Specific medication and specific medicines

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Wilstach, Baldwin & Company, printers, 1870 - 253 pages
 

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Page 24 - We may lay it down as an axiom from which it is never safe to depart, that no medicine should be given unless the pathological condition and the indications for its use are clearly defined.
Page 95 - The influence of Cactus seems to be wholly exerted on the sympathetic nervous system, and especially upon, and through the cardiac plexus. It does not seem to increase or depress innervation, (neither stimulant, nor sedative,) but rather to influence a regular performance of function. I am satisfied, however, that its continued use improves the nutrition of the heart, thus permanently strengthening the organ. It has a second influence, which is of much importance to the therapeutist.
Page 13 - ... dirty-white, pasty coat requires the alkaline sulphites, etc. It is not necessary to continue this illustration further, for the reader will see by the above that specific medication requires specific diagnosis, and that it will be successful just in proportion as we become skilled in this. It is true that almost any one can use veratrum and aconite successfully, for the conditions are so prominent that they can not be mistaken; or any one may successfully prescribe aconite in sporadic dysentery...
Page 207 - The only functional influence it seems to have, is in promoting the flow of urine, which soon becomes limpid and abundant, and this is owing perhaps to the defecated poison or changed virus of the disease exclusively escaping through that channel. The
Page 80 - The symptoms calling for the use of belladonna are usually very plain : The patient is dull and stupid, and the child drowsy, and sleeps with its eyes partly open ; the countenance expressionless ; the eyes are dull, and the pupils dilated or immobile ; whilst as it continues respiration becomes affected and the blood imperfectly aerated. "In these cases I prescribe belladonna ; in the adult, in the proportion of gtt.
Page 206 - ... medical world were utterly ignorant of this great boon of Providence ; and it would be dishonorable in me not to acknowledge that had it not been for the discretion of Mr. John Thomas Lane, of Lanespark, County Tipperary, Ireland, late of Her Majesty's Imperial Customs of Nova Scotia, to whom the MecMac Indians had given the plant, the world would not now be in possession of the secret. No medical man before me had ever put this medicine upon trial ; but in 1861, when the whole Province of Nova...
Page 10 - We use the term specific with relation to definite pathological conditions, and propose to say that certain well determined deviations from the healthy state will always be corrected by certain specific medicines.
Page 106 - ... a considerable number of cases, it does succeed in a very large number. In fact, it is inferior in certainty, as a hypnotic, to opium alone. Moreover, it is very greatly superior to opium, and almost every other drug, in the character of its sleepproducing action ; there are no attendant symptoms of cerebral oppression; the sleep, though often prolonged, is light and refreshing, and no unpleasant after-symptoms are experienced. It is important to observe, however, that this description only applies...
Page 206 - Sarracenia, they are deprived of their contagious properties. The medicine, at the same time, is so mild to the taste, that it may be mixed largely with tea or coffee, as I have done, and given to connoisseurs in these beverages to drink, without their being aware of the admixture. Strange, however, to say, it is scarcely two years since science and the medical world were utterly ignorant of this great boon of Providence ; and it would be dishonorable in me not to acknowledge that had it not been...
Page 10 - ... phthisis, etc. ; and a person looking at the subject in this light, and guided by his experience in the use of remedies, would at once say there are no specifics.

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