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Our explanations of the natural laws of cure and of natural therapeutics are often greeted by "Old School" physicians and students with remarks like the following: "You speak as if you had the monopoly of eliminative treatment and of the production of crises. With our laxatives, cathartics, diuretics, diaphoretics and tonics, we are doing the same thing.
Experience brought much of the wisdom we call empirical, and the records, extending for thousands of years, show that the Egyptians employed emetics, purgatives, enemata, diuretics, diaphoretics and even bleeding. They had a rich pharmacopoeia derived from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.
It is said that tinctures made in spirituous menstrua possess both the emetic and cathartic virtues of the plant: that the extract obtained by inspissating these tinctures acts only by vomit, and with great mildness: that an infusion in water proves cathartic, rarely emetic: that aqueous decoctions made by long boiling, and the watery extract, have no purgative or emetic quality, but prove notable diaphoretics, diuretics, and emmenagogues.
The owner of the dog had applied the solution with the tip of her finger; she experienced some salivation, which she attributed to this cause. The skin of the dog, from the feebleness of its perspiratory functions, is little sensible to the influence of diaphoretics: therefore we trust so much to external applications for the cure of diseases of the skin of that animal.
She had no pain in the head, nor any distressing symptoms. Her skin was soft and moist. All things looked favorable. I gave, now, only gentle diaphoretics, and let the case progress, watching it with the closest attention. In this, I followed my usual course of treatment as to giving medicines.
The sluggish organs of elimination are prodded by poisonous cathartics, laxatives, diaphoretics, cholagogues and tonics, all of which, after temporary stimulation, leave the organs in a more weakened and the system in a more poisoned condition. If brain and nerves are irritated and aching, sedatives and hypnotics are given to stupefy them into insensibility.
The berries were supposed by the ancients to have a purgative and emetic quality; later writers have recommended them in small doses, as diaphoretics and alexipharmics; and Mr. Boyle tells us, that in the London plague the powder of them was given with vinegar, with good success, as a sudorific. It is probable the virtue of the composition was rather owing to the vinegar than to the powder.
In 1809, there was observed, at the Royal Veterinary School at Lyons, an eruptive malady among the dogs, to which they gave the name of 'small-pox'. It appeared to be propagated from dog to dog by contagion. It was not difficult of cure; and it quickly disappeared when no other remedies were employed than mild aperients and diaphoretics. A sheep was inoculated from one of these dogs.
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