1868. | Its Recent Progress and Present Condition. 47 
the care of the physician, results equally great in the aggregate, 
although, perhaps, not individually so splendid, have been produced. 
The most valuable, perhaps, of these has been increased confidence 
in the efficacy of drugs. The remark was long since made, by 
whom first we know not, that the mind of every practitioner who 
thinks for himself, and is not content to be guided merely by 
routine, passes through three stages. In the first stage he has 
unbounded confidence in medicines. In the second, disappointed 
by the non-realization of the brilliant dreams of his youth, he 
doubts their efficacy altogether. In the third stage, that of mental 
maturity, he believes that, judiciously administered in accordance 
with the teachings of enlightened empiricism, they can do a great 
deal. The professional mind, as a whole, has within the last half- 
century gone through a similar series of changes. But a few 
years since it appeared to be sinking into a hopeless condition of 
scepticism as to the utility of strictly medicinal treatment. A 
brighter age has happily succeeded. A discriminating confidence 
in the powers of remedies of proved efficacy has taken the place 
both of doubt and of blind faith in all drugs; and here again the 
duty of relieving pain, and of avoiding unnecessary suffering, has 
been recognized. It has come almost to be a fundamental principle 
that in nearly all diseases, acute or chronic, of which pain is a 
prominent symptom, to relieve the pain is to cure the disease, and 
that therefore, wherever narcotics do no harm in other ways, they 
ought to be administered. Modes of giving them otherwise than 
by the mouth have in consequence been devised, and one of those 
is so ingenious and so elegant, if the expression is admissible, as to 
be worthy of description. By means of a little syringe, having a 
nozzle drawn out into a minute pointed tube, perforated like the 
fang of a rattlesnake a little way below its extremity, a few drops 
of concentrated solution of morphia are injected under the skin, so 
as to come directly into contact with the extremities of the nerves 
of the painful or inflamed part. To quote a portion of one of the 
many recent professional utterances now lying before us, “ We 
see neuralgia of long standing cured by one injection of morphia ; 
we see the same treatment visibly restormg to health congested 
vessels of the conjunctiva; reducing unnatural heat, not of the 
whole body, but of a suffering portion of it; lessening the swelling 
of an inflamed joint; arresting vomiting, depending on a lacerated 
brain, or upon peritonitis, or suppressed menstruation.” * 
The hypo-dermic administration of medicine has not been limited 
to morphia. Other vegetable alkaloids have been given in the same 
way. The most promising results thus obtained have been when 
* Mr. T. P. Teale, jun., Opening Address at the Leeds School of Medicine. 
— British Medical Journal, Oct. 5. 
