New remedies, with formulae for their preparation and administration.

  • Dunglison, Robley, 1798-1869.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New remedies, with formulae for their preparation and administration. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    tlio relation between cause and effect, can ever duly profit by mere experience in that which has been properly termed the most inductive of all sciences.''^ To treat disease methodically and effectively, the nature of the actions of the living tissues, in both the healthy and the morbid condition, must be correctly appreciated; the effects which the articles of the materia medica are capable of exerting under both those conditions, must bo known from accurate observa- tions, and not until then can the practitioner prescribe with any well-founded prospect of success. Numerous errors would be perpetrated, were we to pro- fess, and to carry out such profession, that we are guided by experience only, unless that experience had been gained by a due consideration of all the phy- siological, pathological, and therapeutical bearings of the subject. In illustra- tion of this, the well-known case cited by Dr. Paris in his Life of Sir Hum- phry Davy may be adduced. The enthusiastic Beddoes, having hypothetically inferred that the inhalation of the nitrous oxide might be a specific for palsy, a patient was selected for trial, and placed under the care of Davy—at the time assistant to Beddoes. Before administering the gas, Davy thought of as- certaining the temperature of the body by the thermometer placed under the tongue. The paralytic, deeply impressed by Dr. Beddoes with the certainty of the success of the remedy, of which he knew nothing—soon after the ther- mometer was placed in his mouth, believing this to be the great curative agent —declared that he felt somewhat better. Nothing more was, therefore, done; and he was requested to return on the following day. The same form was gone through with the same results; and, at the end of a fortnight, the sick man was dismissed cured, no agent of any kind having been employed except the thermometer. Now, if the reasoning powers were not duly exerted, experience would ob- viously teach as the result of this case, that the thermometer is an antiparaly- tic. The rational therapeutist is not, however, satisfied with this knowledge of the fact, for fact it is. He inquires into the mode in which the effect was induced, and he is not long in referring it to the influence exerted by the moral over the i:)hys!qxie; and he classes the thermometer with Perkinism, ani- mal magnetism, and their congenerous arts,—amongst articles that act chiefly through the new impressions which they make on the senses. It might seem to those who are unacquainted with medical history, that in periods approaching our own, no such illogical inferences could be deduced, and that it has been the custom with the profession for ages to bestow all due caution and the most rational inquiry in the collection of facts. Such, how- ever, is far from being the case. It is, indeed, humiliating to reflect on the credulity or faulty observation that has existed among nations, who have suc- cessfully cultivated many of the other branches of natural science. It ought scarcely to be credited, and yet it is nevertheless true, that the aqua spe7-matis 1 Propterea sola experientia absque doctrina et ratione incerta est et conjecturalis. Qui enim novit rliabarbarum purgare bilem, nescit tamen quando, quibus, et cui morbo prosit, nisi sit niediciis doctus et peritus. Primeros, De vulgi erroribus in medicind, lib. i. cnp. xl. Amstelod. 1G39.