Therapeutics and materia medica: a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medicinal agents, including their description and history (Volume 1).

  • Stillé, Alfred, 1813-1900.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics and materia medica: a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medicinal agents, including their description and history (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    cies of his ancestors; he has grown up under the most varied circumstances of climate, locality, &c, all of which have moulded his physical condition, and developed in him peculiar susceptibilities; he may be the subject of almost innumerable diseases, of various grades, in various combinations, and at different stages, and each one of these modified by his preexistent tendencies. On the other side there is the medicine, varying in its effects with its origin and mode of preparation, its dose and combination, even in the same healthy organism, but infinitely more so according to the peculiarities of the patient and the disease with which he may be affected. It would seem almost impossible that the product of two such uncertain quantities should ever be foreseen, or, in other words, that therapeutics should ever attain to the certainty even of a rational art, or, still more, of a science. Although it is not a science, yet it involves a large number of scientific elements; for, as will appear in the sequel, in many the- rapeutic problems there are chemical or physical conditions which can be accurately determined, and it is probable that with the progress of investigation the number of these will hereafter be greatly increased. Nevertheless, the modifying influences of the causes already noticed and of many others are so powerful and controlling, that in practice it is seldom possible to foresee the precise result even when the mode of action of the remedy is approximately known. As was before remarked, those remedies are most efficient whose action upon the economy is most obscure. Before proceeding to consider more particularly the sources from which our knowledge of the curative power of medicines is derived, it is proper to premise what should be understood by the phrase to cure disease. The word to cure, in its proper and etymological sense, means to take care of, and it is only derivatively that it has come to signify to heal or to restore to a sound or healthy state. The dis- tinction is happily expressed in the Latin line, Medicus curat, Natura sanat morbos, Physicians cure, but Nature heals. Medicine is only the handmaid of ISfature, the realty active and efficient agent in the restoration of health; Medicine can do no more than remove the im- pediments from Nature's path, support her when faint, restrain her when violent, and guide her wl^en she is inclined to err. But the vital powers and functions of the organism have an inherent tendency to return to their normal condition when deranged by any cause, and to remove or repair the alterations of structure which may have attended that derangement. In this consists the healing power of Nature, via medi- catrix Naturae, which, under various names, was recognized even in the earliest stages of Medicine, and, indeed, more fully then than at any subsequent period until modern times. In diseases the least amenable to art, as well as in those acknow- ledged to be spontaneously curable, the power of Nature is clearly manifested. It is not pretended that any human resources can secure the arrest of tubercle, yet Nature not unfrequently converts the tuberculous into a calcareous deposit, in which form it remains per- manently innocuous. The highest achievement of art is to sustain nature, that she may have time, if possible, to perfect her work. The