Tic doloureux : its causes, symptoms, and treatment / by William Morgan.

  • Morgan, William
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tic doloureux : its causes, symptoms, and treatment / by William Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    out the febrifugal properties of this medicine. Roaming about the mountains and valleys of his native country, Peru, this swarthy denizen of the forest became stricken with fever. He sought the shade of a neighbouring tree, under which lay in placid serenity a silvery and limpid spring, which received day by day into its bosom the fallen leaves and withered branches of the overhanging cinchona. An opportunity so inviting to cool the fevered brain and moisten the dried and parched up tongue of the hunter required but a moment’s thought; he partakes copiously of the impregnated water of this hitherto unknown elixir, which was followed by a rapid restoration to health. Since its first introduction into Europe by the Jesuits,” in 1640, there is no drug that has played a more important part in the field of therapeutics than the one now under considera- tion. At one time the most extravagant encomiums were passed upon its supposed unsurpassable medicinal properties. In fact, it was considered as a panacea for all disorders. But as time wore on the test of experience too faithfully proved these lofty assumptions to he in a great measure ground- less, and its sphere of usefulness became more and more restricted, until that same test assigned to it its proper position in the list of therapeutics, a position which it has an undoubted right to enjoy, viz., that of a febrifuge anti-periodic and a tonic. In 1790 it again fell to the lot of this drug to play a still more important part in the arena of medical science, a part which has gone far to uproot and throw to the four winds the preconceived opinions and prejudices which for ages have built up that incongruous temple of learning, and has shaken the whole fabric to its very foundation. It was in that ever me- morable year that the dawn of light first flickered and then gloriously burst upon the mind of the German philosopher and physician,—that God had not denied to the healer of the sick what he had granted to the mariner, viz., a law to guide him in his trackless course. It was in that year that Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, discontented and disappointed with the uncertain results of the Hijipocratic and Galenic mode of healing, c