Inaugural dissertation, being an attempt to prove that certain substances are conveyed, unchanged, into the circulation, or, if changed, that they are recomposed and regain their active properties / by Edward Darrell Smith, A.M. of Charleston, South-Carolina, member of the Philadelphia Medical Society.

  • Smith, Edward Darrell, 1778-1819.
Date:
1800
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural dissertation, being an attempt to prove that certain substances are conveyed, unchanged, into the circulation, or, if changed, that they are recomposed and regain their active properties / by Edward Darrell Smith, A.M. of Charleston, South-Carolina, member of the Philadelphia Medical Society. 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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    INTRODUCTION. —^,*<€$— D URING the reign of the Humoral Pathology, the opinion, that fubftances were conveyed un- changed into the circulation, was neceffarily adopted by the fupporters of that doctrine. It was fuppofed that difeafe was feated in the fluids of the human body, and that medicines were valuable in propor- tion to their power of correcting or altering the vitiated fluids. Succeeding and more accurate ob- fervations having induced the belief that the doctrine of the Humoral Pathology was not founded upon fufficient grounds, the opinion refpecting the opera- tion of medicines was likewife called in queftion: From remarking that certain powerful fubftances exerted their effects fo fpeedily, that it could not pollibly be fuppofed they were carried into the circu- lation, many philofophers were led to fearch for fome other mode in which medicines operated. They founded their rejection of the old opinion principal- ly upon two circumftances, viz. that they were not able to difcover, in any part of the courfe of the circulation, active fubftances which had been taken into the ftomach ; and that any fluid, even milk, which is the mofl affimilated to the blood, when in- jected into the veins of a living animal, produced