piv. | 76 
DIURETICS. 
Medicines which increase or promote the action 
of the urinary organs. ‘They do this by various 
occult modes of operating, and are character- 
ised by much uncertainty. The precise course 
by which the impulse of these remedies or agents, 
reach the kidnies, so as to establish there an 
is by no means clearly ascertained: and it seems 
questionable from the very nature of the subject, 
whether it ever can be satisfactorily resolved. 
Speculation, grounded on close observation of 
their physiological and curative effects, has not 
been wanting. Much ingenuity and talent has 
been expended on the jarring and irreconcileable 
facts involved in the agency of these medicines ; 
and still much of what is generally received as 
- operating, remains, if not absolutely conjectural, — 
at least far from independent of disputation. ‘The 
different original opinions promulgated by publi- 
cation and taught in schools on this point, may be 
reduced to:— 
ist. That which supposes that diuretics enter 
by absorption into the course of the circulation, 
where after a time they are applied to the kidnies, 
which are thus, by their agency, stimulated to in- 
creased action. This was the idea of Cullen, 
taught in his lectures, and maintained in his k.. 
* 
