PREFACE 



WITH the increasing complexity of the medical curri- 

 culum, and the growing inclination to specialism 

 amongst teachers, there is a tendency for the student 

 to keep his knowledge in water-tight compartments. 

 Physiology, for instance, is studied in the laboratory, 

 and clinical medicine in the wards, and too often one 

 finds that the student is incapable of applying his 

 scientific knowledge to his clinical work. This is to be 

 regretted, not only because it tends to lessen the interest 

 of the practical study of disease, but because it leads 

 to unsound and unscientific practice. For, beyond all 

 question, the medicine of the future will be based more 

 and more upon a sound knowledge of the normal 

 working of the human body; or, in other words, upon 

 Applied Physiology, and the best physician will be he 

 who combines such knowledge in fullest measure with 

 a wide practical experience at the bedside. 



Inability to apply the teachings of physiology leads 

 also to this curious anomaly, that a man may have 

 been taught, and presumably still believe, certain facts 

 as true physiologically, and yet continue to act in his 

 clinical work upon an apparently quite opposite creed. 

 Such an attitude of mind, it need hardly be said, is 



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