Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines.
- Date:
- 1827
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![[ 31 ] warning to others ; and it were better to anticipate the re- cuirence of these evils, by putting the pubhc in possession of the facts in relation to the remedy, where it has been most extensively employed. Unless something of this kind be done, we may expect, at no very distant day, to see it command a very general use amongst us; for of all empirical remedies, this one is set forth in the most spe- cious way to catch the popular favour. The French law not allowing of secret remedies, Leroy takes higher ground than the exclusive possession of a medicinal article. He pretends to lay open to the common gaze, the whole ar- cana of medicine; to show how diseases are produced, in what they consist, and to point out the only way in which they can be removed. In order to accomplish this labour without impediment, the kw facts in medicine he may chance to know, he is obliged to forget, as subversive of his Medecine Curative, which is as new as it is simple— one disease and one remedy—a principle of corruptibility predominating in the fluids, the sole cause of disease—its evacuation through the primse viae, the only cure. A doc- trine so simple, so easily understood, and so easily applied to practise, could not fail of meeting with many advocates, delighted with becoming their own physicians, and even surgeons ; for no matter what may be the ailment or acci- dent, whether a pleurisy, a luxation, or an injury of the head, the disease is still the same, a predominance of the mauvaise huvieur, and its evacuation, yar haul ou par has, according as the ailment is situated, above or below the py- loric portion of the stomach, constitutes the whole mystery of the curative medicine. His therapeutical agents con- sist of an emetico-cathartic of the vinous tincture of senna, and tartarised antimony, and of a purgative composed of concentrated preparations of several of the most acrid hydragogue purgatives. These medicines, especially the purgative, are given, not once, twice, or any limited number](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21150084_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
