Anniversary oration, before the New-York Academy of Medicine : delivered in the chapel of the University of the City of New-York, November the 14th, 1849 / by Alfred C. Post.

  • Post, Alfred C. (Alfred Charles), 1806-1886.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anniversary oration, before the New-York Academy of Medicine : delivered in the chapel of the University of the City of New-York, November the 14th, 1849 / by Alfred C. Post. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the addition of a number of remedial agents of great and universally acknowledged value. There are those now living in our midst, who commenced their professional career at a period when the elegant preparations of iodine and the vegetable alkaloids, such as quinine, morphine, strychnine, veratrine, &c, which now constitute so important a class of reme- dial agents, had not been introduced into the Materia Medica. And such practitioners can well recollect, as they look back to the days of auld lang syne, how formidable a matter in those days was the treat- ment of an ordinary case of intermittent fever, when bark was required to be given in substance, until the stomachs of the patients were often provoked to a rebellion which could not easily be quelled. In ob- stetrics, and in the special department of pathology and therapeutics pertaining to females, most im- portant improvements have been made during the life-time of the present generation. Vague and crude hypotheses have given place to precise and accurate knowledge; and uncertain, dilatory and inefficient modes of treatment have been replaced by methods which are sure, prompt and efficacious. Many a maid and matron, who constitute the light and joy of their respective households, are now promptly rescued from disease, and restored to the full vigour of health and the full bloom of beauty, who under the old system would have lingered out a life of in- firmity and suffering, or would have been consigned to an early grave. In general pathology, also, and in the theory and practice of medicine, improvements