Conception and Contents of the History of a Disease in general.
If we would undertake to write the history of a Disease, the very first thing needful is to frame in one’s own mind a clear conception of what the History of a Disease in a general way is, for it is from a right preliminary conception, that the right conditions will follow which a Historian as such is bound to fulfil. Consult experience,—in other words enquire what has been usually understood under the name History of a Disease, and you find to be included in the idea,—first, a more or less complete chronological comparison of the different observations and views of different Physicians at different times on such or such a Disease, secondly, a survey of the course of the Disease in the individual case. The first is properly only a history of the opinions of Physicians, the History of the Literature so to speak of the Disease, which must come before the _actual_ History, while the latter is nothing else than a history of a Disease in a single instance, that is to say the history of a particular case of disease, the history of individual patients; and this we have long been in the habit of reckoning a part of Clinics.
Nay, the _sum_ of such clinical histories if taken all together will not help us to the actual history of a Disease, so long as they merely give an account of the visible symptoms by which the disease makes its presence known. By this means we shall be learning merely the ideal course of the Malady, getting a pictorial representation of it such as is demanded by Pathological specialists,—as it were the _internal_ history of the Disease. We cannot write the history of a single Man or of a single Nation so as to be a sufficient basis for the understanding and right appreciation of them, if we grasp only their inner history, that of their _internal_ development, and consequently view them by themselves as a something separated off from all surroundings, instead of bearing in mind as we should the forms their relations take to environment, to the outer world generally,—in fact their _external_ history. Similarly we are just as little in a position to furnish the history of a _Disease_, if we include in the matter of our enquiry only the course of the disease and not its external relations as well.