Excerpt from The Diagnosis and Treatment of Digestive Diseases a Practical Treatise for Students: And Practitioners of Medicine In advancing this volume, it is not my purpose to assist in the erroneous movement for divorcing gastrointestinal diseases from the broad field of internal medicine to which they rightfully belong, but to answer, for the student and busy general practitioner, two important questions regarding these diseases, namely, What is the disorder? And What should be done for it? Not only general practitioners, but specialists in other lines, who find it necessary to keep informed in a general way concerning digestion and nutrition, have discussed with me what they desire in such a book. Briefly stated, they need a compact book, which shall contain first, concise, but easily intelligible, descriptions of the various reliable tests for the objects of study in the gastric contents, intestinal juices, and feces; second, practicable and least disturbing methods of determining the position, size, motility, etc., of the stomach, intestines, and other abdom inal viscera; third, a succinct statement of the diagnostic methods indicated in the recognition of digestive diseases; and, finally, an exhaustive discussion of both general and special therapy as applied to these diseases. This I have endeavored to accomplish. I have, how ever, purposely omitted lengthy arguments of unsettled etiologic questions, prolix descriptions of rare conditions which possess only academic interest, and the consideration of pathologic states of a purely surgical nature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.