Cures; the story of the cures that fail / by James J. Walsh.

  • James Joseph Walsh
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cures; the story of the cures that fail / by James J. Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    undoubtedly made more “cures” than any other drug compilation. Even in Galen’s time, the prescription for it was extremely complex and a little bit later it came to be spoken of as a “calendar” prescription because it had as many or more ingredients in it than the days of the month. Somehow it was felt that, with all these medicines in it, it could scarcely fail to do good for any disease, no matter what it was, because there was something for everything in it. It was a veritable gunshot prescription with the shot so scatter¬ ing that it was sure to hit something, provided it was sent anywhere near the general direction of the object at which it was aimed. Harvey’s discovery and the beginning of scientific medicine did not affect the popularity of this old stand-by among the medicines. Indeed, we owe to that popularity the incentive to the studies in the physio¬ logical action of drugs that finally made it impossible for educated physicians, at least, to use the theriac. Claude Bernard, the great French physiologist, has told the comical story of it. As a boy he worked in a drug store. He found there was one remedy that was sold more than any other in this small town in western France. This was the theriac. It was kept in a great big jug and the bottles of those who brought in their own were filled with it, or other bottles were supplied to customers for a consideration. There were many old people who declared that without this remedy they would not have been able to live through the winter, or to live as long as they did; and that when they took it they felt like new people, and when they were without it they felt languid and depressed, slipping down the
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