An introductory lecture, intended as a recommendation to a more careful investigation of the constitutional origin of local diseases, on principles deduced from the opinions of Hunter and Abernethy : delivered at the Finsbury Dispensary / by George Macilwain.

Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory lecture, intended as a recommendation to a more careful investigation of the constitutional origin of local diseases, on principles deduced from the opinions of Hunter and Abernethy : delivered at the Finsbury Dispensary / by George Macilwain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    coincidence in the views of Hunter and Abernethy : I would observe, that Mr. Hunter, in lectures which are reported to have been laboriously delivered to an ungrateful, because too often, an inattentive audience, was elaborate in describing those important phenomena, which constitute the various sympathies of the body; his object being to shew, as Mr. Aber- nethy used to express it, that the whole body sympa- thized with all its parts. Mr. Abernethy laboured to demonstrate, if not to an inattentive audience, certainly amidst the suppressed sneers* of many of his hearers, that diseases of parts of the body had constitutional origins, or connexions. Whether the two opinions were of independent formation, or whether the latter were an emanation of the former, here we see the universal sympathy of John Hunter linked with the Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases of John Abernethy. The influence exerted by the chylopoietic viscera in various diseases, and on particular states of the nervous system, had been recognized from the earliest times; nor would it be difficult to adduce evidence of this recognition from the writings of the Greek and Arabian physicians, or those of enlightened men at all periods. In some instances, this is so marked, * Mr. Abernethy used to observe, that some people said he was mad : perhaps now, they would be satisfied in considering him to have been original.