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. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...the Brain and Nervous System, without which the word "pathology" would be a misnomer--what can be expected from men whose treatment, being for the most part local in principle, is obviously directed to the wrong quarter of the body--the local disease not being the beginning, but the end! And not only do these people select the wrong place, but they address themselves, for the most part, to the wrong system of that place--to the sanguineous, instead of the pathetic system--applying leeches, and such like, locally, when they ought to be strengthening the general constitution by remedies, that through the brain and nerves influence, in a favorable manner, every part of that unity which we find in the body. By such remedies only can the great majority of these disorders, in reality, be cured. Scarcely one of these complaints will yield to mere local measures. Take the case of the Skin, for example. Who, with any experience of diseases of that tissue, would trust to merely local measures?--The remedies that cure cutaneous diseases are the remedies that cure Fever--remedies that act on the pathetic source of the whole tribe of so-called local diseases--such as Bark, iron, &c, which, instead of being locally applied are introduced into the body by the mouth and stomach. What are the local measures generally used by the specialists?--leeches that exhaust the reparative material of the part to which they are applied--blisters, which instead of soothing, irritate its pathetic nerves--mercury or iodine or nitrate of silver, in such modes and forms, that the whole health of the sufferer is thereby more or less irritated and deranged. Local measures then--especially the local measures employed by the specialists--more generally aggravate...

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