Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by LEA AND BLANCHARD, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PHILADELPHIA: T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. TO THE STUDENTS OF MY CLASS, IN THE SESSION OF 1846-7, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY Dedicated, BY THEIR GRATEFUL FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER TO A FRIEND. DEAR SIR: I send you a new Medical book, which I beg you to accept as a testimonial of my respect and affection. I have not dedicated it to you, because it belongs to the Gentlemen to whom I addressed the Letters of which the volume consists. I shall be obliged to you if you will look at it, and tell me whether you think I have committed an unpardonable breach of the forms of our Science, by writing with such a freedom and abandon as you shall here find. Dr. Forbes, in his last article, in the British and Foreign Medical Review, tells us it is a lamentable truth that the eminent. practitioners of England neither read nor buy medical books; and I fear a chief reason of it is to be found in the dulness and jargon which characterize so many medical writings. I am sure that, excluding such as treat of the Physiology of Man, many are very tiresome and disgusting; for, the Doctors seem not to have heeded the lines of Horace, where he says: "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, I have endeavored, according to my poor ability, to tell the truth about our Science and Art, and in doing so, to avoid the dulness and I thought the honestest way for a man to speak is, to speak what he thinks, in his own tone and manner, and not to come before the public under a false disguise. The young gentlemen who composed my Class, were accustomed, all winter, to hear me say just whatever the occasion prompted me to say to them, without any reservation of mine, from distrust of them; for I went into the Lecture room with my heart in my hand; and it is in the same fashion that I have sent them these Letters. Indeed, when I promised to write for them, I engaged to adopt the most familiar style, saying, "I will write in the same language I should address to any one of you, whom I might be instructing, in my library here at home." You will see that I have kept my promise. Whether such a mode of writing may prove agreeable to the brethren, so as to meet their approbation, remains to be seen. If I have failed, let us hope that some one else will try some other method to get rid of our medical dulness, and our time-honored clergyableness; for, to judge of the medical student of the present day, by comparing my own student life with his, I cannot but think he must still find the books as tedious and uninteresting as they used to be when we were young men like them. As to the doctrine and the precept of these Letters, I should suppose, I have a right, at this stage of my life, to be heard upon them and having felt it an occasion of self-reproach, that I could never find time, in the winter curriculum, to fulfil my duties as Lecturer on Diseases of Females and Children, I have taken occasion to speak to my Class through the press. In doing so, I cannot but stand before the public. Flaccus says, "Scribendi recte, sapere est et principium et fons.” You will be able to judge whether I have said that which is naught as to the diseases treated of herein. Certainly, I have had much opportunity to see the things spoken of, and if the book turns out useless or disagreeable, mine is the fault. You, who have seen so much, may be my competent and dispassionate judge. Let me tell you, though, my dear Hodge, that the whole of these 660 pages have been begun and finished since the month of May last. They have none of the nonum prematur in annum merit, therefore—and I wish you to understand, that, I have been obliged to do the whole of the work, in addition to my diurno-nocturnal task of visiting the sick. I cannot, under these circumstances, claim for it the same consideration as might be due to essays carefully revised and finished; and I have a just right to make this apology. But, shall people, who desire to make a contribution to the art that has absorbed their whole existence, refrain from doing so from a fear of offending in the matter of their manner? Would that be American-like? And shall they go out of the world making no sign?-Beaufort was asked but to hold up his hand, but "he died and made no sign." I wish you would make a sign for us; we all wish so. |