A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON APOPLEXY (CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE); ITS PATHOLOGY, DIAGNOSIS, THERAPEUTICS, AND PROPHYLAXIS: WITH AN ESSAY (SO-CALLED) NERVOUS APOPLEXY, ON CONGESTION OF THE BRAIN AND SEROUS EFFUSION. BY WILLIAM BOYD MUSHET, M.B. LOND. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON ; Δύο γὰρ ἐπιστήμη τε καὶ δόξα, ὢν τὸ μὲν ἐπίστασθαι ποιέει, τὸ δὲ ἀγνοεῖν. L383 A7M9 1866 PREFACE. I HAVE attempted to extricate Apoplexy as a substantive disease from an assemblage of symptoms, i.e., from the multiform phases of coma. I am strongly impressed that the main obstacle to a proper and simple understanding of the affection has been its confusion with every malady attended by unconsciousness, irrespective of pathological conditions; coma (the order) and apoplexy (the genus) having been almost invariably regarded as metonyms, loosely expressing a deeper or more pronounced degree of cerebral torpitude than their obsolete and less definite congeners-carus, cataphora, and lethargus. It may be my doctrines are extreme, my efforts too decided in the direction of simplicity and unity. My argument also, I fear, is short of convincing. My views are based on experience, on practice; and I entered on the subject free from bias or preconception, the constancy of cardiac lesions first suggesting, and, indeed, instigating the inquiry. From the nature of the task, the references are necessarily considerable, yet I have repressed their bulk as much as possible, and from this deterrent action have, in some instances, waded through voluminous works, without appropriating a single passage. I launch my conclusions on the troublous sea of medical controversy, keenly conscious that they are but imperfect and tentative, yet not without expectation that they will, in some degree, be acknowledged by succeeding physicians, and tend to emancipated and more enlightened opinions on physio-pathology and therapeutics. 85, ST. GEORGE'S ROAD, WARWICK SQUARE, S. W. September, 1866. W. B. M. |