On the influence of minute doses of mercury : combined with the appropriate treatment of various diseases, in restoring the functions of health, and the principles on which it depends / by A. P. W. Philip, M.D.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1834
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the influence of minute doses of mercury : combined with the appropriate treatment of various diseases, in restoring the functions of health, and the principles on which it depends / by A. P. W. Philip, M.D. 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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    The most advantageous employment of mercury, however, is not the only object of the present publication : it has another, so intimately connected with a medicine of such general application, that it will soon appear to the reader that it is impossible to separate them : namely, the extensive influence of the laws of sympathy in regulating the phenomena of disease, and consequently the operation of the means which relieve them. * It would not be difficult to show, that on the power of sympathy the phenomena of general diseases wholly depend ; and all internal local diseases may be so similated by their corresponding sympathetic affections, that there is often great difficulty in distinguishing them—a difficulty not a little increased by the constant ten- dency of the sympathetic to change into the real disease, which frequently, in regulating the treatment of the different stages, renders morbid dissection itself, in general our surest guide, fallacious. The effects of sympathy, which, under all circumstances is constantly ope- rating in our frame, have never been disregarded by physicians ; and the powers of mercury have in many respects been well understood by them. It is not difficult to prove, however, that the former have not sufficiently com- manded their attention, nor have they sufficiently investigated the latter. Even in the present state of medicine in this country, one of the most fre- quent and fatal errors is the treatment of the sympathetic, which, in a great proportion of cases, becomes^the most prominent disease, without the neces- sary attention to the original affection, obscured, but not removed by it; for it is in vain to attempt to obviate a consequence, if the cause be still allowed to operate, a far less degree of which will support than that which originally caused the train of symptoms to which the attention of the practitioner is too often in such cases unfortunately confined. I would particularly beg to direct the reader's attention to what is said in the following treatise of pulmonary consumption, of which there is more than one species altogether sympathetic, all cases of which, notwithstanding, it is customary to treat in the same way ; by which every chance of recovery, even in those cases in which we shall find recovery, under proper treatment, at the proper period, is almost certain, is often lost; and similar observations, it will appear, apply to many other diseases. The principles on which mercury operates have, as far as I am capable of judging, been in several respects misunderstood, and consequently the means by which we may as much as possible obtain the good and avoid the bad ef- fects of this medicine, in several ways mistaken. The attainment of these objects the reader will perceive, if I am so fortunate as to carry him along with me, in a great measure depends on a correct knowledge of the laws of sympathy. Without this knowledge, however well the operation of mercury may be understood, its correct application is impossible. I need hardly say to those acquainted with our profession, that, in attempt- ing to introduce the plan of treatment 1 am about to lay before the reader, 1 have had much opposition to contend with. This I have always regarded as a necessary effect of the nature of that profession, and have borne it patiently. When new plans are every day suggested, of which not one in a thousand proves to be of any value, we are naturally inclined to turn a deaf ear to the sanguine expressions of our brethren, when they think they have hit upon any * In a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1833, on the nature of sleep ; and another, lately presented to the Royal Society, on that of death, with several preceding papers published in the same Transactions for 1829—31 and—33, I have endeavored to give a view of the various sympathies of our frame, which so essentially modify the nature and phe aomena of disease. 2