Preface.

I offer neither apology nor excuse for placing before the profession another Practice of Medicine. Eclecticism has won its way into the homes of many thousands, since Wooster Beach and the "Fathers" taught a more successful way of treating the sick. The methods of the "New School" are being examined and tested as never before, and men from all schools are recognizing the efficiency of our splendid materia medica.

In writing a New Practice, I do not desire it to be understood that most of the material used is new, for it is one of the fundamental principles of Specific Medication (Modern Eclecticism), that when once the relation of drug action to diseased conditions is found, it is found for all time; that an agent that will correct a specific condition to-day, will correct the same condition to-morrow, next year, or a hundred years hence; therefore many of the remedies used twenty-five, thirty, or fifty years ago, are used to-day.

We have faith in the Eclectic Practice, and the desire on the part of the students of our colleges to use a Practice more. modern than the older Eclectic works on Medicine, one that is up-to-date in etiology, pathology, description, diagnosis, and treatment, is responsible for the publication of this work.

The etiology and pathology must necessarily be the same in all works on Practice and this will only materially differ from other works of like character in presenting a treatment that is proving successful in the hands of more than ten thousand practitioners. I am indebted to a host of able workers, who have, at the bedside, tested and proven many of the agents used.

To W. B. Saunders & Co., Lea Bros. & Co., The Hahnemann Press, P. Blakiston's Son & Co., D. Appleton & Co., and P. A. Davis Co., I am particularly indebted for courtesies shown in the use of illustrations, I have endeavored to give explicit credit to each author where references are cited, and my thanks are due them for favors extended.

I trust that the reader will find the twenty-five years' experience of the writer, as well as those of his many brother practitioners, a help in successfully relieving the sick.

The Eclectic Practice of Medicine, 1907, was written by Rolla L. Thomas, M. S., M. D.