The principles of medicine as applied to dynamical therapeutics / by Herbert T. Webster ; designed as an introduction to the study of eclectic medicine.

  • Webster, Herbert Tracy, 1836-
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of medicine as applied to dynamical therapeutics / by Herbert T. Webster ; designed as an introduction to the study of eclectic medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    administering pulsatilla, leontin, cimicifuga, Milium tigri- num, sepia, or Hydrastis for the symptoms arising from irritation due to chafing of a lacerated, everted uterine cervix needs to extend his reading and widen his lines of thought. There are many conditions, also amenable to drugs, which may be relieved more promptly by other measures and measures which it would be profitable for the practitioner to adopt. Saint Vitus' dance may some- times be cured with drugs, but electricity so infinitely excels their action that they are not worthy of recognition in such a case. An excessively troublesome erythema may be, made to yield to rhus, apis, juglans, or arctium lappa; but as the relief of the troublesome pruritus might be the desideratum and in fact the indirect cure, a topical application might be found the short and com- mendatory way of affording relief. The most scientific method is that which succeeds best. THE OLD CLASSIFICATION Offers manyjindications for remedies which are not wor- thyoFmention here, for they are so simple and appar- ent that little study is required for their recognition, while many of,the indications must become obsolete for reason of the adoption of modern ideas which ignore their utility. The physician who marches not with the prog- ress of the times but remains wedded to old ideas is laboring under an incubus. The old classification arose when disease was regarded^v^ as an entity—a tangible devil to be forcibly expelled from the body, and the harsh and violent agent, one which commended itself by its unpleasant effects, even though it prostrated the patient nigh unto death, was employed. Large doses of powerful drugs was the fashion then and unfortunately a fashion it has been very difficult to change. The conclusions arrived at by the ancients as to the ex-