Physician and Patient Author:Worthington Hooker This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...supposition or theory, and this directs all his future inquiries. He of course obtains a very partial knowledge of the fa... more »cts, and this is mingled with errors. And so it is with him in his investigation of medical subjects. He is a theorizing practitioner. Another makes many inquiries, but they are of a rambling character. He finds out many of the facts in regard to the article, but by no means all of them His observation is active, but it is without method and incomplete. Though he will be diligent in the investigation of disease, and will appear to most persons to be an acute and skilful observer, he never will obtain a thorough and complete knowledge of any case. Another, by a natural succession, of inquiries, discovers one fact after another, till he knows the whole. He does not ask a single irrelevant question. The answer to every question either developes a new fact, or confirms one already discovered. He separates accurately the probable from the true, wholly rejecting the merely plausible. He frames no theory. His search is only for facts. You may be sure that he will be a skilful observer in the sick room, and that in the investigation of disease he will be constantly adding to his store of valuable and well-arranged facts. Do you wish to ascertain what characterizes a physician's measures in the treatment of disease? Instead of watching his practice, of which, as you have seen, you cannot judge with any good degree of correctness, observe what measures he proposes when acting, not in the capacity of a physician, but in that of a citizen, a neighbor, a member of an association, and what reasons he gives for these measures. If you find that he advocates measures which show common sense, shrewdness, and good judgment, and which...« less