THE INDIGESTIONS OR DISEASES OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS FUNCTIONALLY TREATED BY THOMAS KING CHAMBERS, HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, CONSULTING PHYSICIAN AND LECTURER ON THE LOCK HOSPITAL, AUTHOR OF LECTURES CHIEFLY CLINICAL, ETC. PREFACE. IN 1856 I published a small volume on the same subject that I am now again taking up. It has been a good while out of print, for I was not content with it enough to sanction a reproduction in the same shape. But I have always intended to handle it again some time or another. During the last year or so I have been looking over my old notes of cases, and it struck me that it would be interesting to pick out such as bore upon indigestion, to classify them according to the points they illustrated, and see how far they upheld or overthrew my previous views. Then linking them together, after the fashion of a clinical teacher, with a running commentary, I made them tell their own tale, and added such observations as either occurred to me at the time I had the patients under my eye or have flowed from after experience. So grew up, not the new edition I had thought of, but what consistency bids me call a new work. It has therefore a new title, pointing to the different aspect in which the subject is viewed. In the former work it was anatomically, here it is functionally treated. So pleasant has been the holiday task thus 66 to the sessions of sweet silent thought To summon up remembrance of things past," that I am fain to dwell upon it, and to try to lead others towards the same source of enjoyment by describing the way in which my |