[236]. The reader is also referred to an account of Majendie’s experiments as related at page 86 of this volume.
[237]. Fish, especially those of the cetaceous tribe, constantly decompose water, and live upon its hydrogen.
[238]. Rumford’s Essays, Vol. 1. p. 194–202.
[239]. I selected it as the exclusive subject of my Lectures before the Royal College of Physicians, during the year 1820.
[240]. It was wisely said by Lord Bacon, “that Man should observe all the workmanship, and the particular workings of Nature, and meditate which of those may be transferred to the Arts.” Advancement of Learning, Book v. 148. For a further illustration of these views, the partiality of an author may perhaps be excused if he refer the reader to his paper “On the Recent Sandstone,” published in the first volume of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall.
[241]. The practitioner must receive the term similar, conventionally, as expressed at page 71. Many of those substances which we are at present bound to consider similar, will no doubt, require to be transplanted into other classes as the progress of physiological knowledge shall elucidate their modes of action. In this attempt to teach the Art of Medicinal Combination, I have endeavoured to reduce the propositions it comprehends to the greatest degree of generality of which they are, at present, susceptible.
[242]. Numerous isolated statements of the same tendency may be adduced, but these cannot invalidate the claim of Dr. Fordyce, as the first person who generalized the fact, and applied it with success to practice. Diemerbroeck, in his notes upon the Theriaca Andromachi, observes that the composition is a more efficacious medicine from the concurrent powers of so many ingredients, alike in virtue: and Quincy, in his Lectures on Pharmacy, which were published by Dr. Shaw in 1723, says “those fetid gums which are generally prescribed in Hysteria, as Ammoniacum, Galbanum, &c. may be conjoined with advantage, because from a concurrence of properties, they all conspire to the same end.”
[243]. Such was the nature of the “Mustacea” of the Romans, which were a species of cake, used at weddings, and consisted of meal, aniseed, cummin, and several other aromatics; their object was to remove or prevent the indigestion which might be occasioned by eating too copiously at the marriage entertainment. It must be acknowledged that this compound was better adapted for such a purpose than the modern Bride-cake, to which it gave origin. Cato (de R. R. c. 121) has given us a receipt for the Roman bride-cake.
[244]. Dr. Majendie goes so far even as to assert, that by varying the different preparations of the same Narcotic, we shall be better able to keep up its action on the animal œconomy, without an increase of its dose. He adds, “Some English writers have denied the truth of this observation: but they have not given any reasons for their scepticism.—Why should it not be true?”
[245]. It would even appear probable that in some cases mercurial influence has, after its subsidence, been renewed by doses of Opium: a remarkable instance of this kind is related in Hufeland’s Journal (vol. ix.) in which an old woman is said to have fallen into a considerable salivation after every dose of Opium; she had previously applied to the physician for an extensive ulceration over her body, and had taken a considerable quantity of mercury; but the effects had subsided, until renewed by the opium.