Volume 1

Diseases of the arteries including angina pectoris / by Clifford Allbutt.

  • Allbutt, T. Clifford (Thomas Clifford), 1836-1925.
Date:
1915
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of the arteries including angina pectoris / by Clifford Allbutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE Those faults of a book which lie in the quality of its author are more apparent to others than to himself, but none better than the author, who has spent many years in the intimacy of his subject, can know its shortcomings. He is beset by the old proverb that so long as more remains to be done nothing seems done. Still a time comes when his book, however far even from relative perfection, must be published, if published at all—the hour when “ Tam maun ride.” Then it is that to the author the “ suicidal impulse ” becomes comprehensible ; the temptation to make a sudden end of that shed part of himself now drifting on the ebb while the flow of swift thought is streaming far away beyond. No more is there cranny or footnote for new matter or new repentances ; his work is stopped and he swings out of the tide. If this sense of imperfection haunts the composer through¬ out his work, yet it is keenest when the work is done. Of course we cannot know all, no: anything like all; much of the detailed structure and of the fuller outlines of every subject is still obscure or out of sight; but can the author reasonably pretend that he possessed interpretation enough to enable him to deal with the facts provisionally ? The answer to this question is not for him to give. But, if I may speak for myself, I have done my best neverthe¬ less to withstand the craving for a show of symmetry; to avoid the attempt, by building up conjectural superstructures, by “ letting the fancy outwork nature,” to put a semblance of order and