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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    If these questions can be solved, three practical courses are open to us—-namely, one ' curative'; one ' preventive'; and one ' palliative.' Our duty, with a diseased person before us, is, first, to cure him as speedily as possible;—second, to prevent the recurrence of his malady;—third, when we can do no better, to palliate the injury and ease the pain. If it be inquired, How are these ends to be accomphshed ? I answer: We can cure, either by dislodging the removable causes of the malady, whether internal or external, original or sequential; or by ^Pplp^g' counter-actives—i.e. remedies which promote right action or lessen wrong :—we can prevent only by avoiding the original conditions on which the effect depends :-we can jpalliate symptoms, or reactions—which ai'e the sequels of the disorder (or the secondary disease)—and thus give relief when we can do nothing else ; or even sometimes when we are also touching causes. If the querist asks, IIow do we quell the causes or consequences of disease? I answer, by strengthening the vital system, since ' disease' is only another name for weak or perverted action of some kind: is a state of the organism which ceases of course when the conditions of the normal-state ai'e induced.* In disease there are but two modes of giving strength —the fii'st is that direct one which holds in health, the supply of the natural elements of the body and of the associated condi- tions needful for assimilative and normal action,—the second and indirect one, pecuHai' to disease, the administration of medicines ; that is, substances possessed of specific-powers to suppress injurious, or promote remedial function. § 3. It will be obvious, then, that the underlying condition of all but Empirical or Accidental Medicine, is a true and comprehensive hnowledge of the subject of treatment—the Human Body. This embraces, first, its anatomy or structm-e ; second, and even more important, its physiology, i.e. the science * That Sydenham, two hundred years ago, or Mr TorxBEE, F.R.S., in his Inaugural at St Mary's, in 1864, should affirm that Disease is caHSlractire and curative, not rftstructive, will not abate the folly of the affirmation one jot. It is not meant to deny that Disease includes something comparatively good. Disorder is not chaos—hut order deranged. The modified reactions of Vitality are partly resistive, and partly reparative. They are letter than absolute dc- struction, but they are not uecessarilly cojistruction; certainly not aijustcA. or normal action. On the contrary, it is the same absolute loss to the frame, as the loss of force to the American settler-, when his family are summoned from the reproductive labours of the field, to defend farm and life from the incursions of hostile Indians. Civil-war may be better than Civil-death, but it is not therefore good.