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.

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    to meet, the “ pins and needles” are felt. I have known the hand to remain powerless for many months before the medullary matter could be rubbed into its place, after the person had fallen asleep with the head leaning on the wrist over the back of a chair. Narcotics, judging by the phenomena described and others familiar to medical men, interrupt the conducting power of the medullary matter, and as there is no mechanical pressure we can account for this only by some chemical action or union with it. To recur again to the difference between narcotics and stimulants on the one hand, and narcotics and sedatives on the other; sedatives diminish action but not by interrupting the conducting power, for digitalis or green tea render the perceptions more acute and produce wakefulness instead of sleepiness; it is not until the nervous influence is actually exhausted so as not to be sufficient in quantity to produce action that there is any defect in the perceptions and then there is delirium not sleep. Aconite which is a union of nar- cotic and sedative produces a state of delirium, whereas opium which is narcotic and stimulant produces sleep. We see that the action of medicinal agents become most opposite when the proportional quantities are varied, and according to the state of disease which may exist; hence it requires great attention to separate in the mind and estimate the causes of phenomena; the whole practice of the healing art is full of apparent contradictions, thus opium makes the pulse hard or soft, promotes and takes away appetite, the same means appear in one instance stimulant in another sedative ; venesection sometimes makes the pulse smaller, some-