Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/76

 generally succeeded, in order to apply it in some particular instance. This kind of knowledge, too, is the staple of all works known by the name of Practice of Physic, than which none can be less satisfactory for consulting when difficulties occur, for although they exhibit, even to redundancy, means by which cures have been effected, they fail to display, sufficiently for guiding the practitioner, the grounds on which a choice should be made, or the minute observances essential for administering any remedy with effect. Such knowledge as they impart, is, no doubt, useful and necessary, but it furnishes no certain guidance. The treatment most generally successful may have been deduced from an extensive examination of cases faithfully and accurately recorded, and yet it may be wholly inadmissible in the particular instance in which its application is contemplated. As was before remarked, the only security against error lies in adapting the remedies not according to the name given to the disease, nor to the alleged success of former cases, but to the special derangements which prevail in the several functions of the individual frame under consideration. The more nearly the treatment of diseases can be brought throughout to this degree of accuracy, the more scientific will the art of physic become, and the tendency of all medical observation and of all medical writing, should be to advance in this direction. Medical observation is ever incomplete, unless it take cognizance of all the functions, the aggregate adequateness of which, respectively ascertained, constitutes and is essential to health. The state of each should be accurately examined, however unconnected