Complication

“ V. Let me advise you, in your visits to the sick, never to appear in a hurry, nor to talk of indifferent matters before you have made the necessary inquiries into the symptoms of your patient's disease.
VI. Avoid making light of any case. “Respice finem” should be the motto of every indisposition. There is scarcely a disease so trifling, that has not, directly or indirectly, proved an outlet to human life. This consideration should make you anxious and punctual in your attendance upon every acute disease, and keep you from risking your reputation by an improper or hasty prognosis. ”

“ They call that a disease where the whole body is corrupted; they call that sickness where a disease is attended with a weakness, and that a defect where the parts of the body are not well compacted together; from whence it follows that the members are misshapen, crooked, and deformed. So that these two, a disease and sickness, proceed from a violent concussion and perturbation of the health of the whole body; but a defect discovers itself even when the body is in perfect health. But a disease of the mind is distinguishable only in thought from a sickness. ”

“ When a physician names an ailment, describes its symptoms and danger, he has committed an unconscious offence against being, happiness, and health, and will make a sure job for himself, if not a fatal one for his patient. ”

“ When the physician discovers certain signs or symptoms which constitute the diagnosis of any disease, he regards those signs as the effects of a disease already in existence, and treats the patient accordingly. ”

“ Such a diagnosis would ruin a modern physician. The modern physician tells his patient that he is ill because every drop of his blood is swarming with a million microbes; and the patient believes him abjectly and instantly. ”

“ Disease is now so well understood—every step in its march laid down and foreseen—the approach of danger accurately estimated—the liability of the patient, according to his powers of resisting it, to succumb earlier or to hold out longer—all is theoretically so clear that a wholesome suspicion of error in the verdict of the attendants seldom suggests itself. ”

“ When thou art sick, dost thou defer to take care of thy health? On the contrary, dost thou not presently send for a physician, and deem that the disease should be met in its beginning, lest perhaps medicine be prepared in vain, when the complaint has gained strength by too long a delay? ”

“ Why all this hubbub about a disease which causes less loss of life than almost any other complaint known, and whose fatal effects can, in almost every case, be surely and certainly prevented by a surgeon? ”

“ Those who composed what are called “The Cnidian Sentences” [531] have described accurately what symptoms the sick experience in every disease, and how certain of them terminate; and in so far a man, even who is not a physician, might describe them correctly, provided he put the proper inquiries to the sick themselves what their complaints are. But those symptoms which the physician ought to know beforehand without being informed of them by the patient, are, for the most part, omitted, some in one case and some in others, and certain symptoms of vital importance for a conjectural judgment. ”

“ Again, as every one who is in the body, through the changes of the times, and bad living, is subject to sickness and disease, and is in need of physicians who will restore him to his former health if he follow their injunctions ”

“ We bid the stomach, liver, kidneys, to bear us witness, and they respond at our bidding. As we behold the growth of mind with the body, so do we witness their decay. We study psychology in its various relations to physical disease. ”

“ Hence it is that the diagnosis of injury and disease in the extremes oflife is beset by especial difficulties, since the entire body is as silent as are the brain, the pericardium, the mediastinum, and other symptomless areas. For the same reason, when a patient who is seriously ill with a painful disease turns upon the physician a glowing eye and an eager face, and remarks how comfortable he feels, then the end is near. ”

“ SYMPTOMS AND PROGRESS OF DISEASE—AGE AND CLASS OF PATIENTS TO BE TREATED—OPERATION—AFTER-TREATMENT, ETC. Every medical practitioner must have met with a certain class of cases which has set at defiance every effort at diagnosis, baffled every treatment, and belied every prognosis. ”

“ If, while a patient seems to be recovering from a long malady, a new and strange symptom should suddenly exhibit itself, small perhaps in superficial extension, but obviously of a virulent kind, the physician would unquestionably hold that there existed considerable latent danger. ”

“ The laity, if not the doctors too, constantly lose sight of the fact, that there exists an alternative to the fatal event of ordinary disease; that a patient is liable at any period of illness to deviate, or, as it were, to slide off, from the customary line of disease into another and a deceptive route—instead of death, to encounter apparent death. ”

“ How many doubts and distracting anxieties attend such a man at his first patient's bedside. If the disease be acute and life in imminent danger, and if he shrink under this sudden and unusual load of responsibility, he gains little credit for professional ability. ”

“ And in diseases and injuries, when there is a necessary succession of bad symptoms, the physician gets the blame, as men do not perceive that the aggravation of the symptoms is a necessary consequence of the nature of the disease. And if a physician visits a patient in fever, or who has met with an injury, and if the patient gets worse after the first medicine that is administered, the physician is blamed ”

“ From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime—the sum of which will never be known till that great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil. ”

“ The popular mind usually estimates the danger, seriousness, and probable duration of any disease by the amount and intensity of pains, by the violence and rapidity of its development, and by the degree of disability that the sickness inflicts on a man. ”

“ When one watches for symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pellets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer. ”

