NAFURE 
337 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1885 
DR. LAUDER BRUNTON’S “PHARMACOLOGY” 
A Text-Book of Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and Materia 
Medica. By T. Lauder Brunton, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S., 
&c. Pp. 1139. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1885.) 
T is nearly twenty years since Dr. Brunton, then a 
student in the University of Edinburgh, commenced, 
by his researches on the physiological action of digitalis, 
which were followed soon after by others on nitrite of 
amy], a life of laborious work which has been marked at 
every stage by contributions which testify to his scientific 
acumen and his burning love for research, and which 
have enriched physiology and many branches of medicine 
with newly-discovered facts. 
“Now, when the second decade of his professional life is 
drawing to a close, he presents us with a work which 
stamps him as a teacher in the highest sense of the word. 
It may appear to some that an apology is needed for 
introducing into the columns of NATURE a review of a 
work dealing with departments of medicine. To any 
such we would reply that it falls within the scope of 
this journal to review the progress of all departments of 
natural science, and that large sections of Dr. Brunton’s 
book are full of interest to all biologists, and almost as 
much to the specialised physiologist as to the practical 
physician. 
By the term “materia medica” it has long be2n the 
custom to designate the study of the agents, whether 
derived from the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms, 
which are employed in the treatment of disease. By 
“therapeutics” we understand the study of the application 
of these remedial agents to the cure of disease. Until 
very recently the study of therapeutics was based entirely 
on pure empiricism, and under conditions where em- 
piricism (z.e. experiment), uncontrolled by theory and 
unassisted by proper methods of observation, could not 
but yield misleading and contradictory results. The 
physician employed a drug because others had pre- 
scribed it before and found it useful in certain diseases, 
possessing but rarely any knowledge whatever of the 
mode in which the drug would affect a healthy sub- 
ject, or of the manner in which it affected the diseased 
organism. All that was taught concerning the action of 
drugs was based upon successive individual experiences, 
accumulated by individuals who were of necessity desti- 
tute of the scientific knowledge, as yet unexisting, which 
alone could make them “empirics” in the best sense of 
the word. 
These observations are not intended to disparage the 
work of those who, sometimes possessed of marvellous 
intuition, worked in bygone days, nor to lead to the 
inference that old therapeutical experience was barren 
of useful results. However great the knowledge other- 
wise acquired of the action of a new drug, however 
stringent the reasoning which leads us to surmise that 
it is likely to exert a valuable influence in the treat- 
ment of disease, yet ultimately it is by a rational 
empiricism—7.e. by a rational and cautious series of 
observations on actual cases of disease—that its value will 
VOL. xxxtt.—No. 824 
be determined ; and, further, he alone will be worthy of 
the name of a good physician who, irrespective of theo- 
retical considerations, bases his use of remedial agents on 
the results of rational empiricism. To the older thera- 
peutic studies we owe our knowledge of the usefulness of 
such drugs as iron, cinchona, and digitalis, a statement 
which of itself is sufficient to express our obligations to 
the empiricism of bygone days. 
There were many causes which, until lately, stood in 
the way of a proper study of therapeutics. It was only 
when the natural history of disease came to be studied by 
men imbued with physiological knowledge and furnished 
with all the appliances which physiology has borrowed 
from chemistry and practical physics that it became 
possible to lay the foundations of sound therapeutics. 
From such studies it appears that a morbid process is not 
to be looked upon as a morbid entity to be destroyed, 
but usually as the resultant of complex deviations in 
physiological processes ; often, it is true, associated with 
structural alterations of particular organs which stand 
; more or less closely in the relation of proximate causes of 
the diseased phenomena. They have shown that, in 
general, in the treatment of disease, the scope of the 
physician must be to combat particular phenomena by 
the use of agents affecting specially the organ and function 
which are the principal factors in the production of the 
morbid process. 
In order, then, to place medicine on a proper basis, it 
was needed (1) that the functions of the healthy organism 
(physiology) should be studied in the full light afforded 
by anatomy, chemistry, and natural philosophy ; (2) that 
the exact deviations of the several functions from the 
normal standard which constitute particular diseases 
should be ascertained with the utmost exactitude, not only 
so as to permit of accurate recognition (d/agnosts) and 
classification, but to furnish the elements for a philo- 
sophical treatment; (3) that alterations induced in the 
structure of organs by disease (fathological anatomy) 
should be minutely observed, and that by the light of 
experimental pathology, the course of these alterations 
and, if possible, their proximate as well as their more 
remote causes should be ascertained ; (4) that the so- 
called physiological action of drugs and other remedial 
agents should be submitted to a searching investigation : 
to this study the vague and misleading term of pharma- 
cology, previously employed by German writers, has, 
unfortunately as we think, been applied ; (5) that the sub- 
sequent application of drugs and other remedial agents to 
treatment (¢/erafeutics) should be studied not only with 
the object of showing their influence on particular diseases, 
but also the way in which individual phenomena of disease 
have been modified. 
All the above branches of inquiry are now being 
pursued by men imbued with the scientific spirit and 
furnished with all the scientific knowledge of the day. 
As a result, in spite of the great difficulty of the task, the 
physician is acquiring more and more that power of 
anticipating and predicting events which springs out of 
a knowledge of principles and distinguishes science from 
mere empiricism. . 
Until a comparatively recent period the study of the 
physiological action of drugs and consequently of thera- 
peutics remained in a backward condition, which 
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