Volume 1

Therapeutics and materia medica : a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medical agents including their description and history / by Alfred Stillé.

  • Stillé, Alfred, 1813-1900.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics and materia medica : a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medical agents including their description and history / by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    26/812 (page 38)
    88 INTRODUCTION. instincdvely attempting to imitate these processes, he established an art of medicine. The means of accomplishing his purpose were doubtless rude at first, and derived by imitation from the lower animals, or by an accidental experience of the powers of different agents. Thus we may suppose that heat was the first diaphoretic ever employed, because, on many occasions, its power of causing the perspiration to flow was manifest; and, indeed, we find that among savage nations the vapor- bath and other rude methods of sweating still form their leading method of cure. We may presurne that the earliest emetics were those by means of which certain animals excite vomiting, or warm water, whose nauseating properties must very soon have been re- marked. But man, as a rational being, could not permanently remain con- tented with so limited an extent of knowledge; observation, com- parison, memory, and tradition, which is the memory of nations, constantly enriched his medicinal resources, and determined more accurately their value. According to his natural genius, he gave to his knowledge more or less of a scientific form; and while some races, like the negro and the red man, seem never to have been capable of adding to or developing their original scanty stock, the Caucasian has evolved, from the primary elements common to all mankind, a science and an art of therapeutics second to none others in extent, variety, and usefulness. Until the time of Galen, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, medicine hardl}’’ claimed the rank of a science—or a philosophy, as it was then termed—but contented itself with a diligent observation of nature and the results of experience. These were gathered and preserved by Hippocrates, Theophrastus, Celsus, Diosco- rides, and Aretasus, and have continued to be the fountain from which later ages, even to the present time, have drawn their chief supply of therapeutical knowledge. But Galen claimed to create a science of medicine, in which every practical precept was deduced from some pre-established principle. By his commanding genius and profound knowledge he succeeded, at a time of general decay and feebleness, in imposing his dogmas upon the medical profession as a yoke for thirteen hundred years. During this protracted era of mental and material servitude, the primeval stream of science became completely choked by the rubbish of scholastic learning. But since the emanci- pation of medicine from its thraldom to the Galenical system, it has not often, nor for a long time, nor ever completely, become the slave of any doctrinal creed. For, although systems have succeeded systems, and Paracelsus, and Stahl, and Brown, and Rasori, and Hahnemann