New remedies : with formulae for their preparation and administration / By Robley Dunglison.

  • Robley Dunglison
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New remedies : with formulae for their preparation and administration / By Robley Dunglison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    f 0 T U E FIRST A X I> S \]<: <).\l> i; [> The information concerning the remedies of more recent introduction lies BCattered in so many works, that it cannot be accessible to tbu mass of phy- sicians. The author has, consequently, believed that he would be rendering a service to the profession by concentrating the results of experience within reasonable limits, so that they may be readily available to all. The majority of the new agents—it will be found—have been furnished by modern chemis- try; and their employment has been attended with this advantage, that— when properly prepared—they arc not liable to uncertainty in their operation j whilst the various plants from which strychnia, emetia, quinia, &c., are ob- tained, are liable to irregularity of action, owing to faulty desiccation, to the season in which they are culled, &c., <fcc.—objections which cannot apply to the active principles when separated from them. Owiug to the difficulty of sifting the results of true from those of false ob- servation, the author has esteemed it proper to give, as far as he was able, the recorded experience of all who have employed the remedies in question. It need scarcely be said, that to make a correct observer and a good thera- peutist, a knowledge of every department of medical science is deman Anatomy, physiology, pathology, and materia medica arc, indeed, but intro- ductory to the great object which the practitioner has in view—the alleviation and removal of suffering. Were it otherwise, it would be but necessary to in- stitute empirical trials, in every case of disease, with various articles in and out of the received lists of the materia medica, and from such vague trial- to endeavour to deduce what is termed ''experience. The erroneous idea prevails too extensively, that every one is capable of profiting by observation, andjhat, therefore, all who have had the Bame amount of experience, must be equally capable of treating disease. Setting aside, how- ever, the consideration of the differences that must necessarily result from the varied powers of individuals, it can scarcely be maintained, that he who* tention has not been properly directed to the study of the preliminary bran which have been enumerated, and whose mind has not been trained in tracing