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may we not assume that Harvey’s great authority would have set the fashion, and that the systematic study of Morbid Anatomy would have begun a century and a half earlier than it did? And think what this would have meant. With the exception of a few shrewd observations, a few admirable descriptions, and here and there a brilliant discovery, such as the origin and prevention of lead colic and of scurvy and the introduction of vaccination, it may be said that Medicine made no important progress between the time of Harvey and that of Laennec. The very notion of Diagnosis in our modern sense of the word depends upon Morbid Anatomy. The older physicians seldom attempted to determine the seat of an ailment.[1] Disease was looked upon not as a condition depending
- ↑ I have been told by a contemporary of an eminent physician in this city that the accuracy of his diagnosis (it was before the introduction of the stethoscope) was remarkable, for he rarely failed to fix the seat of a disease in that one of the three great cavities of the body in which it was found after death.
