A new systematic table of the materia medica : with a preliminary dissertation, historical, critical, and explanatory, on the operation of medicines / [Andrew Ure].

  • Ure, Andrew, 1778-1857.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new systematic table of the materia medica : with a preliminary dissertation, historical, critical, and explanatory, on the operation of medicines / [Andrew Ure]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    able ideas entertained concerning the vital functions, the prevailing arrangements of medicines and the opinions concerning their mode of action in the cure of disease. Hence, to ascertain the character which any remedy bore, at a particular era, it is more important to inquire, who was the leading pathologist, than to investigate either its sensible qualities, or ordinary effects on the animal economy. It is to be feared, that this unphilo- sophical spirit still exerts a baneful influence on the Materia Medica. Few men have established better claims to the es- teem and gratitude of posterity, than Dr. William Harvey. The circulation of the blood, unquestion- ably the most beautiful fact which the naturalist can contemplate, was a discovery of infinite importance, to the dignity and success of medicine, a discovery by which the comfort and happiness of the whole human race were eminently promoted. Without this funda- mental knowledge, due to the fine genius of Harvey, physic and surgery must have remained a prey to in- cessant errors and delusions, arts unprofitable or dan- gerous to the sick, and conferring little respectability on their professors. When after a painful struggle with bigotry and ignorance, the fiery ordeal assigned to truth; the doctrine of the circulation had acquired its merited ascendancy, over the ancient fancy of flux and re- flux, it excited such genuine admiration as to in- duce physicians to look for the origin and essence of every disease in the affections of the sanguiferous system. Entirely absorbed by this idea, they contem- plated the human body merely as a hydraulic machine, /