A guide to therapeutics / by Robert Farquharson.

  • Farquharson, Robert, 1836-1918.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to therapeutics / by Robert Farquharson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ciple will spare us from the drudgery of placing the exact dose after every preparation whose action we shall examine. These rules may be borne in mind in a general way, and we shall now go on to consider very briefly the plan of arrange- ment to be pursued when we come to consider the various medicinal substances seriatim. Our object will be to balance,, as far as possible, their physiological against their therapeutical action, arranging them in corresponding columns in diagram- matic form ; and it will greatly assist this arrangement, as well as aid the memory of the student, if we adopt the following order in stating what we know respecting the properties of each drug. Take, first, its local or external action. Then its influence on the brain and on the spinal and sym- pathetic system of nerves. This will lead us up gradually to the effects on the heart and blood-vessels, whose functions are presided over, and ruled by, nervous influence. The effects of the drug on respiration and temperature will next be considered, and we proceed to the alterations of secretion in the following order : urinary, intestinal, salivary, cutaneous, &c. Then other actions which come under no heading, and which may be called specific. Finally, we must consider the various modes of elimination from the body, the antidotes, contra-indications, and best modes of prescribing, winding up, in most cases, with a prescription which will, as far as possible, combine efficiency and elegance with palatability. Regarding the method in which the following pages will be arranged, a few words may be said. Different modes of grouping drugs have been adopted, and by some the preference is given to the purely physiological plan,, by which all the medical substances having a particular action are placed under that special heading ; thus, we have purgatives, narcotics, astringents, &c, as different varieties, with their