The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers.

  • Chambers, Thomas King, 1818-1889.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    23/436 (page 11)
    A step seems here made in the right direction, and many unwise traditionary practices have been rooted out in consequence of the adoption of Stimulation by the followers of Brown, Darwin, and Todd. It is a valuable protest against Allopathy, and has taught the present generation already not to think diugs valuable in direct proportion to their power of altering vital processes, and to see that the Greeks were wrong in calling physic and poison by the same name. Tet the idea is rested on a partial truth only, as will be shown shortly when attention is drawn to the common fallacy that underlies all these systems of therapeutics. And the partial truth has led to the practical error of attributing, by deeds perhaps rather than words, life- giving powers to Alcohol, and its consequent abuse in the treatment of the sick. There is a tendency to lean on it alone, and to consider its effects as a pure gain of vital force, a tendency which is dangerous to both patients and science. These five ideas include, I believe, all the definite aims which are professed at our own time in the treat- ment of disease. But few are rash enough to reduce to an absurdity their favorite law of action by applying it without compromise in every case. The Allopathist will shrink from checking a morbid process which experience shows him leads towards health; the Homceopathist will cure his patient by Allopathic treatment; the Evacuator or Humoral Pathologist will arrest Diabetes or colliquative sweating, although abnormal material is leaving the system by the kidneys or the skin ; the adherent of Counter-irritation finds it inapplicable to many diseases; and the staunchest lover of stimulants will gain his object by evacuant, counter-irritant, and allopathic remedies. Many openly profess this Eclecticism, and some are