Introductory address delivered at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York : October 16, 1855 / by Jno. C. Dalton, Jun.
- John Call Dalton
- Date:
- 1855
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Introductory address delivered at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York : October 16, 1855 / by Jno. C. Dalton, Jun. 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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![our study is a particular group of morbid actions, and it is upon these our treatment is to operate. Do not suppose, be- cause two men have inflammation of the lungs, that they are necessarily in the same condition. And if they are not in the same condition, the effect of drugs upon them will be different. Let us attend, then, to the real actions of disease, and not be misled by a name which only represents them. Otherwise we shall be obliged, as the French would express it, to take our pay in words, and the realities will es- cape us. We see, then, why it is that so much judgment and cau- tion are required in the practice of Therapeutics, and why the careless observer is liable to so many mistakes and disap- pointments. Medicine is said to be an uncertain science, and the action of drugs variable. That, however, is not the case. Under the same conditions, a drug will always have the same effect, just as surely as the sun rises and sets. It is the condi- tions which vary in different cases, and these conditions re- quire to be distinctly understood and compared with each other; for in no other way can we arrive at any definite result. You will find, in continuing the study of Therapeutics, that physicians at the present day give but very little medi- cine, in comparison with what was customary many years ago. This is not, as I have already intimated, because they have lost, in any degree, their confidence in the power of drugs, but because they have become convinced that the pre- vious methods of investigation were, to a certain extent, erroneous, and not likely to produce a satisfactory result, so long as every unknown disease was at once attacked with a multitude of unknown remedies, the operation of which tended rather to perpetuate our ignorance than to dispel it. ]STow, retracing our steps so far as they have been made in a wrong direction, we are endeavoring to attain the same end by a different and more practicable route. We now feel the necessity, on undertaking the care of a patient, of making](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21113324_0027.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