“ Apt enough in cases of acute disease to bring into the case some one to share responsibilities which seem grave because near at hand, they continue to treat chronic cases they do not understand, because there is no crisis of pain, disability, or danger to bring them to reason. ”

“ My physician himself told me that, for the first three years, my life was in imminent danger, and if in the last three I was less exposed to death at every step, as it were, the giving way of my stomach, the weakness of my chest, were such that all my days were filled with bitterness, and new crosses were laid upon me. ”

“ What has to be complained of, however, is that constant attempts are made to introduce cases which are so far from being convalescent, that they are still suffering from disease, and require constant medical or surgical treatment. ”

“ SYMPTOMS OF DISEASE, WITH INSTRUCTION TO NURSES. Symptoms are the signs by which we know that disease is present. Every circumstance happening in the body of the sick person capable of being perceived by himself or others, which can be made to assist our judgment concerning the seat or nature of the disease, its probable course and termination or its proper treatment, is a sign or symptom. ”

“ II When in consequence of a long chronic illness the condition of the patient is examined, the question may arise whether the weakening of the fibers and the debility of the organs are the cause of the malady's continuing or the effect of the bad treatment that prolongs its action. ”

“ Whilst the distempers of a relaxed fibre prognosticate and prepare all the morbid force of convulsion in the body of the state, the steadiness of the physician is overpowered by the very aspect of the disease. ”

“ But in doing it they are dealing daily—and ought to deal, and must deal—with the exceptional, and not with the normal; with cases of palpable and shocking disease, and not with cases of at least seeming health. ”

“ The imperfect recovery of such patients from their first attack, and, which is attributed to the depletion, arises from the disease which is left by it, and to the injudicious means, perhaps, that are employed by the too anxious attendants, with the view of restoring the strength. ”

“ That pulmonary disease, affections of the heart, and insanity, are in its train, and that it leads some of our fairest and dearest to Fashion's shrine to die, is placed beyond a doubt by strong medical testimony. ”

“ Medical men, and especially "mad doctors," could tell us much of the great value of a certain relative proportion of pleasurable and painful impressions upon health, and how frequently some unfortunate position, an absence of pleasure, or too much of painful impression, is the cause of serious illness. ”

“ Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly. ”

“ By infirmity is meant disease accompanied by weakness; and by disease is meant a fond imagining of something that seems desirable. And as in the body there are tendencies to certain maladies such as colds and diarrhoea, so it is with the soul, there are tendencies like enviousness, pitifulness, quarrelsomeness, and the like. ”

“ Every physician knows that physical maladies are daily produced or aggravated in individuals by their disorders of mind and life; as by self-indulgence and intemperance, but, what is still more striking, by the immediate operation of evil passions. ”

“ She will be induced to undergo a serious operation by which her perfect physical health will be jeopardised. The operation may or may not be successful. If it fails, she will have undergone unnecessary pain and anxiety. ”

“ That he ought to be called to the sense of duty, and is flying in the face of Providence;—then know that your patient is receiving all the injury that he can receive from a visitor.
How little the real sufferings of illness are known or understood. How little does any one in good health fancy him or even herself into the life of a sick person. ”

“ Before therefore I begin this important lecture, let me request of the reader the strictest attention, and never to act before the ailment, as well as the method of treatment is thoroughly understood; since nothing less than health, and even life itself, is liable to be the forfeit of a fatal error. ”

“ The special suffering which first arrests attention may suddenly arise, but this is always preceded, and for a considerable time, by sensible deviations from that equable and temperate performance of function which can alone constitute sound health. ”

“ The morbific matter, state or condition, call it which you will, which has caused the disease, or generated the sickly state into which the patient has lapsed, is counteracted and neutralized by the action of the drug which, in a healthy person, would produce symptoms similar to, but not identical with, those which are excited by the disease. ”

“ But the fact that medical shortcomings, real or supposed, manifested themselves in the sensitive area of human suffering and death made all the more glaring every instance of ineptitude, inadequacy, inefficiency, or just plain indifference. ”

“ The art consists in three things—the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art, and the patient must combat the disease along with the physician. [636]
[301]
6. Pains about the head and neck, and heaviness of the same along with pain, occur either without fevers or in fevers. Convulsions occurring in persons attacked with frenzy, and having vomitings of verdigris-green bile, in some cases quickly prove fatal. ”

“ Cases are found where the patient, possibly on the public platform or at a social gathering, is seized with a consciousness of the malady so suddenly as to render medical assistance futile. Surgical Cases It is impossible to mention more than a few of the most typical cases of diseases of this sort. ”

“ I could name hundreds of cases where persons have called in physicians and between them both they have made an enemy, the patient suffering himself to be poulticed and blistered almost to death to get rid of the bronchitis or spinal disease or white swelling or some other devil supposed to exist independent of the mind. ”

“ Any physician will tell you that this is one of the greatest difficulties he has to contend with in his patients; the mind being steadily directed to some disordered spot increases the congestion which is the result of disease. ”

“ We give but one. A man who had contracted the disease reformed his ways and was apparently cured. He married, and although living a moral life was compelled to witness in his little girl's eye-balls, her gums, and her breath the result of his past sins. ”