“We have perused no other book containing so much of common sense on the subject of madness, or which presents such striking, instructive, and practical analogies between that and the diseases of other parts of the system, and which renders the reader so familiar with the complaint, by demonstrating its affinity to other affections intimately known to him.”—The Medical Magazine of Boston for July 1833.
“The copiousness of our extracts from Dr Combe’s work (nearly thirty pages), is the best evidence we can give of our opinion of its general merits.”—North Amer. Med. and Surg. Journal, No. XXIII.
John Anderson, Jun., Edinburgh; Longman & Co., London.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] British and Foreign Medical Review, vol. ii. p. 378.
[2] Spectator, 7th May 1836.
[3] Dyspepsia (from the Greek words δυς, dus, bad, and πεπτω, pepto, I concoct) is synonymous with indigestion.
[4] Brachet, Recherches Experimentales sur les Fonctions du Système Nerveux Ganglionaire, chap. iii. Paris edition.
[5] It is difficult, as in the above sentence, to avoid occasionally using expressions and referring to processes, which have not previously been explained; but it would only lead to confusion and unnecessary repetition to stop at every page and introduce explanations, which, after all, the reader would scarcely understand on account of their brevity. In the present instance, therefore, where I allude to the process of digestion, it is better to refer the reader to the outline given at the beginning of Chapter IV, than to distract his attention by introducing it also here.
[6] Vol. iii, p. 40. Paris, 1809.