AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND EDITION.
The present attempt to bring the results of my experience, which are at variance with what is ordinarily taught, before the notice of the medical public at large, in a connected form, has produced unexpected results; it has found many friends and vigorous opponents. Both of these results are certainly very desirable; for my friends will find in this book no arbitrary settlement of questions, nothing systematical or dogmatical, and my opponents will be compelled at length to abandon their fine phrases and to set to work and examine the matters for themselves. Both can only contribute to the impulsion and advancement of medical science.
But still both have also their depressing point of view. When one has laboured for ten years with all the energy and zeal of which he was capable, and has laid the results of his investigations before the judgment of his contemporaries, one is only too apt to imagine that a considerable part, that perhaps the greater and more important portion of them, would be pretty generally known. This was, as I have learned by experience, not the case with my labours. One of my critics attributes it to my bringing forward too many arguments and lengthy cases in support of my views. It may be so, but then I might perhaps have been allowed to expect that other critics would have sought for the proofs, which they did not find here in
