THERAPEUTICS AND MATERIA MEDICA. PART I. INTRODUCTION. THERAPEUTICS (Oɛpanev, to serve, attend, wait upon) really signifies the management of sick persons in such a way as to promote their recovery and comfort. Obviously, this includes a great deal beside the administration of drugs, but the word, partly on account of a traditional overestimate of their power, and partly because various other branches have become so distinctly separated off under their own special names, has come to be closely connected with the study of the action of drugs. It is the belief of the writer, founded on many years' experience in teaching and on the familiarity with the views of physicians, gained in this and other ways, that an attempt is usually made to teach the student too much of materia medica; and that, although it may well be granted that the thoroughly accomplished physician should know all about drugs in all points of view, yet for practical purposes and considering the limited time which, in justice to other subjects of great importance, can be given in an ordinary medical course to this branch, a certain portion of this knowledge is better left in the hands of the educated. pharmacist. This latter class will undoubtedly become a part of the foundation of the therapeutics of the future, and possibly the near future; but at present many of them are too fragmentary and vague to deserve a place in a curriculum which is to prepare the practitioner for his daily work. Many other facts lying chiefly within the domain of experimental pharmacodynamics, and highly interesting and important from a theoretical point of view, may be omitted as having only a remote bearing on the truly therapeutic action of drugs. It seems to the author the duty of every writer on so important a subject, to record a protest against the view prevalent in a certain class of medical literature. The thought, expectation, or feeling is encouraged, that we are on the eve of a great and rapid forward movement in therapeutic science, and the dis |