First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/142 (page 53)
    but they may find examples also of their good effects combined with depletion, for instance, it is well known that ague attacks the most opposite constitutions, and that many require support, and on the contrary many require venesection, opening medicines, and emetics, with bark or arsenic to cure it. Many medical men are so strongly imbued with the idea of bark being stimu- lant, that they prepare the patient as they call it by using the antiphlogistic treatment before they venture to begin the tonic, but practical experience disproved the necessity of this long ago, and few now spend time in unnecessary preparation by other medicine, or bleed unnecessarily, but only when the state of the pulse &c. indicate the propriety of so doing. ‘Tonics then being neither stimulant nor sedative may be usefully combined with either, for whether we want to keep down the pulse in inflammation, or to raise it and the appetite &c., in debility it must obviously be of use, if we can, to give tone and strength to the nervous system at the same time, because that tone and strength of the nervous system will not increase the action of the heart unless it is called forth by stimulants, observe the difference, tonics give strength, stimulants call it forth, a man may be very strong without putting forth his strength. Do not fear any danger from keeping the nervous system in good order by tonics, but beware of exciting over-action by stimulants when either inflammation or fever exists, stimulants excite action, but action is not strength, on the contrary we shall see when we come to consider fever, that action exhausts still more. A correct understanding of these distinctions will be