It is often harder to boil down than to write. Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to recognize out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which are vital. The examination of the urine is the most essential part of the physical examination of any patient with Bright's disease.
Science is essentially a matter of observance, inference, verification, generalization.
The mind of Sydenham, interested in a sick child and humanely preoccupied with its cure, did not, insofar as it functioned scientifically, operate differently from that of Galileo, interested in cosmic physics. Both alike observed, reflected, verified, generalized. In order for the stethoscope to function, two things have to happen. The doctor has to be within thirty inches of his patient. Thou shall not desert or injure thy patient, even for the sake of thy living.