WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO PRACTICAL MEDICINE. LANE LIBRARY GUIDE TO THE KNOWLEDGE AND DISCRIMINATION BY J. M. DA COSTA, M.D., LECTURER ON CLINICAL MEDICINE, AND PHYSICIAN TO THE PHILADELPHIA HOSPITAL; FELLOW OF THE LIBRARY 11979 Illustrated with Engravings on Tetood. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1864.. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by J. M. DA COSTA, M.D., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. L71 DII 1869 PREFACE. My chief aim in writing this work has been to furnish advanced students and young graduates of Medicine with a guide that might be of service to them in their endeavors to discriminate disease. I have sought to offer to those members of the profession who are about to enter on its practical duties a book on Diagnosis of an essentially practical character,-one neither so meagre in detail as to be next to useless when they encounter the manifold and varying features of disease, nor so full as to be unwieldy and lacking in precise and readily-applicable knowledge. In executing my undertaking, two plans offered themselves: either to describe morbid states in compliance with the usual pathological classification followed in treatises on the Practice of Medicine, or to group them according to their marked symptoms. The former plan would have been far the easier, but the latter seemed to me the more suitable for a volume of this kind; and although it has involved much labor, and has rendered the task much more difficult of accomplishment, its advantages appeared to me so great that I have adopted it throughout. That this attempt at a purely clinical classification is not perfect, I am fully aware. But with all its shortcomings, I venture to hope that it will not be devoid of value as an aid in their studies to those for whom it is intended. Some of the statements made may appear too absolute, and as not taking sufficient notice of the many exceptions that may arise; but it was impossible to avoid this without very lengthy discussion: and even in the lengthiest discussion all exceptions and all possible points of fallacy would not have been mentioned; for Nature does not limit herself in her irregularities any more than in her rules. The text |