Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of ContentsLord, John
Philosophy
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents
Lord, John
History
still leads many a phthisical person to his grave. But information is
rapidly being diffused, sanatoria for such of the tuberculous as can
take advantage of them are multiplying, and those who are shut off from
their aid are growing more and more cognizant of how they should live in
order to give themselves the best chance of recovery and save their
associates from infection. The era of consumption-cures--meaning
drugs--is past; but the disease is cured in an ever-increasing
proportion of instances, and that, too, by medical though not
medicinal measures.
At almost every turn medicine has been powerfully assisted by the
sciences which should rather be termed correlative than subsidiary.
Notable among them is chemistry. The isolation of the active principles
of medicinal plants--such as morphine, quinine, strychnine, and
cocaine--has been a remarkable service rendered by chemistry to
medicine. How should we be handicapped if we still had to fight
malarial disease with the crude Peruvian bark instead of its chief
alkaloid, quinine! And how impracticable if not impossible would it be
to render the eye insensitive to pain with any extract of coca leaves,
no matter how concentrated--a purpose that we accomplish almost
instantly with cocaine! Of minor importance, perhaps, but not to be
despised, is the resulting liberation from the old slavery to bulky and
nauseous drugs. The isolation of active principles long antedated the
synthetical preparations, but the latter came at last--the marvellous
array of hypnotics, anodynes, and fever-quellers that are now at our
command, largely coal-tar products. But it is not to pure chemistry
alone that we are indebted for the elegant dosing of the present day;
progressive pharmacy, with its tablets, its coated pills, and its
capsules, has put to shame the old-time purveyor of galenicals. Right
jauntily do we now take our "soda mint" in case of slight derangement of
the stomach, happily oblivious of its vile prototype, the old rhubarb
and soda mixture. Even castor oil has been stripped of its repulsiveness
by the combinations which the soda water fountain affords.
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