Materia medica

“ In tracing the history of the Materia Medica to its earliest periods, we shall find that its progress towards its present advanced state, has been very slow and unequal, very unlike the steady and successive improvement which has attended other branches of natural knowledge; we shall perceive even that its advancement has been continually arrested, and often entirely subverted, by the caprices, prejudices, superstitions, and knavery of mankind; unlike too the other branches of science, it is incapable of successful generalization ”

“ Medical Science is one whole, of which all the branches I have enumerated are the several parts. They may be considered as the links of a chain that have a mutual connection with one another. Anatomy, Materia Medica, Botany, Chymistry, and the Institutions, are only the ladder by which we are to mount up to practice. A general knowledge, at least, in each one of them, is useful to both Physician and Surgeon; particularly to the former, who in proportion as he is more intimately acquainted with them all, will become more skillful in the healing science. ”

“ TREATMENT.—In a disease which affects so many of the races and such great numbers of mankind, which has been for centuries the object of special attention on the part of physicians, and of late years of government commissions and of eminent pathologists, it is evident that every remedy which the materia medica includes, as well as those of merely popular reputation in the widely-diverse geographical regions in which it prevails, must have been employed in its treatment. ”

“ There are other methods of treating disease not included in materia medica, but we know of but one purely metaphysical, and that one is contained in the Scripture, and the one we present to the world. ”

“ In a word, almost every drug in our overflowing materia medica, whether inert or active, has been on one ground or another copiously prescribed in every variety of disease under the supposed sanction of this pseudo-specific on empirical indication. ”

“ It is not only as interpretations of the 'dark sayings' of nature, not merely as contributions to science, that the discoveries now detailed are interesting and important. All of them have a bearing upon the art of healing, and may serve at least to direct the treatment of disease; but chemistry gives still more direct aid to the therapeutist; it has added not a few contributions to the materia medica— new weapons to the physician's armoury. Every new substance discovered is, in fact, a possible remedy, and may ultimately be used to cure or alleviate disease. ”

“ Will the medical man who has spent much money and labor in the pursuit of the arcana of Physic, and on the exercise of which depends his support in life, proclaim the inefficacy of his art, and recommend a remedy to his patient which the most unlettered in society can employ as advantageously as himself? and a remedy, too, which, unlike the drops, the pills, the powders, etc., of the Materia Medica, is inconsumable, and ever in readiness to be employed in successive diseases? ”

“ Is materia medica a science or a bundle of speculative human theories? The prescription which succeeds in one instance fails in another, and this is owing to the different mental states of the patient. These states are not comprehended, and they are left without explanation except in Christian Science. ”

“ Modern medicine would be a fragile structure without its basis of comparative anatomy, physiology, materia medica and therapeutics, which have for long years furnished a basis for rational methods in surgery and medication. ”

“ The lectures on Chemistry and Materia Medica shall be accompanied by actual experiments, tending to explain and demonstrate the principles of Chemistry, and an exhibition shall be made of the principal medicines used in curing disease, with an explanation of their medicinal qualities, and effect on the human body. ”

“ Physicians generally trifle a long time with medicines before they learn their proper use. Many peasants at present know better how to use some of the most important articles in the materia medica, than physicians did a century ago; and doubtless the same observation will hold with regard to others some time hence. Wherever I was convinced that medicine might be used with safety, or where the cure depended chiefly upon it, I have taken care to recommend it ”

“ The materia medica has been improved both by happy accidents, and the scientific labors of the chemist—and the science, trusting only to cautious observation and experiment, has profited as much by what it has rejected from the catalogue of sanative remedies, as what it has added. Reason has here taken the place of superstition and blind credulity, and few prescriptions are now made on purely empirical grounds. We have the most conclusive evidence of the advance of the medical science, in the greater average length of life now, compared with former periods. ”

“ In the prescribing of remedies for disease, the Staff resort to the whole broad field of materia medica, allowing themselves to be hampered by no school, ism, pathy, or sect. The medicines employed are all prepared by skilled chemists and pharmacists, and the greatest care is exercised to have them manufactured from the freshest and purest ingredients. Our Faculty probably employ a greater number and variety of extracts from native roots, barks and herbs in their practice than are used in any other invalids' resort in the land. ”

“ THE Materia Medica of the Hindoos is a marvel to the modern investigator. In it are fully described the properties of drugs belonging to the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and of the articles of food essential to the maintenance of health and strength. The theory which forms the basis of the investigation is, that every substance, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, possesses five properties, namely, Rasa, Guna, Veerya, Vipaka, and Prabhava. ”

“ The materia medica of the schools, to-day, includes upwards of two thousand substances the number increasing daily and when viewed dispassionately it presents what? A list of drugs, chemicals, dye- stuffs, all subversive of organic structures. They are all antagonistic to living matter: all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living domain as a matter of fact, all are poisons. Now, what logical standing can a system have, that employs, as remedies for diseases, those things that produce disease in healthy persons? ”

“ Henry Wood, “to heal disease is becoming a matter of doubt, even among many who have not yet studied deeper causation. Materia Medica lacks the exact elements of a science. The just preponderance, for good or ill, of any drug upon the human system is an unsolved problem, and will so remain .... ”

