The new handbook of dosimetric therapeutics, or, The treatment of diseases by simple remedies : including symptomatology, thermometry and uroscopy, with synoptical tables epitomising important clinical cases : a work particularly designed for practitioners / by Ad. Burggraeve ; tr. from the French, and ed. by Henry Arthur Allbutt.

  • Burggraeve, Ad. (Adolphe), 1806-1902.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The new handbook of dosimetric therapeutics, or, The treatment of diseases by simple remedies : including symptomatology, thermometry and uroscopy, with synoptical tables epitomising important clinical cases : a work particularly designed for practitioners / by Ad. Burggraeve ; tr. from the French, and ed. by Henry Arthur Allbutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    dosimetry, the doctrine of the jugulation of acute diseases was- not admitted except in the case of intermittent fevers — in which quinine and its different salts are employed. Dosimetry, however, when it was established, proved that remittent and continued fevers could be jugulated in a similar manner, by a similar class of remedies, that is, by the alkaloids. Hahnemann, it may be truly said, foresaw this possibility, in his law of similars; but independently that that law is not a constant one, he went so low in his doses that he fell into- mythicism. Such eccentricity excepted — and which his- admirers have still more exaggerated — the honour of the reform of therapeutics would have been his No one, at least, will contest with him his having opened the road for phar- maco-dynamics, since until his time physicians had blindly followed the routine of empiricism. By proving that aconitum and veratrum reduce fever quite as well as bleeding, Hahne- mann has rendered a great service to physicians and patients : to the former, by making them more certain of their cures; to- the latter, by saving them from many after-troubles. He thus prepared the way for dosimetry, by striking the first blow against the crude compounds of the official pharmacopoeias. Dosimetry employs medicaments whose action is at once- certain, rapid, and agreeable, after the surgical precept of Celsus : Tuto, cito, jucunde. The physician, therefore, should know that he can have neither motive nor pretext in refusing to adopt this method. The physician is the minister of nature, naturoe minister (and not the master, as some pre- tend) ; he should, therefore, satisfy all her desires : but it is acting contrary to those desires if the organism is weakened when it is making every effort to repel the morbid agent. Two innovators of our time — Brown and Broussais — pre- sent themselves. Which is right, and which is wrong? I reply : both. Nevertheless, Brown understood nature better than Broussais, since behind the sthenic condition he caught a glimpse of asthenia. But his active measures were rude ^