Canadian Practitioner Volume 31 (Paperback)

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. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...cause and nature of disease, the outgrowth of original research and accurate scientific investigation by a host of earnest students the world over has already resulted in erasing from our nomenclature, a number of formidable diseases and in limiting the spread of deadly epidemics. Preventive Medicine.--The crowning glory of our profession in the future will be preventive medicine. The sphere of the general practitioner will become more and more circumscribed; that of the scientist will expand and keep step with the progress and advancements of preventive medicine. Rational preventive medicine had its origin contemporaneously with the foundation of the new science of bacteriologv, and its further development and sphere of usefulness must necessarily depend on the progress and expansion of the latter. We may confidently look to the near future for more men like Jenmr, liaffkine, Lister, Pasteur and Koch, who will do their good share in blotting out preventable diseases. Surgery has not been idle and has contributed its liberal part toward reducing the death-rate and diminishing human suffering. Based on the teachings of Pasteur and Lister, a system of aseptic and antiseptic precautions has been gradually perfected, which is now in force wherever modern surgery is practised, and which has been the means of almost entirely eliminating from wound complications the disastrous affections due to infection, and has greatly increased the range of operative procedures. Primary healing of wounds is now the rule, instead of the exception, as was the case only a quarter of a century ago. Hospital gangrene, the bla k monster of military and civil hospitals less than half a century ago, has disappeared from the face of the earth never to return....