Copy 1, Volume 1

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

  • John Ayrton Paris
Date:
1823-1824 [vol. I, 1824]
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. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    talismanic aid of a few great names ; when once established upon such a basis, ingenuity, argument, and even experiment, may open their ineffectual batteries. The laconic sentiment of the Roman Satirist is ever opposed to our remonstrance— “ Marcus dixit ?—ita est.” u Did Marcus say ’twas fact ? then fact it is. No proof so valid as a word of his/5 A physician cannot err, in the opinion of the public, if he im¬ plicitly obeys the dogmas of authority ; in the most barbarous ages of ancient Egypt, he was punished or rewarded according to the extent of his success, but to escape the former, it was only necessary to show that an orthodox plan of cure had been followed, such as was prescribed in the acknowledged writings of Hermes. It is an instinct in our nature to follow the track pointed out by a few leaders ; we are gregarious animals, in a moral as well as physical sense, and we are addicted to routine, because it is always easier to follow the opinions of others, than to reason and judge for ourselves. “ The mass of man¬ kind,” as Dr. Paley observes, u act more from habit than re¬ flection.” What, but such a temper could have upheld the preposterous system of Galen for more than thirteen centuries? and have enabled it to give universal laws in medicine to Eu¬ rope—Africa—and part of Asia ? What, but authority, could have inspired a general belief, that the sooty washings of rosin* would act as a universal remedy ? What, but a blind devo¬ tion to authority, or an insuperable attachment to established custom and routine, could have so long preserved from oblivion the absurd medicines which abound in our earlier dispensato¬ ries ? for example, the Decoctum ad let eric os,” of the Edin¬ burgh College, which never had any other foundation than the doctrine of signatures in favour of the Curcuma and Chelido- nium Majus ;t and it is only within a few years, that the The- * This practice of Bishop Berkeley has been ridiculed with great point and effect, in a pamphlet entitled, “A Cure for the Epidemical Madnessof drinking Tar Water,5’ by Mr. Reeve ; in which, addressing the Bishop, he says, “ thus, in your younger days, my Lord, you made the surprising discovery of theunre- ality of matter, and now in your riper age, you have undertaken to prove the reality of a universal remedy ; an attempt to talk men out of their reason, did of right belong to that author who had first tried to persuade them out of their senses.” Tar water was also at one period considered to possess very con¬ siderable efficacy in Syphilis. f The Euphrasia Officinalis, or Eye-bright, which is indebted for its Celebris ty to the doctrine of Signatures, as before stated, is actually employed at this time in cases of dimness of sight. See a Paper upon the efficacy of this plant by Dr. Jackson, in the London Medical and Physical Journal. Vol. 23, p. 104.
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