“ There is, perhaps, no well proven remedy in the Materia Medica, of equal value to that of which I present a brief study, that has been so wholly overlooked by the homœopathic profession. There certainly is none which possesses a more marked individuality, and which more fully fills a place by itself. It is safe to say that not one in ten of those who practice the healing art has ever used it or is familiar with its pathogenesis. ”

“ The whole materia medica, perhaps, furnishes no drug or mineral that is known, when taken into the stomach, to have a local and partial effect on the eyes. Such an effect is even irreconcileable with the general and constantly observed operation of all remedies applied to the human body. ”

“ Examinations may be wholly or partly in writing, and shall be of an elementary and practical character, embracing the general subjects of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, materia medica, pathology, pathological anatomy, surgery, and obstetrics, but sufficiently strict to test the qualifications of the candidate as a practitioner of medicine, surgery, and obstetrics. ”

“ The students of Medicine, who almost exclusively support the Professorship of Chemistry, are induced to do so in consequence of its application to Pharmacy and the different branches of Medicine, viz., Physiology, Pathology, Therapeutics, Materia Medica, and the Practice of Physic. ”

“ By John V. Shoemaker, A.M., M.D., Professor of Materia Medica, Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and Clinical Medicine, and Clinical Professor of Diseases of the Skin in the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia; Physician to the Medico-Chirurgical Hospital, etc., etc. This, the second volume of Shoemaker's "Materia Medica, Pharmacology, and Therapeutics," is wholly taken up with the consideration of drugs, each remedy being studied from three points of view, viz. : the Preparations, or Materia Medica; the Physiology and Toxicology, or Pharmacology ”

“ The details of this arrangement are founded solely upon the therapeutic operation of medicines, as used to cure diseases, and not in any way upon their physiological action upon a healthy man. Much unnecessary confusion, in works on Materia Medica, has arisen from these two different matters being taken into account at the same time. Food is the only restoration of wanting material needful to a healthy man ”

“ Because science reverses the positions of personal sense, human reason acts slowly in accepting it, contesting every inch of ground it occupies, while error, self-complacent and applauded, sneers at the slow marches of Truth. Physiology is a name in our land. Institutions honor it, and materia medica bows the knee, but notwithstanding this, it has not improved mankind. We shall yet open our eyes to this fact in theodicy, that depending on matter for what Intelligence is responsible, is a mistake with grave consequences. ”

“ His ‘Pharmacologia’ published in 1812, and revised by him up to the ninth edition in 1843, was a general treatise on materia medica and therapeutics. It was long the standard book on its subject, and he made five thousand guineas by its sale. He published in 1823 a book on ‘Medical Jurisprudence,’ which still continues to be the only English work on the subject with any pretensions to literary value. ‘The Elements of Medical Chemistry’ was published by him in 1825, and in 1827 a ‘Treatise on Diet,’ of which five editions appeared in ten years. ”

“ To render these lectures as instructive as possible to students of Physic, the Doctor proposes, in the course of them, to give some useful Observations on Medicine in general, and the proper manner of conducting the study of Physic. The authors to be read in the Materia Medica will be pointed out. The various Substances made use of in Medicine will be reduced under Classes suited to the principal Indications in the cure of Diseases. ”

“ Then, again, when I attend our medical associations and find the faculty discarding" methods and remedies which were once pronounced 'wonderful discoveries,' and substituting something new or something that had years ago been discarded, I become disgusted, and declare there is no science in materia medica; that it is but 'a bundle of speculative theories,' as Mrs. Eddy puts it in her startling chapter on 'Medicine.'" [Footnote: "Science and Health," page 149.] ”

“ All of my time is employed. I do some sort of laborious work every day to start my blood coursing vigorously, and open the pores of my skin. By a proper adjustment of my under-clothing, I prevent a cold, and am always ready with a good appetite when meal-time comes. I have never studied Anatomy, Medicine, or Surgery, know but little about the niceties of the English language, but I have studied the Materia Medica of myself, and am aware of just what is beneficial and what is injurious for me. ”

“ There is surely no question connected with our subject which can be more interesting and important, no one which requires a more cool and dispassionate inquiry, and certainly not any which can be more appropriate for a lecture, introductory to the history of Materia Medica. I shall therefore proceed to examine with some attention the revolutions which have thus taken place in the opinions and belief of mankind, with regard to the efficacy and powers of different medicinal agents ”

“ A man may know the chymical analysis of all the articles in the materia medica, without being able properly to apply any one of them in the cure of diseases. One page of practical observations is worth a whole volume of chymical analysis. ”

“ This variety in diseases, which is produced by the changes in the customs of civilized nations, will enable us to account for many of the contradictions which are to be found in authors of equal candour and abilities, who have written upon the materia medica. ”

“ I do not comprehend it all. “Great ignoramus!” Nobody is perfected in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature, and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases safely.
CORRECT POSITION. INCORRECT POSITION.
Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which he knows little or nothing? ”

“ As a matter of fact, it can be shown that it is to the purely scientific chemist, working with the main object of building up the science, that we owe the discovery of most valuable remedies, at least of those which are strictly speaking chemical compounds. I select for this purpose two substances which have but comparatively recently found their places in the materia medica—viz., chloral and salicylic acid. How and by whom were these substances discovered and introduced into medicine? ”