Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/22

xn IxNTRODUCTION. than to load the stomach wiili it in large quantities at once." If they thus spoke and acted in the days when remedies were mild, and had but little i^ifluence on the patient ; if they then said — Salvia cum ruta faciunt tibi pociila tiita^ how much more should this golden rule be observed by us, now that the progress of chemistry has unfolded the powers of those simple remedies. I have no great opinion of the so-called nostrums ;: but, as we are recommended to " prove all things, and hold fast that which is good," I tried some of them, out of curiosity. The celebrated Morrison's- and also HoUoway's pills, I found, as I expected,, violent purgatives, which may, however, be employed- with advantage (?) by a judicious physician, I need' scarcely observe, that they do not deserve the name oi panacea ; neither can I advise any one, to take either of them in the beginning of a violent fever, having witnessed bad consequences from so doing,. I have administered the above-mentioned pills, in small doses ; also Warburg's fever drops, which are reputed good ; and the reader may find a descrip- tion of their efifects and composition in th« second volume. I was pleased to see in a Report in the Bengal Pharmxcopxia (1844, p. 147) that arsenic in very minute doses, recommended as a diuretic, which is driven oflf with the urine, may be again easily de- tected in it. It is highly probable, that if we were as well acquainted with the re-agents of other medici- nes as we are with those of arsenic, and if we know where to look for their action, i. e.^ whether in the blood-vessels or in the nerves, in the lymphatic system or in the cellular tissue, in the gall or in the bladder, in the spleen, in the liver, in the