Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good].

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/784 (page 12)
    reason, to have fallen into temporary disrepute. There are some practitioners who think that all the articles which are of real use in the cure of diseases lie within a small compass, and may be learnt without burthening the memory. ‘This remark may be allowed to those who are limited to a portable dispensary, as in travelling, or on shipboard; but when uttered under other circumstances, it savours less of wisdom than of indolence. If the pharmacopceias of former times were too voluminous, and were occasionally loaded with me- dicines of trifling importance, the lopping and topping that must hereupon ensue would make a destructive inroad upon their boundaries, and take from, them much that is good as well as something that can be spared. We may easily, in- deed, substitute one medicine for another, but it is very rarely that we can hereby obtain an integral representative; a remedy, possessing not only the general but the particular qualities of that whose place is supplied, so as to be equally adapted to the exact state of the disease or the express character of the idiosyncrasy. Sir George Baker was en- gaged as reasonably and scientifically in examining into the virtues of the cardamine pratensis, or lady’s smock, as Dr. Stoerck in proving, upon his own person, the violent powers of colchicum and stramonium. A common fate has, indeed, attended the whole of these experiments. From attracting and concentrating the attention of the public, the medicines to which they were directed became equally overvalued ; were employed upon all occasions; produced frequent dis- appointment ; and-gradually fell into disuse. The colchicum has been fortunate enough to ascend once more to its full zenith of popularity ; many efforts have been made on behalf of the stramonium; and the cardamine, though at present less successful than either of the others, still holds in abey- ance its post in the established pharmacopeeias, waiting for some lucky trial to bring it once more into general esteem. A work, erected upon scientific principles, should know nothing of these accidental reverses, and still less of the varying and too often capricious taste of the day. ‘To judge by the sentiments of some writers, the reputation of the bark seems at present on the wane, while the seeds of the croton tiglium, after a long neglect, are again rising into notice. In the remedial part of the present work, the author has endeavoured to allow to every medicine its proper value, as far as he has been able to estimate it, whatever may have been the era of its credit; and as there can be no stronger ground for the study of botany, oryctology, or chemistry, than the advantage they afford to the art of healing, and as these are provinces cultivated in our own day by almost every one, he has felt himself called upon by the general voice