PREFACE. THE following LECTURE was designed in the Autumn of 1840, and was intended to be introductory to the Course of Lectures on General Pathology, which its Author had engaged to deliver at the University of Edinburgh. In rendering it available to a more popular audience, much of the original argument and arrangement of this monograph has necessarily been altered; and, to make it consistent with the advancing state of auxiliary medical sciences, many of its previous facts have been expunged, and their places supplied by other, more recent, discoveries. It is with much pleasure that the present opportunity is devoted to paying a tribute of merited praise to the Authors of the most elaborate works upon the subject of which these pages treat-Drs. Pritchard and Carpenter-of whom it may be said, and proudly, that, the former has no rival in the Literature of his Professionthe latter no superior in its Physiology. 31, Great Charles Street, Birmingham, June 24, 1843. |