Volume 1

Essays medical, philosophical, and experimental / [Thomas Percival].

  • Thomas Percival
Date:
1788-1789
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays medical, philosophical, and experimental / [Thomas Percival]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the veins to the arteries; whereas. Galen afferts that, .as health confifts in the equilibrium between ~ drynefs and moifture, heat and cold, ficknefs muft depend upon the fubverfion of that equilibrium. One fect adopts plethora as the caufe of all difeafes ; another denies the poffibility of its exiftence in — the body. Sylvius exults in the difcovery that an acid is the fole morbid principle; his antagonifts afcribe that honour to their alkali. Salt, fulphur, acrimonies, cauftics, volatiles, ferments, 8c. &c. have each, at different times and by different fy{te- matics, been received as the undoubted principia morborum. - No lefs abfurd are the fictions of the theorifts, concerning the elements and qualities of medicines, and their operation on the body. The fame drug is reprefented as hot in one degree and cold in another, or as dry in one proportion and moift in another. Certain remedies are whimfi-. cally affigned to particular parts of the body, on which they are fuppofed to exert their effects by a peculiar predilection. Hence the claffes of pec- torals, ftomachics, hepatics, cephalics, cordials, 8c. One medicine attracts and eliminates the bile, another the pituita, and a third the ara bilis or melancholy. Some preparations irradiate the ani- mal fpirits, others darken and obfcure them. But enough of thefe idle conceits, the offspring of theory, and the difgrace of phyfic! D2 PERHAPS
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