Dr. Hancock on Quinine. 307 



ingredients." And in vol. i. p. 285, he adds, " Does it not, 

 therefore, appear that certain elements exist in the composition 

 of vegetable remedies, as furnished by nature, which, although 

 individually inert, confer additional strength and impulse upon 

 the principle of activity with which they are associated*?" 



So far, indeed, from depriving the bark of a large portion of 

 its active principle, the most sensible physicians have advised 

 the addition of other aromatic and astringent substances to 

 heighten its powers. In proof of this, I shall quote further 

 from Dr. Paris's work. 



The most powerful minds are not exempt from extravagant 

 errors — Sydenham pronounced that <e to add anything to the 

 bark argues either ignorance or craft." He did not, however, 

 intend at the same time that anything should be abstracted 

 from it. 



U The most respectable testimony," says Dr. Paris, vol. i. 

 p. 307, " may be adduced to demonstrate the great advantages 

 which have arisen from the various combinations of this heroic 

 remedy." — Sir George Baker has said, that " there is less of 

 reason than of severity" in the above remark of Sydenham ; 

 for that it was found in the cure of the intermittent which he 

 describes, that, according to circumstances, sometimes the 

 Virginian snake-root, and in other cases myrrh, were added 

 with propriety and advantage; and, according to the experi- 

 ence of several practitioners, a drachm of the rust of iron, and 

 the same quantity of black pepper, added to each ounce of the 

 bark, were the means of subduing the most inveterate agues. — 



•' * When the structure of vegetable remedies shall have been tho- 

 roughly examined upon this principle of combination, much medicinal 

 obscurity will be removed, and probably pharmaceutical improvements 

 of value suggested ; at all events, it will teach a lesson of prudent cau- 

 tion to the pharmaceutic chemist ; it will shew the danger of his removing 

 this or that element from a vegetable compound, merely because he finds, 

 upon its separation, that it is inert. I dwell the more upon this point, 

 because I feel that there never was a period in the history of medicine, 

 at which such a caution was more necessary ; for while the poly-phar- 

 macy of our ancestors has driven the physician of the present day into 

 a simplicity of prescription that on many occasions abridges his powers and 

 resources, the progress of chemical knowledge has diffused through the 

 class of manufacturing chemists a bold spirit of adventure and empiri- 

 cism, — a mischievous propensity to torture our best remedies, in order to 

 concentrate or extract the parts which they consider to constitute their 

 essential ingredients." 



