A text-book of practical therapeutics : with especial reference to the application of remedial measures to disease and their employment upon a rational basis / by Hobart Amory Hare.

  • Hare, H. A. (Hobart Amory), 1862-1931.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A text-book of practical therapeutics : with especial reference to the application of remedial measures to disease and their employment upon a rational basis / by Hobart Amory Hare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    ■School of medicini. University of Leeds. PART I. GENERAL THERAPEUTICAL CONSIDERATIONS. Before entering into a study of the action of drugs upon a living body, it is necessary that the student should possess a clear idea of -what the word therapeutics means, the reason why we resort to drugs, and, more important than all, that he should grasp the limita- tions which govern the administration of remedies. Two very foolish and unfounded ideas have been put forward by certain persons—one being, that medical therapeutics is use- less; and the other, that this branch of medical knowledge is not advancing with so great a stride as is pathology or surgery. The individuals who deride the use of drugs in disease belong to one of two classes : either they have never tried them or have used the drugs ignorantly or wrongly. The statement that therapeutics is to-day less advanced than are pathology and surgery is readily answered by a denial; for the thera- peutist is able to treat successfully many diseases of which the pathol- ogist knows nothing, and is obliged to rest his treatment on empix-i- cism simply because he cannot tell how his drugs act if the pathologist cannot tell him in what the disease consists. Rheumatism and syphilis are good examples of this very point. In regard to surgery, evei'y one must recognize the extraordinary advances made in this branch of medical science, yet compai'atively few realize that it is solely by the proper use of drugs that all its triumphs are possible. The definition of the word therapeutics in Billings's Dictionary is: That branch of medical science which treats of the application of remedies to the cure or alleviation of disease ; and practically the term is almost universally used to signify the employment of drugs for such purposes. The credit for the introduction of new instruments and operations may be accorded to surgery, but the dis- covery of new drugs must be accorded to therapeutics. We find, then, that ether and chloroform began to revolutionize surgery sixty yeai's ago, and that corrosive sublimate and other drugs have revolutionized it once more within the lifetime of every one who reads this book. Cocaine has changed the entire aspect of eye surgery and other minor operations, and has immediately averted an enormous amount of pain and suffering which the surgeon could not mitigate, much less remove, in the absence of its influence. To the accusation of backwardness