A System of Medicine

Abstract

IT is almost exactly thirty years ago since the first volume of the “System of Medicine,” edited by Sir Russell Reynolds, was published; and the dedication of the present work to him is a touching acknowledgment, on the part of the editor, of the service rendered to medicine by the late lamented President of the College of Physicians, and his band of collaborators. Thirty years has produced not only great changes in medicine itself, but also great changes in the methods of attacking medical problems. The intimate relation in which medicine to-day stands to what may, perhaps, collectively best be termed experimental pathology, has rendered necessary in the present System, the collaboration of a band of authors whose names are better known as physiologists, pathologists, or bacteriologists than physicians, and their contributions lend a very special value to the work. The book begins with an academic introduction by the editor, who at once rightly denies any corporeal fixity to the term “System of Medicine,” and defines it as “a setting forth of the whole of our knowledge, as immediate convenience and the exigencies of contemporary learning may dictate.” A few brief but pregnant remarks upon classification, nomenclature, diagnosis and prognosis, lead us to Division i. of the System, which has received the name of prolegomena. Each of the articles, twenty in number, contained in this part of the work is complete in itself, and may be regarded as representing the present state of our knowledge upon the subject of which it treats.

A System of Medicine.

By many Writers. Edited by Thos. Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge, &c. Vol. i. Demy 8vo, pp. 1008, 38 illustrations, 13 charts, 1 coloured plate. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1896.)