The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan].

  • James Foulis Duncan
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The moral treatment of disease / [James Foulis Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/54 (page 12)
    emetics, and will continue to do so till relieved by appro- priate treatment. Then, but not till then, will the natural and physiological effects of the emetics employed be ob- served to follow. These examples may suffice to explain the way in which the ordinary action of remedies is altered by disease. And it is important for practitioners to be aware of all these modifying circumstances, because they will thus be enabled both to understand many anomalous phenomena that occur in practice, and also to regulate the quantities of the me- dicines prescribed to the exigencies of each individual case. It will also furnish them with a tolerably correct index to estimate the latent force of the malady under treat- ment. The presence of disease in the constitution being the cause of the little effect produced by the remedies em- ployed, it follows, as a matter of course, that these two forces bear an inverse proportion to each other, and that it is possible to estimate the one from the other. When the violence of the disease begins to give way, the physio- logical effects of the medicine begin to show themselves, and vice versa. It is thus that the incipient evidences of ptyalism, taking place in violent inflammation, for the cure of which mercury is used, are so valuable to the Medical Attendant, and so eagerly sought for. Not that the ptyalism carries off, as was formerly supposed, the dregs of the complaint, or the morbid humours which produced it, but it indicates that the mineral is producing its physio- logical action upon the constitution, and is thus an indi- rect proof that the violence of the disease has begun to abate. Were man a mere animal, entirely destitute of intelli- gence and moral feeling, these two kinds of effects would be all that could be recognised as the result of the action