The physiological action of medicines : a paper read at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Nottingham / by William Sharp... August 23rd, 1866.

  • Sharp, William, 1805-1896.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiological action of medicines : a paper read at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Nottingham / by William Sharp... August 23rd, 1866. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    / ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF MEDICINES. (Eead at the Meeting of the British Association, at Nottingham, August 23rd, 1866).* Medicines are substances belonging to the mineral, vegetable or animal kingdoms, wbich are not nutritive, or •which are not assimilated by the process of digestion, and therefore cannot, in this sense, contxibute to the preservation of the living body. For the purposes of this paper they may be described by three characteristics; characteristics well known and admitted, but hitherto unexplained :—The first, that their action is more or less partial or local; the second, that this action in disease is often curative; the third, that in health it is always more or less injurious. I. The action of medicines received into the body is local; to borrow an old chemical phrase, there is sort of elective affi- nity between certain organs of the body and certain drugs. This fact is as weU known, though as unexplained, as the parallel fact that each organ selects from the same current of blood the elements of its own nutrition; organs differing as much as the brain, the muscles, the bones, the ligaments, the * It is a rule of the British Association that the papers proposed to be read shall be sent about ten days before the meeting commences, that the committee of the section to which each paper belongs may have an opportunity of accepting or declining it. The committee of the physiological section accepted this paper, but requested me to omit reading the early part of it, for the reason that it was historical and preliminary. A 2