On the classification of medicines according to their action on the healthy body / by Alexander Fleming, M.D.

  • Fleming, Alexander, 1823-1875.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the classification of medicines according to their action on the healthy body / by Alexander Fleming, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    principles, and so to avail liimself with facility, on all sides, of the rapid advancement of the medical sciences. We are surprised that many able writers on the Materia Medica have been indifferent to these important advantages, and that so little care has been devoted to the scientific arrange- ment of drugs*. Many of the existing classifications are un- scientific and bad, and are consequently fertile sources of error, both in fact and in generalization. We allude to the so-called therapeutic arrangements, and not to those founded on the na- tural-historical, sensible, or chemical properties of drugs, which are not without their value in relation to certain ends, but, as commonly employed to avoid the supposed insuperable diffi- culties of a physiological classification, present no claim to our notice. With them we have no more concern than the natu- ral philosopher has with the arrangement of bodies in che- mistry, or the chemist with the natural arrangement of plants. The bodies examined by all are the same, but it is the duty of each science to arrange them with reference to the proper- ties (and their practical application, if they have such) which it is the object of the science to investigate. Most recent authorities have sought rather to indicate the differences presented by the action of drugs when compared together than to trace the resemblances, more or less intimate, which link them into groups,—a task which, however difficult, must be performed if we hope to attain to general views and scientific treatment. To declare its performance impossible is virtually to deny the application of induction to therapeutics, and to reject its claim to the rank of science. The study of the differences of action is most instructive, but the most effi- cient means of making them apparent is presented by the previous arrangement of the medicines according to their phy- siological analogies. » Amongst the exceptions to this remark we must place in the first rank the dis- tinguished authors of the Pharmacologia, and of the Elements of Materia Jledica and Tlierapeutics.