Modern medicine and homœopathy / by J.J. Drysdale.

  • Drysdale, J. J. (John James), 1817-1892.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern medicine and homœopathy / by J.J. Drysdale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was all that medicine pretended to. To be sure, there is the fashionable drug the bromide of potassium, which, however, is chiefly praised for its merely palliative action on the nervous centres. Beyond these no systematic gain to therapeutics can be named. But when we look into details we discover a great change going on, viz., a most extensive use of specifics, i.e., medicines whose operation can be traced to no obvious physiological action taking place during the process of cure. These are generally now given unmixed, ostensibly empirically and from clinical indications alone, and in comparatively small doses ; so that in some clinics we might at first sight almost fancy we had got into a homoeopathic dispensary by mistake. We hear nothing, however, of homoeopathy, and no reason is given for the choice of the medicine, only somehow or other it was found to be good, and is repeated empirically. What can this mean? We know very well how it was found to be good. Did the prescriber really not know, or did the above spoken-of threats induce him to keep silence ? But we see also another phenomenon. For the last sixty years the homoeopathic body have pro¬ claimed incessantly the necessity of proving medicines on the healthy body. Lately, we have had this recommended, and grants of money proposed for its accomplishment, but no word of homoeopathy! Moreover, it has been partially carried out, and one bulky book has been published on some medicines with no word of homoeopathy except a passing sneer. It is still more remarkable that when the author comes to grapple with the results of the provings, much of his reasonings and his conclusions are found actually identical with our own; yet there is no word of homoeopathy. I allude to Dr. Harley’s Old Vegetable Narcotics. In this book the remarks on belladonna are especially interesting to us, for we find that the further the author advances in his study of its action on the healthy body, the more closely do his views of it approxi¬ mate to those of our school. He recognises the similarity between the primary action of belladonna on the capillary vessels and sympathetic nerve, and the states of fever and inflammation, and, in consequence, anticipates “ that its sphere of usefulness will be acknowledged before long to be co-extensive with that of acute disease itself.” He then proceeds to explain and illustrate its curative action in these words :— “ The action of belladonna in febrile diseases is frequently attended with results which are not only unexpected, but exactly
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