On the therapeutical action of medicines in dilated conditions of the blood vessels / by Archibald Reith.

  • Reith, Archibald.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the therapeutical action of medicines in dilated conditions of the blood vessels / by Archibald Reith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    treatment of disease. I say, in a way, because it is not true scien¬ tific progress. It is merely the abandonment of the system of doing too much—the nimia diligentia—for the adoption of the system of doing little or nothing. Of the two, certainly the natural system is to be preferred. It allows nature to exercise her own undoubted powers unchecked, and thus contributes much more surely to the welfare and recovery of the patient. Should the case terminate fatally, the patient dies at least a natural death. But still, it is not scientific progress. It is a reaction from over-credulity to over¬ scepticism, from the belief in the absolute necessity of medicines to a conviction of their absolute uselessness. If we contrast the position of our forefathers, and their vast array of drugs, with our own present helpless position—standing with folded arms at our patient’s side, doing little more than announcing the name of his disease, and giving daily bulletins of its course—we will be little inclined to consider our progress very satisfactory. The conclusion on which the followers of the natural system seem to proceed is, that there are few agents yet discovered which will exert a true remediable influence on disease. The oft-repeated, almost invariable failures met with in practice, and the discrepancy among observers regarding the action of drugs, seem to give colour to that opinion. It is impossible to look back over the recorded experience of the last fifty years without being in a considerable degree inclined towards more or less complete disbelief in medicinal agency. That period has witnessed the rise and fall of a whole dynasty of medi¬ cines, each one more vaunted and promising more fair than its pre¬ decessor, but all destined more or less to fall into disuse. It cannot be wondered at, then, if the rising generation of medical men should declare themselves sceptics. Yet, notwithstanding the great uncertainty of medicinal action, it has long appeared to me that the conclusions on which the natural system of therapeutics is based, are premature. They proceed on the assumption that our knowledge of disease and of medicinal action on the living body, is sufficiently perfect to warrant an accurate determination of the influ¬ ence exerted by the one over the other. To be sound, they ought to be based on a thorough acquaintance with Pathology on the one hand, and of Materia Medica on the other. It is needless to say how far short we are of this perfection. Rapid as has been the advance of pathology, and clear as is the light it has shed on many obscurities, we must, nevertheless, confess our ignorance of disease in its true nature and causation. The state of the Materia Medica is not much better. Although many drugs have been familiar to the profession for centuries, and although an infinite number of experiments of almost every kind have been made with them, both on man and on the lower animals, there is still great discrepancy regarding their properties. The diversity of opinion is not so much in regard to their physiological or toxic properties ,* on the contrary, most writers are at one on the symptoms usually manifested in the
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