Trans Action (Volume 20-21) (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. 1891. Excerpt: ... as if there were no question but that by purely inductive investigation we can learn all that is knowable of vital processes. 2d. To regard these changes as effects of causes, one of which causes is immaterial life, is at least not out of harmony with any known fact. We may regard as one of the foundation-stones of homoeopathy the fact that in each tissue change of disease one element has been that which Hahnemann in his Organon called spirit-like or dynamic. To study morbid histology, ignoring that element, is to study very superficially. To study morbid histology with regard for that element may set many a man upon the inquiry, What is the law of cure? To that inquiry he could find but one correct answer. PATHOLOGY AS IT RELATES TO SYMPTOMS. BY T. P. WILSON, M. D., DETROIT. As we know nothing of the essential nature of disease, we are compelled to study only its effects. As the path of the tornado or the line of the thunderbolt contains all we can tell of certain great forces of nature, so the effects of whatever sort or kind produced in living tissues are all we can tell of the secret force which produces the manifold conditions known as morbid states. In making these general statements I do not mean to lose sight of the fact that etiology, looking into the causes of disease, affords us much valuable information, and that that information is an indispensable part of the physician's study. Etiology, however, lies outside of our present purpose, which is to study the symptoms produced in the body by the morbific force. In short, we have in view only symptomatology. Now it so happens that this force expends itself, as do all other known forces, in accordance with well defined modes. Out of what seemed at first to be a chaos of morbid phenomena, we have be...