Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Compend of Materia Medica and Therapeutics: For the Use of Students
Materia Medica is that department of medicine which treats of the remedies employed for the alleviation and cure of disease. In its most comprehensive sense it embraces all agents which are capable of making sanative impressions on the human system, including hygienic remedies, as diet, exercise, and climate; surgical and mechanical remedies; and certain physical agents, as heat, light, and electricity; but, as employed in this work, it has a more restricted sense, and applies only to the consideration of those material substances derived from the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, which are used as pharmacological agents or medicines.
Therapeutics is that division of the science which treats of the various actions and effects of agents upon the diseased system, and their application for the cure, alleviation, or prevention of disease.
Medicines may be defined to be those substances which possess the power of affecting the solids and fluids of the body, thereby producing certain modifications of the vital functions, which render them serviceable in the treatment of disease. They differ from aliments in resisting the digestive powers, and consequently are not adapted to supply growth, to repair waste, and to maintain the various functions at the healthy standard. Poisons differ from medicines only in the degree of their effects, and the uses to which they are applied; for the most powerful poisons become, when administered with proper precautions, very valuable medicines.
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