Preface to the First Edition.
Almost from the day my Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy was given to the profession, I have received the most urgent requests to prepare a work on the Practice of Medicine, which should embody the truths which are presented in the above mentioned work. I finally concluded to present the facts fully in "The Treatment of Disease." This will be found to differ from a complete work on Practice, only in the fact that I have left the exhaustive consideration of the history, etiology and pathology of disease to other writers. The subject of etiology, however, in each disease will be found sufficiently full for all practical purposes, and the symptomatology, diagnosis and prognosis are as complete as in a work on Practice. In treatment the work is exhaustive and I trust it will be found to be as practical as the suggestions have proven to be to the author.
In the arrangement of the different topics in this work, I have reserved the right to sacrifice a strictly scientific grouping in a few instances, to my idea of a practical arrangement. To illustrate: I have grouped croupous pneumonia with lung diseases, and certain infectious intestinal diseases with diseases of the latter class, instead of grouping them solely with reference to their infectious origin. The group of exanthematous diseases includes only the major exanthemata, those of the more common acute fibrile type in which the exanthem is the conspicuous factor of the disease.
This work is designed strictly as a companion to my Materia Medica and Therapeutics, above mentioned, and I have therefore, in treatment, often given only the name of the remedy indicated, and have not fully described its mode of action, depending upon the reader to refer to the companion work for a full, thorough and exhaustive consideration of the remedies. If this work is received as enthusiastically as the companion work, and proves as useful as that work seems to have proven, I shall have occasion to be more than satisfied.
Finley Ellingwood.
Evanston, Illinois, May 1, 1906.
