Pharmacologia; comprehending the art of prescribing upon fixed and scientific principles; together with the history of medicinal substances / By J.A. Paris, with notes and additions.

  • Paris, John Ayrton, 1785-1856.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia; comprehending the art of prescribing upon fixed and scientific principles; together with the history of medicinal substances / By J.A. Paris, with notes and additions. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    has at once arraigned Physic as a fallacious art, or derided it as a compo¬ sition of error and fraud.* They ask—and it must be confessed that they ask with reason—what pledge can be afforded them, that the boast¬ ed remedies of the present day will not, like their predecessors, fall into disrepute, and in their turn serve only as humiliating memorials of the credulity and infatuation of the physicians who commended and prescrib¬ ed them ? There is surely no question connected with our subject which can be more interesting and important, no one which requires a more cool and dispassionate inquiry, and certainly not any which can be more ap¬ propriate for a lecture introductory to the history of Materia Medica. I shall therefore proceed to examine with some attention the revolutions which have thus taken place in the opinions and belief of mankind, with regard to the efficacy and powers of different medicinal agents : such an inquiry, by referring them to causes capable of a philosophical investiga¬ tion is calculated to remove many of the unjust prejudices which have been executed, to quiet the doubts and alarms which have been so indus¬ triously propagated, and, at the same time, to obviate the recurrence of several sources of error and disappointment. This moral view of events, without any regard to chronological mi¬ nutiae, may be denominated the Philosophy or Hi-story, and should be carefully distinguished from that technical and barren erudition, which consists in a mere knowledge of names and dates^ and which is perused by the medical student with as much apathy, and as little profit, as the monk counts his bead-roll. It has been very justly observed, that there is a certain maturity of the human mind, acquired from generation to generation, in the mass^ as there is in different stages of life, in the indi¬ vidual man; what is history, when thus philosophically studied, but the faithful record of this progress ? pointing out for instruction the various causes which have retarded or accelerated it in different ages and countries.. In tracing the history of the Materia Medica to its earliest periods, we shall find that its progress towards its present advanced state, has been very slow and unequal, very unlike the steady and successive improve¬ ment which has attended other branches of natural knowledge ; we shall perceive even that its advancement has been continually arrested, and often entirely subverted, by the caprices, prejudices, superstitions, and knavery of mankind ; unlike too the other branches of science, it is in¬ capable of succesful generalization ; in the progress of the history of re¬ medies, when are we able to produce a discovery or improvement, which has been the result of that happy combination of Observation, Analogy, and Experiment,! which has so eminently rewarded the labours of mo¬ dern science ? Thus, Observation led Newton to discover that the re¬ fractive power of transparent substances was, in general, in the ratio of * A late foreign writer impressed with this sentiment has given the following flat¬ tering definition of our profession : ‘ Physic is the art of amusing the patient, while Nature cures the disease.’ 'I’his is a sarcasm which can only be equalled by the churlish and ill-humoured apostrophe of our ov^n Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in speak¬ ing of the profession of physic, exclaims ‘ It is a melancholy attendance on misery ; a mean submission to peevishness; and a continual interruption of pleasure.’ t Observation, says professor Leslie, is the close inspection and attentive examina¬ tion of those phenomena which arise in the course of Nature; Experiment, as the term implies, consists in a kind of trial, or artificial selection and combination of circumstances, for the purpose of searching after the remote results.