An inquiry into the reasons and results of the prescription of intoxicating liquors in the practice of medicine / by F.R. Lees.

  • Lees, Frederic Richard, 1815-1897.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the reasons and results of the prescription of intoxicating liquors in the practice of medicine / by F.R. Lees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Sciences ancillary to Medicine. aQd microscopical, prepares for the study of Patholog,/, or the Iniowledge of morbid structures. This is quite a modern development of Medicine, and one in which it boasts its greatest triumphs. Nevertheless, while this study may reveal ivhat is wrong—may show the precise nature of the departure from the healthy standard of tissue aud function —it will not, of itself, teach us how to get rid of the abnormal condition. A knowledge of the disease is iwt half the cure, quantitatively—it is only the first scientific step towards cure. The Physician's second step is Experiment, as the basis of Induction—epcperiment in regard to the relation of Drugs and other Agents to disease. Here Therapeutics (the Art of Healing) properly commences. But this study calls into requisition two others—Chemistry and Materia Medica. Amongst the few certain things in ' Medicine,' may be ranked the application of some chemical remedies for chemical disorders of the blood and of the secretions. Chemistry is a progressive science of fixed relations ; alkalies and acids must neuti-alize each other, and one substance dissolve another, whether in the stomach, the bladder, or the blood. A knowledge of Chemistry, therefore, is needful, not merely to enable the physician to prescribe the proper chemical drugs for producing the decompositions or the neutralizations demanded by the causes of disease, but to avoid the introduction of drugs that are chemically incom- patible, and which would simply counteract each other. § 8. Medical Botany, not to speak of IMinerals, inti'oduces us to a class of peculiar organic-substances prei^aredin Nature's laboratory of the Vegetal Kingdom, which have special characteristics. Some of them may be called ' simples '—such as tansey, broom tops, mint, balm, penny royal,—others may be gentle or quick ajjerients, weak or sti'ong bitters,—and some may be powerftd sedatives, Hke fox-glove, or strong narcotics, like the fearful strychnine, or the ' deadly aconite.' Nature has scattered over her domains a vast variety of such medicinal and poisonous products : these form the bulk of what is technically called materia medica, but whether they are useful, any or all of them, in the treatment of disease; or for what diseases, and in what measui'es and forms they should be administered,—ai'e questions only to be settled by intelli- gent trial and scientifically conducted expei'iment; in short, by large Inductions, after careful observation and rigid com- parison of results. Conclusions and practices short of this, are cither downright Quackery, or simple Empiricism.