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Show 152 FlirrirlatiOns of opinions and practice in fever. the consideration of degrees of diSease would be very justly brought in here by the advocates for the similarity of diseased action in the two complaints. Nor can the consideration of graduated etfect be overldoked in any of the processes of nature. With regard to practice, however, degree is kind. A difference in degree of force in an exciting cause, or in the susceptibility of the recipient, will call fora difference of kind in the healing process. 163 The inhabitants in general of our European countries (for the orientals are more modest) easily persuade themselves that their own physicians are the best existing. Nay, I have heard the people belonging to a small town and petty sect lament the lot of the rest ofmankind, because they could not be attended by the apothecary of their borough or their meetirw. ‘Vithout narrowness, one may assert that no country, that alone which produced the incomparable Hippocrates excepted, can boast a name in medicine equal to Harvey, Sydenham, Hunter, or Jenner, tho-ugh Bichat seems to have Hudzmz‘ions of opinions and practice in fewer. Sztpervelzing diseases, we see, are held up as the sevenfold shield by which the doctrine is to be defended againt all anatomical objections. If they be sutiicient for its defence, it is im- been prevente‘donly by the shortness of his life from attaining equal pre-eminence'. We are justified by more than Swift's rule for estimating excellence in believing that our own medi~ cal chiefs-our principcs medicinae-are the universal chiefs of medicine. For no other nation Ventures to rank their own higher; and by every portant to have shewn that fever is as dangerous from the disposition which it gives to neutral ours are preferred. But since Sydenham emancipated the sufferers under fever from heat these disorders as the and alexipbarmics, no mind ofthe highest order brain, nay perhaps exceptions are more nu- has been intently fixed upon this class of dis»' merous than examples in favour of the rule. Whatever opinion be adopted, too much can l'ringlc, Huxham, Cleghorn, Clark eases. and Fordyce, who have done so much and left hardly be done to recal attention, so long led astray by the fallacious efforts of ingenuity, to so much to do on this subject, have been at least equalled by Wcrlhoff, Torti, De Haen, Stoll, from its attack on Sarcone, that accumulation of evidence which the senses have afforded of the frequency of these super- vening diseases. The Cera, Passolongo, Marteau, Rush. For the useful labourers in medicine-4mm of patient1:. 9 VlflNl NlO |