Pharmacologia : being an extended inquiry into the operations of medicinal bodies upon which are founded the theory and art of prescribing / by J.A. Paris.

  • John Ayrton Paris
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia : being an extended inquiry into the operations of medicinal bodies upon which are founded the theory and art of prescribing / by J.A. Paris. 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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    markable of these cases will probably be the easiest mode of putting the reader in full possession of the pith and marrow of the homoeopathic doctrine. Thus, the author of the fifth book, Emdr]p,(ov, describes an Athenian attacked by the most violent cholera, as cured by hellebore, which is, in itself, so violently emetic and cathartic as to produce a kind of cholera. Again, the English sweating sickness, which appeared for the first time in 1485, and was of so destructive a character as to kill nine tenths of those attacked with it, could not be allayed until the use of sudorijics was resorted to. In like manner, Fritze and De Haen saw convulsions and delirium produced by a species of nightshade, and the latter physician, by aid of small doses of the same poison, effected the cure of similar convulsions. From learned quotation Hahnemann de- scends to common experience. He asks whether we do not apply snow or ice to a frozen limb—whether the cook does not expose a scalded hand to the fire, wisely despising the increased smart which this occasions, in the conviction that the pain and its cause will be re- moved by a few minutes of endurance ? Others, he says, apply heated spirits of wine, or oil of turpentine, which work a cure in a few hours; whereas cooling salves might be used in vain for as many months, while cold water would only aggravate the mischief. And here the culinary empiric has the support of mighty names. Fernelius (Therap., 1. vi., c. 20) recommends us to bring the burned part to the fire. John Hunter condemns the use of cold water, and approves of exposure to heat. Sydenham and Benjamin Bell declare for spirits of wine, and Kentish, Heister, and John Bell applaud the use of turpentine. It is from such facts, backed by such authorities, that he takes his stand ; and in the deep conviction of the truth of his principle, and the importance of his discovery, he triumphantly exclaims, Yes! there were, from time to time, physicians who surmised the important truth, that medicines healed disease only through their fitness for exciting analogous symp- toms. But enough of his principle—let us now examine the mode of its application. It will be readily perceived that the homoeopathist can have no other object than to deal with the symptoms; he does not in- quire whether the patient has a fever, or a fit of the gout, or a disease in the brain, liver, or lungs, but he makes curious inquiries as to the state of the skin, his joints, or his great toe. Since these symptoms are the great object of attack, and since, according to his doctrine, every collection of them must be cured by something which would excite analogous affections in a healthy subject, the nature of a homoeopathic pharmacopoeia may be readily imagined.* It may, perhaps, be asked how the tendencies of different medicaments, to produce particular symptoms, can be ascertained ?—by experience. A set of meek and much-enduring men, of sound constitutions, must be found ready to sub- mit their own bodies to the useful but unpleasing task of serving as pharmaceutical tests. But the most absurd and startling part of the story, and that which will assuredly give the rudest shock to the read- * Is it not highly probable that Hahnemann borrowed the homoeopathic theory from the practice of Celsus, who'treated dropsy by throwing his patient into a pond of water? for, says he, the only remedy is to throw him, unexpectedly, into a fishpond, and if he be un- able to swim, keep him for some time immersed, so as to make him swallow a portion of the water, and then raise him out of it, alternately immersing and emerging him; but if able to swim, he should be kept in the same manner at times immersed by force, so as to be surfeited by water; by which means both the thirst and the dread of water will be ef- fectually subdued.—Similia Similibus.—Am. Ed.