Remarks on the narrow limits of so-called rational medicine : read before the South Hants Medico-Chirurgical Society / by J. Stevenson Bushnan.

  • Bushnan, J. Stevenson (John Stevenson), 1808?-1884.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the narrow limits of so-called rational medicine : read before the South Hants Medico-Chirurgical Society / by J. Stevenson Bushnan. 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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    2G rests only in a small degree upon rational grounds, and that the extension of rational Medicine must proceed onwards with extreme slowness. We admit that in the particulars above referred to (and the enumeration, we think it will be allowed, contains the chief important additions made of late by Che- mistry to Medicine) there are some examples of the rational treatment of morbid conditions. But we must premise this:—that the instances we are going to concede, do not at all warrant the idea entertained by some, that the progress of organic chemistry already holds out the promise of an immediate era of rational Medicine founded upon chemical pathology and treatment. And here it may not be out of place to recal the remembrance of a former era of so-called chemico-medical rationalism by which the exist- ence and repute of the old humoral pathology were prolonged long after it was thoroughly worn out, in the vain hope of placing its foundations anew upon the principles of the then infant science of chemistry. We admit, then, that it is rational treatment to prescribe magnesia and chalk against the poisonous effects of the mineral acids, or rather of the sulphuric, hydrochloric, and oxalic acids; to prescribe weak acids and bland oils against the pure alkalies and their carbonates; to prescribe white of eggs against corrosive sublimate; to prescribe sulphate of soda or sulphate of mag- nesia against the chloride of baritum, chloride of calcium and the soluble salts of lead. We admit also that it is rational treatment to prescribe alkaline remedies in uric acid diathesis, and the nitric or hydrochloric acids in the phos- phatic diathesis; also to prescribe alkalies, chalk and mag- nesia in affections of the stomach and bowels connected with the presence there of acid acrimony; nor less to prescribe iron in anaemic diseases. These several modes of proceeding have nothing to do witli chemical pathology, being all.