Materia medica, or, Pharmacology and therapeutics (Volume 1, Part 2).

  • Tully, William, 1785-1859.
Date:
1857-58
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Materia medica, or, Pharmacology and therapeutics (Volume 1, Part 2). 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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    certain that it can not be produced without a general increase of vital energy and strength of action.in the heart and arteries. IMS I.am sure that no simple and pure Narcotic ever produces lopi- cal superficial Congestion of any other sort than from Phlogosis, appears to me to be impossible from any agent taken internally. It must be obvious that those Narcotics, which have other powers conjoined, must operate in regard to Congestions, exactly as those other powers would operate, if possessed alone by an agent. But I attach very little importance to the subject of Congestion, since (as appears to me) it is always a mere effect of some thing of far more consequence, itself being of very little consequence. As appears to me, there is no universal disease, which does not to a greater or less degree vary the relative distribution of the blood between the external and internal parts. Indeed, I doubt not that such variations in a much less degree, are constantly occurring in a slate of health, without disturbing such health in the least; and when they occur in the highest degree, as the result of disease, they do not endanger, and much less destroy the life of the pa- tient but are the mere effect of extreme exhaustion, which causes death instead of the Congestion. The general Congestions there- fore, that occur in fatal diseases, are always internal, and always produced by exhaustion, and the fatality results from the exhaus- tion and not from the Congestion. The topical Congestions that are found in fatal diseases, I believe, are always the effect of Phloo-osis of some sort or other, or of some other local disease which produces exhaustion in some viscus or organ whose func- tions are necessary to health or even life. Now I repeat, it is not the Congestion which occasions the fatality ; but the Congestion and the fatality are equally the result of the exhaustion. The several different terms by which this class has been desig- nated at different times, by different authors are the following, viz.: Torpentia. This is one of the translations into Latin of the term Narcotica, and on the whole, not as true a translation as the term Stupefacientia would have been. In as much as Latin is * In the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 23, Vol. VI., Wednesday, July 18th, 1832, I published an abridgement of an Essay on Congestion, which I beg leave to rel'er-to, for my principles on this subject. The original from which this was abridged has been long since lost.