On the Medical Selection of Lives for Assurance

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE, The Lecture of which the following pages are substantially a transcript, was introduced by me into the Course of Forensic Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital, in order to supply my class with some information, which it seemed strictly in accordance with the spirit (if not the letter) of my duty to...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE, The Lecture of which the following pages are substantially a transcript, was introduced by me into the Course of Forensic Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital, in order to supply my class with some information, which it seemed strictly in accordance with the spirit (if not the letter) of my duty to impart. I have been induced to publish it, in the belief that such information may be useful to others than those to whom it was first addressed. In preparing it for the press, I have made so few changes in either the matter or. arrangement of the original Lecture, that I must warn the reader against anticipating more than such a short discourse might fairly be expected to aiford. The brevity with which I had to treat my subject forbade anything like full information, accurate description, or close and connected reasoning. The previous studies of my audience rendered it unnecessary for me to do more than allude to the various physiological and pathological details, by which alone my propositions could be sustained or illustrated. My purpose obliged me to state all the rules I could suggest in such a short and simple form as would allow them to be easily remembered. And lastly, though feeling bound to utter all I knew, I was naturally anxious to avoid dogmatizing on a subject, in which our calculations rest on what is, at present, but an imperfect basis. But though my remarks scarcely exceed the value of suggestions, I venture to hope that they are not without traces of more care than the form in which I have thought it advisable to put them together might seem to imply. At any rate, I trust that, as the summary of a large experience, communicated without much reserve, they may fulfil my chief object: namely, that of furnishing some practical hints, which may assist tho...