164 Extracts from Dr. Yeats's 



these phsenomena, and consequently leave us in the dark as to that 

 great object, a remedy to counteract them. 



They, therefore, seduce the student, and are made to supersede 

 chnical inquiry into the effects of remedies on the modifications or 

 counteraction of symptoms, by which alone a practical physician 

 can both do credit to himself, and become essentially useful to the 

 community ; by which a Sydenham and a Heberden rose to merited 

 fame, and bequeathed in their observations a valuable legacy to 

 posterity. The examination of morbid parts did not teach the 

 former the cool treatment of variola, nor the propriety of bleeding 

 in the diarrhoea after measles ; neither is Hippocrates indebted to 

 the same source for the correctness of his aphorisms. We observe 

 in persons who die of fever, the ravages committed by its violence 

 on the brain, the liver, the spleen, and other organs — they are the 

 effects of the storm which has raged, and which has uprooted the 

 vitals of the constitution — this destruction of parts shows us how 

 certain symptoms will terminate by diseased structure in death ; but 

 assuredly this destruction did not suggest to the philosophic Currie 

 that beautiful theory, nor the reasoning upon it, which led to the 

 successful cold affusion in fever. Well has the author of the 

 Gold Headed Cane observed, *' For strange as it may appear, not- 

 withstanding the estimation in which the works of this great orna- 

 ment of physic (Sydenham) have been always held, he made 

 no powerful impression himself upon the general state of medicine, 

 nor diverted in any material degree the current of public opinion 

 from its former channel. The mathematical physicians who suc- 

 ceeded him, invented new theories more captivating than any which 

 had hitherto appeared, and the full effect of the example of Syden- 

 ham was for some time lost in the seductive influence of visionary 

 speculation," founded, I will add, on the mechanical doctrines. I 

 am, therefore, anxious to put the younger part of the profession, 

 and the student who is working his way to the practice of it, upon 

 their guard against too sanguine an expectation of practical utility 

 from such pursuits. 



We know from experience and observation that a certain assem- 

 blage of symptoms will indicate a tendency to premature death, and 

 it is pf no consequence, in a practical point of view, whether disso- 

 hition take place from the destruction of the brain, the liver, or any 

 other organ, provided we can obviate the cause ; and in fact, during 

 the disease, fever for example, we do not always know which organ 

 will be destroyed, and perhaps no one in particular may exhibit the 

 appearance of disease, though death shall ensue. The morbid ap- 



