MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 213 



properties and its efficacy in dropsy, but Cullen justly 

 claims* the honor of having clearly proved the important 

 fact that digitalis is " the opium of the heart." 



The rapid advance of chemistry at this period could not 

 fail to have an effect on that of therapeutics. For one 

 thing, it had given origin to new systems as to diseases, 

 and gained admirable drugs for practitioners. It is in the 

 eighteenth century that the use of the purgative salts of 

 magnesia began ; that the discovery was made, by Goulard, 

 of the acetate of lead, and the powerful astringent proper- 

 ties by which it is marked ; and that the use of the salts 

 of bismuth was recommended by Odier. At the same 

 period Van Swieten made the solution of corrosive sub- 

 limate famous which has kept his name, and by which he 

 replaced the inconvenient mercurial preparations in use 

 before his time. These useful acquisitions, doubtless, en- 

 couraged the development of the art, but they did not much 

 enlighten science in especial, and the time was drawing 

 near when the question must necessarily be asked, how 

 and why these drugs act. Hardly a thought had been 

 given to that point before Bichat appeared. 



Bichat, after having reconstructed anatomy and physi- 

 ology, and then pathology, was ambitious to reform thera- 

 peutics also. Struck by the disorder and want of exact- 

 ness of that science, he believed that it might be brought 

 nearer perfection by the methodical study of the action of 

 medicinal substances, not upon diseases, which are compli- 

 cated phenomena, but upon the tissues. With this pur- 

 pose he undertook at l'H6tel-Dieu, at which he had just 

 been appointed physician he was then thirty years old 

 a series of exact experiments with regard to the effect of 

 remedies. More than forty pupils began to assist him in 

 this undertaking, and in each one of the course of lectures 

 he was making on these substances he gave an account 

 of the results obtained ; but Fate did not allow him to go 



