Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / [James Hamilton].

  • Hamilton, James, 1749-1835
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / [James Hamilton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/460 (page 22)
    times and seasons, conceiving that they would prove beneficial or hurtful, according to the junc- tion or opposition of the planets, the seasons of the year, or the age^of the moon. These reveries, happily, have long since vanished, in the course of regular practice; and can now be traced only in directing the sage advice of the matron of the village and the hamlet. The favourers of the humoral pathology, called in the aid of purgative medicines to expel pec- cant matter, supposed to have been previously se- parated from the mass of blood by an appropriate fermentation. They also taught, that different purgatives possessed distinct powers, and moved different fluids by a specific action. Hence they talked of cholagogues, phlemagogues, hydra- gogues, melanagogues; and they displayed no little sagacity in the selection of the purgative adapted to the expulsion of the fluid supposed to be prevalent at the time. This fermentation, however, and consequent deposition of peccant hu- mours, have ceased to hold a place in the doc- trines of physic 5 while the specific operation of purgatives, in expelling particular fluids, is neither