Excerpt from Diseases of the Skin: Including the Exanthemata, for the Use of General Practitioners and Advanced Students

For the busy man, whether practitioner or student, brevity is essen tial in the make-up of any text-book. So it has been my aim in the succeeding pages to present clearly and concisely the subject of derma tology. To this end, an attempt has been made to arrange the general considerations and the special diseases in logical sequence, to properly emphasize the relative importance of symptomatology, etiology, path ology, diagnosis and treatment, to present lucid and descriptive defini tions, to relegate obsolete terms to their proper spheres, and to omit the many unnecessary and confusing foot-notes so characteristic of many scientific books. It does not seem necessary or fitting to give a dermato logic bibliography but, if he so desires, the student can readily, at his leisure, investigate the varied Opinions of many authorities, by referring to any or all of the bulky volumes preserved in our many libraries.

The subject of treatment is a broad one and is given extensive con sideration not only as regards general principles in the introductory por tion of the book but also from a specific standpoint under the description of the various disease entities. Inasmuch as symptomatic prescribing (the use of drugs, indicated on a homeopathic basis) is only one of a number of therapeutic measures at the physician's command, the amount of space given to it in this volume is based on its relative importance, the limitations of a work devoted to the consideration of dermatology from all view-points, and lastly upon the supposition that a majority of my readers possess and use the standard works on Materia Medica. Other methods of treatment are impartially viewed and no sensible physician can afford to neglect any item of therapy that may conduce to his patient' 8 cure or relief. Internal medication by physiological and empiric methods, with certain exceptions, occ11pies a minor place in these days of scientific medicine while hygiene, diet, specific medication, prophylaxis and physical therapy have made wonderful advances in the past decade. Further studies along certain of these lines are certain, I believe, to contribute in time to a better understanding of the action of internal remedies, prescribed on the homeopathic or a similar basis. It will be noticed that treatment, in all its varied aspects, is given promi nence in American treatises because here in the United States, the patient is a more assertive individual than he is abroad and makes it known that he is more anxious to be cured than he is to know the nature and course of his ailment. Thus it is, whether falsely or truly, American physicians are better known as therapeutists than as clinicians.

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