Use of diaphoresis and diaphoretic agents in ophthalmic therapeutics / Hiram Woods. Diaphoretics and diaphoresis and ophthalmic therapeutics / T.A. Woodruff.

  • Woods, Hiram.
Date:
[1902?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Use of diaphoresis and diaphoretic agents in ophthalmic therapeutics / Hiram Woods. Diaphoretics and diaphoresis and ophthalmic therapeutics / T.A. Woodruff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    AGENTS IN 0 ' .PEUTICS. To properly estimate the therapeutic value of an agent, allowance must be made for the natural enthu- siasm of those who introduce it and who often record results which later experience fails to confirm, and the tendency of certain things to remedy themselves, the exciting cause having been removed. Disappointment may ensue because too much is expected. Credit may be given when none is due. Truth lies between these ex- tremes, and is to be reached, it seems to me, by finding out what one should look for, basing judgment on the physiologic effects of the remedy, and the teachings of clinical experience. An example of what one may, not illogically, term therapeutic enthusiasm and therapeutic chaos, is found in the statements of books on general therapeutics and those on eye diseases, regarding the use of diaphoretic agents in ocular affections. If we could accept, for instance, all of the following from Potter’s “Materia Medica,” pilocarpin would be little short of an ocular panacea. Says this writer: “Oph- thalmologists employ pilocarpin with most excellent re- sults in the amblyopia of alcoholism, and that from the use of tobacco, in detachment of the retina, chronic iritis, keratitis, glaucoma, hemorrhage into the vitreous, atrophic choroiditis, white atrophy, to promote resolu- tion and absorption in inflammatory conditions with ex- udation.” Bartholow and other writers indicate prac- tically the same scope. The student turning from this general advice to special works will, I think, be disap- pointed if he expects to find specific and positive infor- mation as to what in this list is true and what is not. Most of our special writers indicate that diaphoresis has