Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Vol. 2

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Excerpt from Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Vol. 2: With Especial Reference to the Clinical Application of Drugs
The issue of the second volume of this work has been unexpectedly and unavoidably delayed. Several circumstances have concurred to produce this result. In projecting a work of some magnitude it is necessarily difficult to estimate the time which its execution will demand. After the most liberal allowance seems to have been made, the exigencies of professional life may totally disarrange preconceived plans. This premise, which applies to every physician who essays to add to the literature of his profession, gains added force in the present instance, since the author stood already pledged to several other literary undertakings. No one can regret more than the writer that his calculations have been disturbed and the fulfillment of his present task postponed. He felt, however, that it was far more important that his labor should be performed as thoroughly as possible than that it should be finished by a specified date. He certainly desired that the work should be based upon his own experience and convictions. Yet no less assuredly was he anxious to modify or extend his conclusions in the light of those reached by other laborers in the same field. It was his aim to render this volume a complete, as well as practical, exposition of the pharmacological, physiological, and therapeutical action of the various drugs now used in medicine. Practical usefulness determines the standard of value of a work on therapeutics. It should aim to be a complete repertory of the various means at our command for resisting the ravages or removing the effects of disease. It should fairly represent the various measures which have been found beneficial in the experience of the general profession. Though a writer may speak with conviction of remedies and methods which, in his own experience, have proved of advantage, he should not lose sight of the fact that, for one reason or another, the practitioner is not infrequently disappointed in the action of the most approved medicaments. Cases constantly occur, especially in the course of chronic affections, in which our knowledge of drugs and methods of administration is tried to the utmost extent. One seemingly indicated remedy after another is, in vain, employed.
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