Lecture XXXIII :- The value of symptoms. (continued)

It is very important that you should understand what is meant general, common and particular symptoms and so I will repeat somewhat. The generals are sometimes made up of particulars. If you examine any part alone, you are only examining the particulars. If you examine the liver symptoms alone, you are examining particulars. If you are examining the eye symptoms, or the symptoms of any other region considered apart from the whole man, you are examining particular symptoms. But after you have gathered the particulars of every region of the body, and you see there are certain symptoms running through the particulars, those symptoms that run through the particulars have become generals, as well as particulars. Things that apply to all the organs may be predicated of the person himself. Things that modify all parts of the organism are those that relate to the general state. Anything that the individual predicates of himself is also general. There are things that an individual might say of himself that might relate to only one organ, but of course that becomes a particular ; but most of the things that the man predicates of himself are general. Consider for instance, the symptoms of sleep. You might at first think that they related to the brain, but the brain does not sleep any more than the whole man. "I was wakeful last night." he is predicating something of himself and hence it is general. or, he says, "I dreamed." Well it is true that the whole man really dreamed. You might say that the mind merely dreamed, but the mind is the man and therefore, we see how important sleep and dreams become in the anamnesis of a case. Scarcely more important is what the woman says of her menstruation ; menstruation so closely relates to the whole woman that it becomes most important. The special senses also are so closely related to the whole man that the smells that are grateful and the smells that are disagreeable become general.