Dental materia medica and therapeutics : with special reference to the rational application of remedial measures to dental diseases a textbook for students and practitioners / by Hermann Prinz.

  • Hermann Prinz
Date:
1913
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dental materia medica and therapeutics : with special reference to the rational application of remedial measures to dental diseases a textbook for students and practitioners / by Hermann Prinz. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    l)i'ei)arati()iis, doses, etc., is referred to as materia medica. The term materia medica was introduced by Dioscorides (40-90 A. I).). He published the first (so far as known)'compilation of de.scrip- tions of about a thousand drugs, which were mostly vegetable in character, while the first collection of ])re.scriptions—a formu- lary—was edited by Scribonius Largus about 100 A. D. Drugs— pharinaca—are remedies; the study of drugs—that is, the changes which are induced in the living organism by their admini.stra- tion—is known as pharmacology. In a restricted sense of the word, only the changes which are produced by the action of drugs in the healthy or diseased organism is known as pharma- cology, while the power of drug action itself is known as pharmaco-dynamics. At the present time pure pharmacology is classified as a department of biology; all biologic sciences, how- ever, serve in some form or another as handmaids to general medicine. In the teaching as well as in the clinical application of pharmacology a number of questions arise which indicate its close relationship to physiology and to pathology. Through the action of drugs on normal tissues we are led to understand their effects on the disturbed functions of these tissues. In the ex- perimental study of antipyretics, for instance, their influence on the normal temperature as well as on the increased temperature in fevers, together with an understanding of the nature of the latter, is essential for the full comprehension of their therapeutic application. In its broadest conception, then, we understand by pharmacology the science of the changes which occur in the vital reactions of healthy and diseased tissues under the influence of chemic substances. The application of remedial substances in the treatment of diseased conditions of the body is based on our knowledge of pharmacology, and it is at present referred to as pharmacotherapy, a term which was introduced by Robert (1887). It constitutes the most important branch of thera- peutics. Some substances, when injected into the living body, posse.ss little medicinal value, but they act as poisons by bring- ing about dangerous or even fatal results. The study of their effects on the ti.ssues and the methods of their detection is known as toxicology. It is difficult to draw a distinct line between a
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