The dispensatory of the United States of America / By George B. Wood ... and Franklin Bache.

  • George Bacon Wood
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dispensatory of the United States of America / By George B. Wood ... and Franklin Bache. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/1394 (page 3)
    tained within the organs, including 1. ANTHELMINTICS, which destroy worms, or expel them from the bowels; and 2. Anracips, which neutralize acid, whether existing in the alimentary canal, or circulating with the blood. It is believed that all substances employed as medicines, with the excep- tion of a very few, which are so peculiar in their action as scarcely to admit of classification, may be distributed without violence among the above classes. Some substances, however, in addition to the ‘properties of the classes to which they are severally: attached, possess others in common, which give them practical value, and authorize their association in distinct groups, not recognised in the system of classification, but constantly referred to in medical language. “Thus we have Rerricerants, which, when inter- nally administered, diminish animal temperature; ALTERATIVES, which change, in some inexplicable and insensible manner, certain morbid actions of the system; and Carminatives, which, by promoting contraction in the muscular coat of the stomach and bowels, cause the expulsion of flatus, It is common, moreover, to attach distinct names to groups of remedies, with reference to certain effects which are incident to the properties that serve to arrange them in some more comprehensive class. ‘Thus Narcotics fre- quently promote sleep and relieve pain, and in relation to these properties are called Soporirics and ANopyNEs; and various medicines, which by diversified modes of action serve to remove chronic inflammation and en- largements of the glands or viscera, are called Drosstruents. ‘These terms are oceasionally employed in the following pages, and are here ex- plained, in order that the sense in which we use them may be accurately understood. W..