On the difficulty of estimating the therapeutical value of medicinal agents : being the address delivered to the Harveian Society at their annual meeting on the 13th April 1857 / by Archibald Inglis.

Date:: 1857

Credit: On the difficulty of estimating the therapeutical value of medicinal agents : being the address delivered to the Harveian Society at their annual meeting on the 13th April 1857 / by Archibald Inglis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

9/24 page 9

$extending it ought to take, a closer examination makes us acquainted with important differences, which account, in a great measure, for the former making less rapid progress than that by which the latter have been distinguished. Many of tlie preliminary investigations which have brought to their high perfection the art of navigation, and that of the engineer, are dependent on principles admitting of all the accuracy of mathe- matical demonstration ; whilst others of a more variable character— e.g., the strength of different kinds of material—are reducible to the test of experiment, rendered all the more easy from inanimate mat- ter being the subject of it. The chemical changes, too, which are brought into activity in many of our manufacturing processes, are of a simpler nature than those occurring in living organisms ; and their recuri'ence, under similar circumstances, may not only be pre- dicted, but, by means of the ascertained laws of chemical affinity and combination in definite proportions, they may be reduced to formidce almost as certain in their application as those of mathe- matics. So large, indeed, is the ratio of the certain to the uncer- tain in all these pursuits, that success may be considered the rule, danger or failure the rare exception. Highly, therefore, as we ought to value the talent, and estimate the skill which, by making scien- tific research go hand in hand with its practical application, has brought various branches of industry to their present position, it is evident that he who wishes to advance medical science, and to lay down precise rules for its practice, has a range of far more intricate subjects to investigate, and far greater difficulties to overcome, be- fore he can render the results of experimental inquiry subservient to his purpose. It is plain that a comparatively small proportion of the phenomena which the medical man has to deal with falls directly under the cognizance of the senses. By the use of these he may, indeed, be- come acquainted with the external characters of the medicinal agents he is called upon to employ, and with the anatomical structure of the dead body. By the same means, also, especially when aided by optical or acoustic contrivances, or when the products of either healthy or morbid actions can be made the subject of chemical analysis, he may become acquainted, to a certain extent, with some of the phenomena which accompany or result from the ])rocesses going on during life; but the processes themselves are, in most instances, not the objects of sense, and it is only bv inference that we can throw any light on their nature. The laws,also, of physical science may serve to elucidate some of the phenomena of the living body; and chemistry makes us acquainted with both the proximate and ultimate constituents of the solids and fluids which compose it; yet \ve find that, during life, both chemical and physical forces act in subordmation to a power, the operations of which it is much more Uithcult to trace, and which either modifies or supersedes their action in a manner not exemplified in the inorganic kingdom of$