OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE; DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AND JUNIOR PRACTITIONERS. BY GEORGE GREGORY, M.D. LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, IN LONDON ; GENERAL DISPENSARY. "Ratio nisi studia dirigat, studia rationem non perficient."-BAGLIVI. FOURTH EDITION, REVISED, ALTERED, AND ENLARGED. LONDON: BALDWIN AND CRADOCK, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1835. 545. TO. SIR JAMES M'GRIGOR, BART., M.D. F.R.S. AND K.C.T.S. DIRECTOR - GENERAL OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, &c. &c. My dear Sir James, A warm admiration of your unceasing and successful efforts to uphold the character of the medical department of the Army, and a grateful recollection of many acts of personal kindness, were the motives which prompted me to place the former editions of this work under your auspices; and they operate now with that increased force which new obligations, a longer tried friendship, and accumulated claims to respect, create. It has been my study, by careful revision, to render this volume more worthy of your patronage, and of those flattering recommendations of the work which you have been pleased to express officially. To be held up as a guide to the Junior Medical Officers of the Army in the discharge of their arduous duties, is an honour of which I may justly be proud, and which my utmost efforts have been exerted to deserve. I gladly seize the opportunity thus afforded to me of gratefully acknowledging such favours, to avow the high respect and esteem with which I am, PREFACE. THE object of the author, in the following pages, is to lay before the student an outline of the theory and practice of medicine, unbiassed by attachment to any professed principle, and to delineate those views of pathology which appear to direct the reasonings, and to give a tone to the language, of medical writers at the present period. The general design of the volume coincides very nearly with that of Dr. Cullen's First Lines, a work which, for perspicuity of description, acuteness of reasoning, and elegance of language, will probably long continue unrivalled, and which, for its various merits, is justly classed among the standard classical works in medicine. It cannot be concealed, however, that many of the theoretical speculations in which Dr. Cullen indulged are in a great measure forgotten; that much which he thought important is now neglected, and much that he neglected has since risen into consequence. This must ever be the fate of medical authors, and their productions. In the progress of years, new views of disease will naturally arise, and the general aspects of the science be materially altered. Forty-five years have elapsed since the death of Dr. Cullen, during which long period, a general spirit of improvement has pervaded every branch of medi |