For instance, there is a broken leg; the surgeon has only to look
at it once to know; it will not be different if he sees it in the
morning to what it would have been had he seen it in the evening. And in
whatever conditions the patient is, or is likely to be, there will still
be the broken leg, until it is set. The same with many organic diseases.
An experienced physician has but to feel the pulse once, and he knows
that there is aneurism which will kill some time or other.
But with the great majority of cases, there is nothing of the kind; and
the power of forming any correct opinion as to the result must entirely
depend upon an enquiry into all the conditions in which the patient
lives. In a complicated state of society in large towns, death, as every
one of great experience knows, is far less often produced by any one
organic disease than by some illness, after many other diseases,
producing just the sum of exhaustion necessary for death. There is
nothing so absurd, nothing so misleading as the verdict one so often
hears: So-and-so has no organic disease,--there is no reason why he
should not live to extreme old age; sometimes the clause is added,
sometimes not: Provided he has quiet, good food, good air, &c.
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