Book Description

Excerpt from A Handbook of Physical Diagnosis: Comprising the Throat, Thorax, and Abdomen The design of this handbook is to present a concise description of the various methods pursued in the clinical examination of the thoracic and abdominal organs in health and disease and an estimate of the diagnostic value of the results so obtained; the examination of the Larynx is treated of in an Appendix. The general plan of the work, both as regards the order in which the different methods of exploring each organ are discussed and the account of the conditions likely to be met with, is naturally that of a systematic, scientific inquiry. Our description, however, particularly when dealing with the purely physical methods of examination, will be found to vary considerably in form and fulness, according as groups of similar phenomena, belonging possibly to different diseases, do or do not admit of being explained by com, ?non causes; in the latter case a detailed account of the symptoms has been given. Whenever the nature of the subject permitted, I have endeavored to preserve a certain uniform order also in the arrangement of details, taking up first the signs obtained by each method of exploration, then their causes, and lastly the physiological and pathological conditions, and the diseases, in which they occur. In this way only was it practicable to include within our relatively narrow limits the large number of pathological phenomena elicited by the various modes of clinical examination. That an account of this kind, indeed, should not be absolutely complete, that it should fail to take (cognizance of every deviation of the symptoms from the fundamental pathological type, is unavoidable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.