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2 to give a medicine in small doses, and at intervals,
3 than to load the stomach with it in large quantities
4 at once.” If they thus spoke and acted in the days
5 when remedies were mild, and had but little influence
6 on the patient ; if they then said — Salvia cum ruta
7 faciunt libi pocula tuta , how much more should this
8 golden rule be observed by us, now that the progress
9 of chymistry has unfolded the powers of those simple
10 remedies.
11 I have no great . opinion of the so-called nostrums ;
12 but, as we are recommended to “ prove all things, and
13 hold fast that which is good,” I tried some of them,
14 out of curiosity. The celebrated Morrison’s and also
15 Holloway’s pills, I found, as I expected, violent pur-
16 gatives, which may, however, be employed with ad-
17 vantage (?) by a judicious physician. I need scarcely
18 observe, that they do not deserve the name of pana-
19 cea; neither can I advise any one, to take either of
20 them in the beginning of a violent fever, having wit-
21 nessed bad consequences from so doing. I have ad-
22 ministered the above-mentioned pills, in small doses; also
23 Warburg’s fever drops, which are reputed good ; and
24 the reader may find a description of their effects and
25 composition in the second volume. I was pleased to
26 see in a Report in the Bengal Pharmacopoeia (1844,
27 p. 147) that arsenic in very minute doses, recommended
28 as a diuretic, which is driven off with the urine, may
29 be again easily detected in it. It is highly probable,
30 that if we were as well acquainted with the re-agents
31 of other medicines as we are with those of arsenic, and
32 if we knew where to look for their action, i.e . whether
33 in the blood-vessels or in the nerves, in the lymphatic