Note-book of materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics / by R.E. Scoresby-Jackson.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note-book of materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics / by R.E. Scoresby-Jackson. 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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    mav be said, thatevenwhen tbese'most desirableclaasificationsare con- structed, they must necessarily give rise to many exceptions, varying not only with the individucility of the patient, but also with the characters of the disease. The action of a medicine upon a person in health cannot be accepted as the criterion of its action in the presence of disease; nor can the action of a medicine be certainly predicted in any individual case. It may be modified by many circumstances, pertaining equally to the patient and the drug itself, as we shall show more fully hereafter. And again, medicines are not to be restricted to a single class, for theyact in a variety of ways, according to the manner in which they are administered: thus, tartar emetic may be a dia- ])horetic, expectorant, or emetic ; quinina, a tonic, or a febrifuge ; calomel, an alterative, a cathartic, or a sialagogue ; squill, an emetic, cathartic, diuretic, or expectorant ; or all may be given as poisons. Medicines may be classified physiologically, either according to effects, which are obvious, or according to the changes which they are supposed to produce within the system, but of which there is no im- mediate external manifestation. Of the former, we have an instance in that comprehensive class called evacuants, comprising substances which cause discharges from one or other part of the body : if from the skin, they are diaphoretics; if from the nose, errhines; if from the bowels, catharti; if from the lungs, expectorants. Of the latter we have examples in alteratives and tonics. It is easier to classify medicines physiologically than therapeutically, because it is easier experimentally to trace the cause of aberration than that of restoration. The natural condition of the body is health —a state, it is true, that cannot be maintained without a due attention to the necessities of life, but which, nevertheless, under favourable circumstances, is its normal state ; whilst disease is a departure from the normal condition, and is caused either by a positive injury, as l)y a stroke or a poison, or by deprivation, as of food, heat, light, exercise, &c. But there is always a tendency, sometimes feeble and unavail- ing, but invariably present—the vis medicatrix nature—an innate tendency to return to the normal condition of health ; and it is the conflicting influence of this healing power of nature that renders a therapeutical classification the more difficult. No medicine is worthy of a place in either of these classifications until it has repeatedly, and under a variety of circumstances, mani- fested its qualifications ; and these are more readily tested physiolo- gically than therapeutically. An illustration will explain this more clearly. A medicine is administered to a person in health, and soon afterwards it is observed that his pulse beats less rapidly than before;
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