Pharmacologia : being an extended inquiry into the operations of medicinal bodies, upon which are founded the theory and art of prescribing / by J.A. Paris.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacologia : being an extended inquiry into the operations of medicinal bodies, upon which are founded the theory and art of prescribing / by J.A. Paris. 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.

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    nization already predisposed to be affected by tbem ; and the power of medicine being at any rate more energetic than that of natural sickness, a ver^ small quantity of medicine must be adequate to act upon an organization thus prepared. The slightest aggravation of the disease by medical means will constitute an artificial malady powerful enough to control and suppress the natural one ; and the more slight this artificial malady, the more easily will it, in its turn, give way to the vital principle.” In the next place, Hahnemann contends that the ruhhing and shaking to which the preparations are subjected, not only alter, but develope, in a manner hitherto unknown, the powers of the drugs so treated : so that it is upon the augmented force of the medicines, however reduced in bulk, which results from his method of preparing them, that the founder of this strange system seems inclined to rest his explanation. That amongst the credulous public a train of knight-errants should be found to enter the lists against science and common sense is not so extraordinary ; but that any professional man of ordinary education and honesty should present himself as the defender of a doctrine that contradicts all facts, and confounds all opinions, is wholly unaccountable. “ But cures have been performed through its means —true—but on whom ? On hypochondriacs who have been drenched for years with phy- sic, and to whom this system has brought a truce, while it has encouraged their faith through the medium of the imagina- tion. If it were necessary to enter upon a serious refutation of this doctrine, we might, in the first place, observe, that symp- toms, apparently similar, arise from the most opposite condi- tions of disease—witness, for instance, those connected with disturbance of the digestive and cerebral organs. Then, with regard to the facts upon which this doctrine is founded ; who ever heard of quina producing ague, or colchicum the gout? All experience disproves these data; some of the members of the Academic dc Mcdecine have fairly ])ut them to the test.