The pharmacological action and therapeutic uses of the nitrites and allied compounds : including the Croonian lectures for 1893 / by Daniel John Leech ; ed. by R.B. Wild.

  • Leech, Daniel John.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pharmacological action and therapeutic uses of the nitrites and allied compounds : including the Croonian lectures for 1893 / by Daniel John Leech ; ed. by R.B. Wild. 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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    act according to experience, we in. fact only make trial of a remedy which we think we have seen do good in a case where iq^ thinh the conditions have been similar to those in the case before ns. Every adaptation in the use of a drug founded on experience is in fact an experiment which we make on the ground of two judgments—(1) that in the former case or cases the drug actually did good; (2) that in the present case the essential conditions of the experiment are the same as in the former. The father of medicine says in his first aphorism, i) Sf Trttpa acpaXepri, 17 Se Kpicng ^aXtTri]— '^ Experience is delusive, judgment is difficult; and so it has ever been found. Constantly have experiences proved delusive because of misjudgments as to the real effects of a drug, or as to the similarity of the instances of disease. An anecdote recorded by Paris^ in his history of Sir Humphrey Davy, and also mentioned in the ^' Pharmacologia, illustrates well one cause of the difficulty in deciding as to the true effects of the drug. It is interesting not only in connection with my subject, but because it seems to show that this great English observer was one of the first to appreciate the value of the thermometer in exact observa- tions on the human body. '^ As soon, says Paris, '^ as the powers of nitrous oxide were discovered, Dr. Beddoes at once concluded it must necessarily be a specific for paralysis; a patient was selected for trial, and the management of it was entrusted to Davy. Previous to the administration of the gas, he inserted a small pocket thermometer under the tongue of the patient, as he was accustomed to do upon such occasions to ascertain the degree of animal temperature, with a view to future comparison. The paralytic man, wholly ignorant of the nature of the process to which he was to submit, but deeply impressed from the representations of Dr. Beddoes, with the certainty of success, no sooner felt the thermometer ^ '* Life of Sir Humphrey Davy. by J. A. Paris, M.D., F.R.S., 1831, p. 50.
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