A manual of pharmacology / by Walter E. Dixon.

  • Dixon, Walter E. (Walter Ernest), 1871-1931.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of pharmacology / by Walter E. Dixon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    energy through its oxidation, sufficiently important for it to be actually useful. Alcohol is such a substance. Drugs and poisons, therefore, may be closely related to foods, and there is no sharp line of distinction between the two groups. From time immemorial man has been concerned with the cure of disease, and from time to time many systems of cure have been suggested. One of the most ancient, the “ doctrine of signatures/' required that the external configuration of plants suggested their use in medicine, and hence the origin of such names as lungwort, liverwort, and the like. The celebrated hypothesis of Galen is little more than a mass of fantastic fiction, and deserves no notice. In more recent times, when observations were more accurate, it was noted that symptoms were cured by drugs which produced an opposite effect. Thus, diarrhoea was cured by astringents and constipation by purgatives, and so a system of cure contraria contraribus curantur was promulgated. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a German physician, Hahnemann, introduced homeopathy. He regarded disease as “ immaterial produced by some irritation, and being immaterial its symptoms only could be treated : this was done by opposing it with an agent giving rise to a similar series of symptoms, and hence arose another “ system of cure,” similia similibus curantur, and in its support it was pointed out that diarrhoea was sometimes cured by purges and inflammatory skin diseases by drugs which produced inflammation. This “ homeopathic speculation ” further suggests that infinitesimal doses—one billionth of a grain, or less— are necessary to exert this mystic power over disease. Pharma¬ cology is now a purely experimental science, all such fantastic speculations as those mentioned have been swept aside, and it no longer merits the reproach of being a discredit to medicine. It is true that a few medicines are still often prescribed empirically, following the dictates of experience without reference to science : this is the case when colchicum is prescribed for gout. How this drug beneficially affects acute gout the pharmacologist cannot as yet say, but this is largely due to the fact that the pathology of the disease is still unknown. Rational treatment presupposes a know¬ ledge of the working of the disease, and the pharmacology of the remedy used to combat it. Quinine, we know, kills organisms of malaria at a certain period in their life-history without hurting the host. The treatment of malaria by quinine is therefore rational, and our knowledge also tells us when to administer the quinine so as to reach the parasite at the one stage in its life-history at which it is vulnerable. Or, to take another example, alkalies administered on an empty stomach inhibit the secretion of gastric juice. If, then, it is discovered that a man is suffering from dyspepsia due to a hypersecretion of a feebly active gastric juice (a common type of dyspepsia), the administration of alkalies is rationally indicated. It was formerly thought that for each disease a certain cure in