| Popis: |
Asthma, as we conceive it to-day, is a manifestation of Allergy. We take this for granted, without considering the centuries of medical thought given. to the subject. It took two thousand years and more of speculation, of experimental failure and success, of keen observation and violent disputations, before the modern conception of this malady was moulded. The history of Asthma is a history pregnant with interest. It reveals the untiring spirit of scientific inquiry striving after truth; of :pen labouring with the knowledge of their time to overcome almost insuperable obstacles confronting them. To-day we adopt the theory of Hypersensitiveness as a true explanation for this complaint; yet who knows what another millennium of medical thought may yield; when a better knowledge of disease has arisen from a keener observation and a truer interpretation of facts. Then, these our thoughts, may likely be of only such historical interest as we now regard the ideas of Hippocrates and Galen. There is much in this brief outline of the history of Asthma which has been left unsaid, but there has accumulated so enormous a literature On the subject,that to include much more than is already contained in this essay, would be to offer unnecessary repetition. An attempt has therefore been made to sift out only that which is necessary to show the unbroken evolution of ideas on the subject, or that which may Drove of interest to the reader. |
