John Abernethy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    12/572
    collected and examined, as to render a more minute description of them unnecessary. If diseases could, like other objects which we mean to delineate, be placed in various points of view, and illuminated at pleasure, so as to shew distinctly their dilterent parts, one ac- curate representation would suffice; but we see them obscurely, and as knowledge in- creases, it serves, like light shining from dif- ferent places, to illuminate the various parts of the objects of our examination. For, as I have expressed it in the first edition of these writings, in proportion as we advance in knowledge, we are led to re- mark many circumstances in the progress of a disorder which had before passed without notice j but which, if known and duly attended to, would clearly point out the nature of the complaint. Hence the records of former cases are of much less value ; as the symptoms about which we are now anxious to enquire, have in them been entirely overlooked.” It therefore, becomes necessary that each writer should state those circum- stances to which he has been particularly attentive j