Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / by James Hamilton ... ; from the fifth Edinburgh edition.

  • Hamilton, James, 1749-1835.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the utility and administration of purgative medicines in several diseases / by James Hamilton ... ; from the fifth Edinburgh edition. 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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    Practitioners, during a long period, forged shackles for themselves, by placing too implicit a confidence iu the opinions of the ancient physicians. They not only respected these opinions, but defended them as the standards of medical truth, and considered them as the only sure and safe guides. Satisfied with the practice which they had found sanctioned by men of eminence, nothing, they thought, was to be expected, or inquired for, beyond the pale of their authority. Thus they had never presumed to think or reason for themselves with that free and unfettered mind which they ought to have preserved. Nay, even we, in our day, are still disposed to bend with too humble deference to the fathers of physic. A prepossession in favour of early speculations re- presses that freedom of inquiry so necessary to the im- provement of medicine. Under this prepossession, practitioners do not always see what is passing before their eyes in a just and proper light. They are thus apt to be deceived themselves, and to give to their obser- vations a shade or colouring which deceives others. Physicians, in conducting the cure of painful and dangerous diseases, have been led, by an anxiety cre- ditable to their feelings, to the promiscuous employ- ment of different active remedies, or to the adoption of them in so quick a succession, as to make it frequently uncertain to which of these remedies, changes which may take place in the course of the ailment are to be referred. Much of the slow progress of medical im- provement may be attributed to this circumstance. The history of medicine, also, clearly shows, that theory or reasoning has contributed in no small degree to impede its progress. Physicians have at all times