The American Journal of the Medical Sciences (Volume 58)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869. Excerpt: ... the universal globe, the nomenclature would need to be one that can be understood and used by the educated people of all nations. When a general and uniform nomenclature has once been carefully framed, when we are sure that medical observation is occupying itself everywhere with the selfsame diseases, the value of statistical tables becomes very high, as representing the course of events in disease, under various circumstances of time, place, season, climate, manners and customs, age, sex, race, and treatment. This general, or common, or standard nomenclature need not be imposed upon every nation and people as its proper nomenclature. It could not. It would be unintelligible by the people at large, and embarrassing to those by whom the necessary returns must be made. But the nomenclature proper or peculiar to each country, and which may be called its national nomenclature, should be readily convertible into the standard nomenclature. For the construction of a nomenclature of diseases, a committee of the Royal College of Physicians was appointed in 1857. Representative members of the Royal College of Surgeons, the Society of Apothecaries, the Medical Department of the Army and Navy, the Registrar-General, the Epidemiological Society, etc., were subsequently added. The meetings of the Committee were suspended in 1858 and resumed in 1863, when the Committee was further enlarged, and sub-committees appointed. Sir Thomas Watson was the Chairman of the Committee, and the names of the other members afford a guarantee that the work would be faithfully and well done. The publication is subject to a decennial revision. Of the result of their labours, the Committee say, in the preface, as follows: The Committee appointed by the Royal College of Physicians of Lo...