Similia similibus curantur? : addressed to the medical profession / by Charles S. Mack.

  • Mack, Charles S. (Charles Samuel)
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Similia similibus curantur? : addressed to the medical profession / by Charles S. Mack. 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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    administering iron, well and good; but, though that iron is called medicine and not food, administering it is certainly a very different matter from prescribing a poison which we hope will by modifying the processes of the vital powers be an instrument of cure.2 Chemically acting upon the con- tents of the alimentary canal, or, by means concerning which similia says nothing, removing parasites which have been introduced into that canal from the outside world is no more prohibited by similia than is mechanically remov- ing from the surface of the body parasites or dust which have adhered to it in its contact with its surroundings. Under the same category come the cleansing of wounds and the killing of germs which have been introduced into them from without. Similia does not prohibit stimulating 2 If the view supported by Dr. Richard Hughes is correct, the action of a medicine useful only in supplying to the system an element which is present in health and absent in disease does not fall under any law distinct from the laws of dieteties. [See his Manual of Pharmacodynamics, Fourth Edition, page 339.] Drugs useful in some such way as this may be indefinitely many,—preparations of lime or phosphorus may be among them: quinine may be one. [See A contribution toward our knowledge of the pathological changes in the fluorescence of the tissues, by Edward Rhoads, M. D., and Wm. Pepper, M. D., in the Pennsylvania Hospital Reports, Vol. 1, (1868) in which paper are recorded some observations upon effects of quinine sulphate.] If there is a curative medicine for such cases, it will so modify the processes of the vital powers that the deficiency, which is an effect of abnormal processes, will not persist.