Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/268

 248 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. the assumed gravity and outward signs of the pro- fession were now considered obsolete customs, and were, by general consent, laid aside by the physicians, and as a more curious anxiety began to be observed on the part of the patient to learn every thing connected with his complaint, arising naturally from the improved state of general knov/- ledge, a different conduct became necessary in the sick-room. " The innovation required by the spirit of mo- dern times never could have been adopted by any one more fitted by nature and incHnation to carry it into effect than by Dr. Baillie. " The attention which he had paid to morbid anatomy enabled him to make a nice discrimina- tion in symptoms, and to distinguish between dis- orders which resemble each other. It gave him a confidence also in propounding his opinions, which our conjectural art does not readily admit ; and the reputation which he enjoyed, universally, for openness and sincerity, made his dicta be re- ceived with a ready and unresisting faith. "He appeared to lay a great stress upon the information which he might derive from the ex- ternal examination of his patient, and to be much influenced in the formation of his opinion of the nature of the complaint by this practice. "He had originally adopted this habit from the peculiar turn of his early studies ; and, assuredly, such a method, not indiscriminately, but judi- ciously employed, as he employed it, is a valuable auxiliary to the other ordinary means, used by a physician, of obtaining the knowledge of a disease submitted to him. But it is equally true, that,