Elements of therapeutics, or, A guide to health : being cautions and directions in the treatment of diseases : designed chiefly for the use of students / by the Rev. Joseph Townsend.

  • Townsend, Joseph, 1739-1816.
Date:
1807
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of therapeutics, or, A guide to health : being cautions and directions in the treatment of diseases : designed chiefly for the use of students / by the Rev. Joseph Townsend. 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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    In the practical part I have inserted a variety of forms, for many of which now added, I must acknowledge myself obliged to Sir John Pringle, through his friend Dr. Ingen Houz, and to Dr. Smith, whose valuable formulae merit particular attention : but I wish the Student to understand, that these require to be altered, as the age, the constitution, and the circumstances, of the patient may require. Let the young practitioner learn the nosology ; let him study the Indications ; let him be attentive to the Operation of every simple medicine ; and he will be never at a loss, having a slight knowl- edge of Chemistry for his Prescriptions : but without this knowl- edge and attention, his blunders will be innumerable. If any one, not bred to science, should imagine, that by consult- ing this Work he may readily become his own Physician, he mis- takes my meaning. Yet such has in general been the defective education of count Surgeons, that families of small fortune, unable to seek the advice of a physician, are not unfrequently reduced to the disagreeable ne- cessity of consulting books. For their sakes therefore chiefly 1 have given most of the prescriptions in English, that in cases of emergency they may not be wholly destitute of help : nevertheless, I most earn- estly exhort the heads of families not to tamper with their children, or others, and give that preference to books and their own judgment, which is more properly due to the Medical Practitioner. It is much to be lamented that, in this enlightened age, the atten- tion of the Public should still continue to be turned towards Specifics, when it is well known, that the same disease not unfrequently pro- ceeds from a variety of causes, and therefore, properly speaking, no Specific Remedy can exist. What reason can we assign then for the astonishing, and still in- creasing, demand for Quack Medicines and Quack Books ? Whence is it, that Quack Medicines and Quack Books are to be found, not merely among the lower classes of society, but in respectable families, and almost in every house ? It is, that they have a higher opinion of such Medicines and of such Books, than of the Judgment, the Skill, the extensive Experience, of men devoted to the Science ; of men, who have been regularly taught, and who are in the daily habit of dis- tinguishing diseases ? No, certainly it is not.—But I leave this im- portant question to be answered by Writers on Political Economy. CONTENTS.