Excerpt from Medical Notes and Reflections

On topics of the latter class I have sought especially to associate pathology with physiology, the morbid with the natural and healthy states of the body, believing this principle of modern inquiry to be above all others fertile in sound conclusions, and far from being yet worked out to its full extent. If I might venture on giving any distinctive character to the volume, it would be that of aiming throughout at this object.

In one instance only have I indulged in any mere speculation, and this only interrogatively, as to an old hypothesis, regarded in its relation to modern science, and to the history of a remarkable disease. Many other points I have put as questions, finding them as such in my notes, and thinking it well, whenever it could be done, thus to mark the objects most open to inquiry. I have further taken the privilege, (which more than twenty years experience may perhaps be allowed to sanction, ) of commenting, on certain usage and details of practice, in which the character and usefulness of the profession, and, through them, the welfare of the public, are materially concerned.

On each subject treated of, I have brought together my notes in the manner best suited for perspicuity, adding whatever seemed necessary to give greater completeness to the reasoning, or to connect it with the inquiries of others on the same topics. In effect of this, much of the volume has been wholly written anew. I had at one time proposed the insertion of a greater number of the cases upon which its materials were founded, but I abandoned the intention, from a wish not to increase the size of the work, which this must largely have done. And for the same reason I have abridged into the form of notes many topics on which I had originally written at greater length.

As respects the arrangement of the subjects, it will be found a very desultory one, such as naturally arose out of the miscellaneous materials employed. In a few instances only have I thought it worth while to bring topics expressly together for their mutual elucidation. To have attempted this further would imply a more complete and consecutive work than that now offered to the public.

These, I think, are all the circumstances which need be stated in explanation of the form and matter of the volume. It will deeply gratity me, if hereafter I find cause to believe that it has contributed to science by any right views in the philosophy of medicine, or to practical good by any suggestions of value regarding the treatment of disease.

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