Royle's manual of materia medica and therapeutics : including the preparations of the British pharmacopoeia and other approved medicines / by John Harley.

  • Harley, John, 1833-1921.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Royle's manual of materia medica and therapeutics : including the preparations of the British pharmacopoeia and other approved medicines / by John Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    9, worthy the attention of one who knows something of Greek hex- ameters and the differential calculus, and that such gross and commonplace things are best left to the care and consideration of the pharmacist. If any of my readers should he incMned to this mew, I would remind them that gentle manners and persuasive speech, proper and desirable though they he, will neither free an obstruction nor bind a diarrhoea; and that if they do not know what to prescribe and how to proportion the dose to the relief of the patient, they will sooner or later be confronted by their ignorance, and humbled by the reflection that the only weapons which can help them to make a worthy stand against the general foe are useless to them, hfbthmg secures the confidence of the patient more readily and completely than the ability to predicate the effect of the medicine which you prescribe for him. He himself expects resrdts, and if these accord with your predictions, you have already done much to relieve him. To be able to do this, implies a knowledge of most that is written in the following pages, and besides this, a great deal more that cannot be written. No one ever became an exact fencer by bare study of the written descriptions of the poses, passes, feints, and foils of the art, nor an accomplished musician by the theoretical study of har- monics. For the same and even a stronger reason, no one can become even moderately competent to employ medicines for the relief of disease, unless he have diligently watched their operation at the bed- side. A faithful study of the following pages, aided and supplemented by the prescribed courses of lectures and practical Pharmacy, will provide a foundation for therapeutical knowledge ; but the super- structure itself must be built up of observations personally made and recorded, and repeated under a great variety of conditions. The Materia Medica is a choice repertory of the most precious gifts of nature and of science, and, as such, its individual objects are intrinsically interesting. The three kingdoms of nature are fully represented. Chemistry is the presiding genius, and is attended by Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology, and we are incidentally introduced to some of the most interesting operations of animals and plants. But it is necessary to know these objects, not onily for theh own sake, but to detect the impurities which they acquire by association, and the adulterations which are imposed by dishonesty. In the present day it would be folly to shut one’s eyes to the fact, that we may have been watching day after day, and week after week, for the effects of a given medicine which we have prescribed, and at a loss to account for their absence, and at the end of this time discover, li we have the ability to do so, that the active principle is wanting. Severe competition between wholesale dru^ists, and the absence ot an authorised and unexpected inspection of the drugs kept by both wholesale and retad druggists, render the precautions given under characters and tests in the Pharmacopoeia absolutely necessary; and it a medical practitioner should be incapable of ascertainmg the purity of the drugs he prescribes, he will, unless he send his patient to a reliable source, soon begin to lose faith in his prescriptions.