Lectures on Subjects Connected with Clinical Medecine, Comprising Diseases of the Heart (Volume 2); In Two Volumes (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. 1846. Excerpt: ... LECTURE XXXVm. ANGINA PECTORIS CONTINUED.--ITS CLINICAL HISTORY AND TREATMENT. CONDITIONS TO BE NOTED IN THE INTERVALS OF ITS PAROXYSMS. PARALLEL BETWEEN IT AND EPILEPSY RESPECTING THEIR TREATMENT. MANAGEMENT OF THE PAROXYSM. WHAT AUSCULTATION TEACHES. WHAT THE VARIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES OF ITS CLINICAL HISTORY. The cases already given offer a striking representation of angina pectoris in what concerns the paroxysm, displaying its essential conditions and its fatal tendency. But they are extraordinary cases. And extraordinary cases are often merely curious, and interesting only because they are curious. But sometimes they are interesting, because they furnish rare and fortunate opportunities of instruction; filling up gaps in our knowledge, or fortifying it with new proofs, and so giving it a higher degree of certainty than it had before. Thus the cases which have been recited seem to carry us a little beyond our former knowledge of angina pectoris. In the last lecture it was almost taken for granted, that the assemblage of symptoms constituting angina pectoris was to be found by turns in connection with all forms of unsoundness which belong to the heart. The fact, you may perhaps think, should rather have been verified by an appeal to numerous cases and dissections, especially since it was a good deal relied upon as a basis of our reasoning. But this would have been a long business. Let it then be enough for me now to refer you to a source, where this very fact is authenticated, and where indeed the whole learning of our present subject is set forth with admirable accuracy and comprehensiveness. My purpose however is to take what I have myself seen, and to comment upon it as I would Upon cases in the hospital. Have I then any thing more to say of the mere pa...