The elements of materia medica and therapeutics : adapted to the American reformed and eclectic practice

Front matter

[ Surgeon General's 0 f f i c 3

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THE ELEMENTS OF

Author's Preface

In offering this second edition of the following work, the Author deems an apology necessary to those Colleges that have continued (in expectation) to announce it as a text-book while out of print. Several Medical Conventions, and many of his professional friends too, have indicated their solicitude for an early reprint. The delay has been mostly occasioned by engagements upon other works deemed equally important, and which were intended to have been published before the former large edition of this work was exhausted. It had been the author's intention not to submit the work to republication, until he should have ample time for thorough revisions and extension. This has now been accomplished, and it is hoped that the work will continue to merit the liberal patronage of the profession.

Much of it has been rewritten, and nearly three hundred pages of matter, as also many new illustrations, have been added. The agents of Materia Medica have been numerically increased, and comprise among them many important new articles. Its Pharmacy has been improved and extended, and its Therapeutics also is perfected and amplified.

The work, however, is still far from what the author could wish it to be, and he cherishes the hope that the generous profession will continue their kind indulgence.

That the treatise will be considered sectarian and proscriptive, is very possible, since the curative intentions are all projected upon principles of absolutely safe medication. Nevertheless, the author may be permitted to say that in his revision of the work, he has still found it unnecessary to treat the views of those who differ from him in professional sentiments, with unkind feelings or discourtesy. He has pursued his labor independently, but respect-

I viii author's preface.

fully, with his purpose fixed upon the maintenance of truth as indicated or corroborated by experience and observation.

For the better understanding of practical truth in medicine, the author, from the first, found it necessary to investigate all the different views in pathology and therapeutics, and to test them by the analogies afforded in an extended practice, and by a sound inductive philosophy. With him the result of all this, has been a sound conviction that no curative measures contemplating organic lesion or functional derangement, as a basis or principle of cure, can be admitted in a perfect system of medication.

There is indeed no record of any practice true to a theory so perfectly physiological, in the dusky archives of medical lore, yet this should be made at least a hypothetical standard in practice, and we should attain it as nearly as possible. Our resources of the harmless order are very abundant, and while these agencies are proven to be equally efficient in the cure of disease there is no reason why they should not be adopted.

Although the present age is one of notable progress and improvement, yet the profession should in no degree less respect the labors and accumulated knowledge of the many past ages. A full sense of this fact has given an impress upon the present, as well as upon the former character of this work. Numerous foreign, as well as native authorities, have been consulted ; these have been generally credited in the work where referred to, and require no special acknowledgment here.

With these remarks the author submits the work to the press, in the hope that his labor may continue of some service to his generous co-laborers in the profession.

Cincinnati, December, 1857.