Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/60

 founded. But it is more particularly used to denote certain combinations of morbid symptoms, to which a character of individuality is assigned, and which are thence more especially denominated diseases. These have been classed according to their real or supposed relation, and this branch of medical science is distinguished by the name of nosology. It is to the investigation of nosological diseases, that the labours of medical enquirers have been most assiduously devoted. These preliminary statements lead us to one source of the imperfection which has hitherto attached to such research; specific diseases attract attention only when the aggregate distress, or some symptom more prominent than the rest, impresses the conviction of the frame being out of order. The symptoms are now examined, and, according as the assemblage corresponds with some nosological character, is the name assigned. This is the first step in the medical problem, “ the disease being given to find the remedy;” and so abundant are the curative means laid down in books, that the medical student, who has just escaped from the schools, confident in the resources of his art, conceives he has only to determine the disease in order to subdue it. A very little experience of actual disease, suffices to disabuse him of this notion. He soon finds that the nosological character of disease is seldom, if ever, realised in any individual case. However well marked this may be in its leading features, it is characterised by others of which his nosology takes no count. Many instances, and of formidable disease, will he meet with, which cannot be referred to any nosological character; and, if he