GREAT AFFECTION.
Nottingham, Jan. 6, 1826.
PREFACE.
The following pages are presented to the medical public with very humble pretensions. It is chiefly with the minor accidents or diseases that they have to do; but I shall not consider that I have laboured in vain, if I am enabled to mitigate even these little evils of human life.
In these prefatory observations, however, I would suggest the question whether the caustic may not be employed with benefit even in some of the severer diseases to which the human frame is liable. Indeed I consider the investigation as only just begun, and many other uses of the lunar caustic, besides those detailed in the following pages, have suggested themselves to me.
May not the caustic, for instance, be of greater efficacy, because of greater power and of quicker operation, than ordinary blisters, in some internal diseases?
It is repeatedly stated hereafter, that the application of the lunar caustic is a means, in certain circumstances, of subduing external inflammation. Might it not, on this principle, be of service in the treatment of some of the internal phlegmasiæ?