On Winter Cough, Catarrh, Bronchitis [&C.] Lectures (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1866 Excerpt: ... and enquiry, in order that I might devote all the time at our disposal to those which come more strictly within the limits of practical medicine. Again, I can but think that, as practitioners of medicine, we ought to look with far more interest upon anything that conduces to the cure or relief of the diseases which affect the largest number of persons, than any rare and solitary cases, however curious they may be. I have not hesitated, therefore, to devote a large amount of time and study to the very common and well-known class of cases which form the subject of these lectures. I have included them all under the crude name of "Winter Cough," because it expresses the one conspicuous symptom, common to them all, which especially brings such cases under the eye of the physician. All the patients had a cough, which was either limited to the winter season, or was much aggravated during that part of the year. However tedious and wanting in the excitement of novelty a common case of winter cough may be to the medical practitioner, there are few complaints which so painfully absorb the interest and attention of the patient; and as such cases are extraordinarily numerous in all ranks of society in this climate, they represent an enormous amount of human suffering, and from this fact alone demand our most earnest consideration. I need hardly tell you that at this hospital such cases abound in every form and variety, and afford the widest possible field for enquiry, whether it be into their symptoms and physical signs, their course and treatment, their consequences and terminations, or their causes and natural history. As two or more winters usually pass before the tendency of the complaint to recur or to become habitual is established in a patient's mind, these cases...