Medicina simplex, or, The pilgrims waybook, being an enquiry into the moral and physical conditions of a healthy life and happy old age : with household prescriptions / by a physician.

  • Forster, T. (Thomas), 1789-1860.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicina simplex, or, The pilgrims waybook, being an enquiry into the moral and physical conditions of a healthy life and happy old age : with household prescriptions / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    principle to be universal which I have stated to belong to stimulants, that they leave the patient in a worse state than they found him. What Hufeland says of intensive and extensive life, seems to be well illustrated by the effect of stimulating aliments. If we live the faster for the time, we shall live for a shorter period in the end. Opium, however, has some effects which strongly illustrate the immediate power of the vital principle over the sentient capacity—in other words, of life over mind. After taking opium there is, in addition to the pleasurable exhilaration, a sense of expansion as to SPACE, aud of extension as to time, which is truly extraordinary, and which shews hovp even the most simple of our elementary ideas are under the influence of organization. Dr. Maddan, in his travels, thus describes the effects of this drug. He says— The pleasure of the sensation seemed to depend on the universal expansion of mind and matter; my faculties appeared enlarged; every thing 1 looked on seemed increased in volume ; I had no longer, when 1 closed my eyes, any consciousness of the effects of this drug, such as I had when they were open ; it appeared to me as if it were only external objects which were acted on by the imagination and magnified into images of pleasure; in short, it was the faint exquisite music of a waking dream. He then goes on to describe the brilliant visions of delight which filled his brain during the ensuing night, and his painful exhaustion ext day. Davy, the chemist, described a similar thing s resulting from inhaling the gaseous oxide of azote. The effects of Tobacco, another narcotic, are an 'llustration of a similar principle. I therefore would ever recommend either the chewing of it, or the aking of snuff; but I believe the more gentle and oothing effects of smoking to be useful, and by no eans attended with danger. Indeed 1 always adopt he practice, and generally recommend it, of smoking a ipa after meals; it keeps the mind and body quiet,