428 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 



such arguta sedulitas. And indeed his method of managing 

 his subject must certainly interrupt and retard all methodical 

 nosology. His arrangement of diseases is according to no af- 

 finity, but that of the slightest and most uninstructive kind, the 

 place of the body which they happen to affect. His Generalia 

 et incertae sedis, have hardly any connexion at all ; the titles, 

 Rheum atismuS) Hypochondriasis, Hydrops, follow one an- 

 other. When he does attempt any general doctrine, it is not 

 till long after he has treated of the widely scattered particulars. 

 Under each particular title which he assumes, he has endeav- 

 oured to enumerate the whole of the symptoms that ever ap- 

 peared in a disease under that title ; and this without aiming at 

 any distinction between the essential and accidental symptoms, 

 or marking the several combinations under which these symp- 

 toms do for the most part steadily appear. From the concur- 

 rence of accidental symptoms, the variety of the same disease is 

 frequently considerable, a circumstance necessarily perplexing 

 and distracting to young practitioners ; but it seems strange to 

 me, that an experience of thirty years, in considerable practice, 

 could do nothing to relieve them. 



Mr. Lieutaud has, at the same time, increased the confusion 

 that must arise from this want of distinction, by his considering 

 as primary diseases, what appear to me to be the symptoms, 

 effects, and sequels of other diseases only. Of this I think the 

 JEstus morbosus, Virium exolutio, Dolores, Stagnatio sangui- 

 nis, Purulentia, Tremor, Pervigilium, Raucedo, Suffocatio, 

 Vomica, Empyema, S'mgultus, Vomitus, Dolor stomachi, 

 Tenesmus, all treated of under separate titles, are examples. 

 A general Symptomatologia may be a very useful work, with a 

 view to a system of Pathology ; but, with a view to practice 

 without any system, it must have bad effects, as leading only to 

 a palliative practice, and diverting from the proper efforts to- 

 wards obtaining a radical cure. Mr. Lieutaud, indeed, has en- 

 deavoured to exhibit the symptoms above mentioned as so many 

 primary diseases : But he has seldom succeeded in this ; and, 

 in delivering the practice, he commonly finds it necessary to 

 consider them as symptoms, and that not without some theory, 

 implied or expressed, with respect to their proximate causes. 



