The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner.

  • Jenner, William, Sir, 1815-1898.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    advances of pathological knowledge, been established, but new drugs of great practical worth have been introduced into our Pharmacopoeia, and old drugs have been found to possess virtues heretofore unsuspected. How wonderful is the influence of bromide of potassium over diseases for the treatment of which we were but a few years since almost impotent. A dull heavy looking lad suffered for seven years from epileptic attacks, steadily increased from the first in severity and frequency, till many occurred in the 24 hours. For a year he was treated by a physician on general principles with little benefit. The case was in all particulars most unpromising; yet from the time the boy took the first dose of bromide of potassium to the present, nearly three ^ears, he has not had a single fit. Is this a solitary case? Certainly not. We could all match it. But it illustrates well the power of a new drug over a class of cases which, not long ago, were regarded by practical men as almost as much beyond the curative influ- ence of drugs as is a case of cancer of the breast. To one other of the powers of this drug I must advert, viz., its influence on the sexual organs; a power which enables us to exercise a real curative influence over a class of most distressing affections, for which, by drugs at least, we could formerly do nothing. Other illustrations of the strides made in drug-thera-' peutics are afforded by the influence of cod-liver oil on the cachexia of tubercular disease and of rickets, of iron on the cachexia of the aged, of digitalis as a cardiac tonic.