Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868.

  • Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, for the year 1867 : transmitted to the legislature January 17, 1868. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    109/406 (page 97)
    a variety of cases sufficient to test all these remedies? Surely, no one. But one physician who has cases which seem to indicate alnuin, must test that remedy, and report results through the med- ical journal; and his brother practitioner, who has cases which seem to require ampelopsin, should try that, and give his report. Thus may we secure a number and variety of provings, which shall be of untold value to every physician; which shall sift our list of concentrated remedies, and so inform us that we shall know what to prize and what to reject. From some statements in refer- ence to the trade of certain parties in New York and Cincinnati, engaged in the manufacture of our “ concentrated remedies,” we judge that nearly one hundred thousand dollars worth of them were last year sold in Europe alone; and by them we are to be judged, and our reputation established, or our system condemned by the medical savans of Great Britain, France and Germany. Many of these remedies we have proved, and they are established; whilst others have not received our own full endorsement here at home; for we have not, as a profession, successfully tested them. They are on trial as yet. What a matter of honor, as well as use- fulness, is here involved. And yet these provings cannot be known, and the real place of these remedies be established, except through the united labors of individual ph3Tsicians, testing them and reporting results through the medical journals. Again, we must have, as already suggested, an eclectic pharma- ccepia. As this matter now is, there is neither science for ourselves nor scarcely safety for our patients. There is quite a difference in the strength of some of the tinctures, as prepared by the United States Pharmacopoeia, and as prepared by the eclectic dis- pensatory; and it only by the use of much care that we avoid mistakes. But this is not all; we soon shall have a large list of concen- trated tinctures. The profession is rapidly becoming convinced that the tincture, when rightly prepared is, in a very large propor- tion of cases, the very best preparation of medicine. But the relative proportions of alcohol and water, to be used in such tinc- ture, to extract the properties of the different plants, is to be very different from what it has been. The old proportions of one-half alcohol and one-half water, generally adopted for most tinctures by the United States pharmacopoeia is to be set aside, as entirely unscientific and impracticable; and a proportion of each must be used for each plant, according to the relative solubility of the [Assem. No. 25.] 7