To uphold the exhibition of noxious agents in
disease, as the rule, instead of admitting them cautiously and
reluctantly as the exception, is, as I think, an eddy of opinion in the
direction of the barbarism out of which we believe our art is escaping.
It is only through the enlightened sentiment and action of the Medical
Profession that the community can be brought to acknowledge that drugs
should always be regarded as evils.
It is true that some suppose, and our scientific and thoughtful
associate, Dr. Gould, has half countenanced the opinion, that there may
yet be discovered a specific for every disease. Let us not despair of
the future, but let us be moderate in our expectations. When an oil is
discovered that will make a bad watch keep good time; when a recipe is
given which will turn an acephalous foetus into a promising child; when a
man can enter the second time into his mother's womb and give her back
the infirmities which twenty generations have stirred into her blood, and
infused into his own through hers, we may be prepared to enlarge the
National Pharmacopoeia with a list of specifies for everything but old
age,--and possibly for that also.
NOTE C.--
The term specific is used here in its ordinary sense, without raising the
question of the propriety of its application to these or other remedies.
The credit of introducing Cinchona rests between the Jesuits, the
Countess of Chinchon, the Cardinal de Lugo, and Sir Robert Talbor, who
employed it as a secret remedy.
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