| Summary: | "The complaint has been made, and not without cause, by thousands of students of the medical profession, that the textbooks usually prepared for the course study are too abstrusely written for the intelligence of the ordinarily educated matriculant. This is a serious fault, and goes far toward defeating the chief purposes of the scientific pursuit. We propose in this book to aim, by every means within our power, to preserve the simplest form of instruction, avoiding at all times the use of terms and words from dead and foreign languages where plain and perspicuous English will suffice. We desire to never be more than simple and direct, that no one will find it possible to misunderstand or misconstrue our meaning. We discern that literary finish is one thing, and that facts plainly expressed may be another. We desire no overstrain of the comprehension of the art that has for its object the promotion of bodily health, without which, said Esculapius, "the son itself can not be sound." It will be observed that we follow, to considerable extent, the description of diseases as given by Prof. J.M. Scudder, because we have found his theories in regard to the pathology of diseases very similar to our own. We expect, consequently, to quote him on many subjects. We trust, therefore, with this declaration of our purposes, that none will find aught but encouragement in the healing art as taught by Nature--our first mother--to whom alone we must look for the secrets of recuperating human life, of which disease is but a reminder of her neglected laws"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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