LECTURES IN PRACTICAL MEDICINE, DELIVERED IN THE HOSPITAL ST. BY PROFESSOR DUJARDIN -BEAUMETZ, PHYSICIAN TO THE COCHIN HOSPITAL, MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF MEDICINE THE TREATMENT OF NERVOUS DISEASES; OF GENERAL DISEASES; AND OF FEVERS. TRANSLATED BY E. P. HURD, M. D., Member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Vice-President of the Essex North Medical Society; one of DETROIT, MICH. GEORGE S. DAVIS. ROSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY IN THE FRANCIS A. COUNTWAY BRARY OF MEDICINE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This work, which my friend, Dr. Hurd, has so satisfactorily translated, and which Mr. George S. Davis (who has done much—in my estimation—to advance the cause of progressive therapeutics) now publishes, will, I hope, be found useful to American practitioners. The success which has attended the publication of these lectures in France, where the work, before its completion, had gone through four editions, and in foreign countries, where it has been successively translated into Spanish, by Dr. Reboles y Campos, of Madrid; into Italian, by Dr. Cozzolino, of Naples; into Greek, by Dr. Kyriazides—a translation into Russian is also in progress-shows the great interest which physicians of all lands are today manifesting in therapeutic advance. It has been my object to furnish a ready help to the busy practitioner, and especially, to young physicians commencing practice, by showing them how best to treat diseases, and by removing obstacles from their way. To attain this end, I have drawn largely from the published labors of all countries, for science is cosmopolitan, having no boundary lines. In order to judge of the value of the various medications in usage, one should always ask first, what are the clinical results? It is to this test that I have endeavored, impartially, to make appeal. My hospital opportunities have been great, and I have sought to obtain from them the utmost possible returns. Therapeutics, which, as a branch of medicine, has been so much neglected, I may almost say despised, since the commencement of this century, is to-day claiming its rights and its pre-eminent position being first in the hierarchy of medical sciences, and all the other studies being subservient to it. On all sides we now see tokens of splendid promise. Yesterday the leading interest was in resorcin, kairine, antipyrine, and other new antithermic medicaments, which enable us to be masters of the temperature; to-day it is in cocaine, with its marvellous local anesthetizing properties; to-morrow, or in the near future, it will be in the vegetal world, better known and applied to therapeutics, or in chemistry, by synthesis discovering new medicines, or in the protective benefits of attenuated virus creating media refractory to infectious diseases. The United States has not been behind in beneficent medical work; we owe already to this country of enterprise and of progress, the greatest therapeutical discovery of our age, and of ages to come: surgical anesthesia. Therefore, it is with extreme satisfaction that I have accepted the proposition of Dr. Hurd, and I take this occasion to thank him for the assiduity, pains-taking, and accuracy with which he has translated these lectures, which I hope will receive a favorable reception from my American confréres, with whom the entire body of French physicians has such hearty sympathy-sympathy created by the bonds of affection which have so long united France to the great Republic of the United States. PARIS, August, 1885. DUJARDIN-BEAUMETZ. |