The analytical system of medicine, or, The treatment of disease according to the principles and requirements of nature / by J. Clawson Kelley.

  • Kelley, John Clawson, 1793-1863.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The analytical system of medicine, or, The treatment of disease according to the principles and requirements of nature / by J. Clawson Kelley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    them upon any other principle than hope and belief ? He hopes and believes they will prove beneficial to his patient; and should they not act as he rather confidently anticipates, he is surprised and disappointed, and knows not what to attribute their failure to. But resolving to accomplish the visible effect he at first de- signed, he determines upon the employment of a more powerful medicinal agent, without, perhaps, even thinking that serious and permanent internal injury may be produced, even for life, by his more powerful agent. Too frequently he guesses, imagines, and supposes this or that organ diseased ; that this or that medicine will answer best, and thereupon continues to pursue the course he has learned from authors, until the nervous system of his pa- tient becomes exhausted and death follows. His conscientious scruples are quieted by his firm conviction that he has followed the most approved methods which scientific authors have advis- ed, and which his brethren of the profession justify. He believes that he has done all that could be done to save the patient— which is no doubt true! How important that medical men should be so far acquainted with natural laws, particularly those which relate to the constituents of both vegetable and animal matter, as to enable them to employ such medicines as shall act upon the human system in accordance with laws capable of changing or removing those morbid conditions of the system which gener- rate disease, be it general or local, that a restoration to health may follow. Some authors seem to think that no science or experience can unfold to the world principles by which the invisible operation of medicine could be known. They suppose the operation of all medicines to depend upon what they term their vital principle, or effort of nature which, they say, enables the digestive and assimilating organs to change or destroy the qualities of the sub- stances exposed to their operation, without sustaining in return the slightest injury or change. It would hence really appear that instead of matter, whether aliment, drink or medicine, act-