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Lectures on the principles and practice of physic v.1
Lectures on the principles and practice of physic v1 Author:Thomas Watson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE II. Pathology—meaning of the term. Pathology, general and special. Morbid alterations of the solid parts of the body. Alterations in bulk. Hypertrophy... more »—laws of its production—its effects. Atrophy—its causes and consequences. Changes in form. Alterations in consistence. Induration—its various kinds. I Propose to devote several lectures, in the commencement of the course, to pathology, as it relates to medicine. And I must first of all explain to you what I mean by the term pathology. Many persons speak of pathology as if it were the same thing with morbid anatomy. That is not the sense in which I purpose to use the term. Pathology is morbid anatomy, but it is something more. A knowledge of pathology (in the full and proper acceptation of the word) implies indeed a knowledge of altered structures and of diseased conditions;—but it implies also an explanation of these —a knowledge of what precedes them, and a knowledge of what results from them. It comprehends therefore the following particulars :—1. A knowledge of the material changes to which the several parts of the living body are subject in disease: 2. A knowledge of the processes or actions whereby these changes may be wrought: 3. A knowledge of the causes which may set these processes on foot: and 4. A knowledge of the consequences of the same changes, or of the symptoms they occasion. On some of these points our actual knowledge is still scanty and imperfect. Yet a good deal of valuable information has been collected concerning each of them, and this I shall endeavour to place before you as distinctly, and at the same time in as small a compass, as I can. Pathology is general or special. General pathology treats of the morbid conditions which are common to the entire system, or to the whole of e...« less