560 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



PART III. 



OF CACHEXIES. 



MDXCIX. Under this title I propose to establish a class 

 of diseases, which consist in a depraved state of the whole, or 

 of a considerable part, of the habit of the body, without any 

 primary pyrexia or neurosis combined with that state. 



" The idea of my system of Nosology proceeds on the view, 

 that pathology generally considers symptoms as they affect the 

 three several classes of functions, the vital, animal, and natural. 

 Our Pyrexiae comprehended the vital functions. The Neuroses, 

 though extended to the whole of the nervous system, yet chiefly 

 had in view the animal functions, and this class, the Ca hexioe, 

 comprehends the affections of the natural functions." 



MDC. The term Cachexy has been employed by Linnaeus 

 and Vogel, as it had been formerly by other authors, for the 

 name of a particular disease ; but the disease to which these 

 authors have affixed it, comes more properly under another ap- 

 pellation ; and the term of Cachexy is more properly employed 

 by Sauvages and Sagar for the name of a class. In this I have 

 followed the last-mentioned nosologists, though I find it difficult 

 to give such a character of the class, as will clearly apply to 

 all the species I have comprehended under it. This difficulty 

 would be still greater, if, in the class I have established under 

 the title of Cachexies, I were to comprehend all the diseases 

 that those other nosologists have done ; but I am willing to be 

 thought deficient rather than very incorrect. Those difficulties, 

 however, which still remain in Methodical Nosology, must not 

 affect us much in a treatise of practice. If I can here properly 

 distinguish and describe the several species that truly and most 



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