The Action of Medicines in the System: Or, on the mode in which therapeutic agents introduced into the stomach produce their peculiar effects on the animal economyHeadland, Frederick William
Science
The Action of Medicines in the System: Or, on the mode in which therapeutic agents introduced into the stomach produce their peculiar effects on the animal economy
Headland, Frederick William
Therapeutics
The third minor proposition repeats the rule of local access, which has
already been enforced in treating of the fifth proposition. It was not
necessary to maintain this in the case of medicines acting on the blood;
but Neurotic agents must be shown to operate locally on the various
nervous organs. I have only to repeat the arguments which were urged
before. It is proved that the action of nerve-medicines cannot be
propagated by nervous connexion, but that passage in the circulation is
necessary; that the course of the latter is sufficiently rapid to
account even for the action of Hydrocyanic acid; and that, however near
a medicine be introduced to a nervous organ, it does not affect it
unless it be allowed to reach it. The nerves are not naturally
constituted for the conduction of medicinal impressions, but only for
the passage of impulses of volition, sensation, or emotion. And this
evidently forms a powerful safeguard to the system against the effects
of a poison. The assertion is further maintained by the fact that the
action of a Neurotic, when applied topically to the part which it tends
to influence, is the same as that which is exerted by it on the same
part after absorption. And lastly, some nerve-medicines have actually
been found after death in the substance of those nerves and centres
which had been affected by them during life.
The use of these medicines in the treatment of disease is defined in the
fourth minor proposition. They have no influence in the blood. They are
not employed in slow or long continuing diseases. Their applications
depend on their known physiological tendencies, already stated. Abnormal
deviations from the proper functions of the nervous system are rectified
by means of the influence which they exert over the nervous organs.
When the powers of life are sinking, the nervous force on which life
depends may perhaps be roused by a strong Stimulant, and maintained by
its repetition. Sometimes the emergency may be thus postponed, and the
danger escaped.
In violent inflammations and fevers, when the action of the heart is so
violent, and the nerves that control it so excited, as to place life in
peril, we may do good by the administration of a Sedative, such as
Antimony or Digitalis, by which the nervous force may be reduced to its
proper level.
Narcotics are used in various cases, to cause sleep, or to quiet mental
irritability. Both these and Sedatives are employed to alleviate the
different kinds of pain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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