306 Prof. E. D. Smith on Calculous Affections, 



occasioned slight returns of the complaint, but two or three 

 doses of magnesia have never failed to remove it. And it 

 appears to be not an unfair inference that the injurious ac- 

 rimony was generated in the stomach and therefore quickly 

 and efficaciously counteracted by the internal use of the al- 

 kaline earth. 



To attempt a practical improvement of the preceding de- 

 tails, I would offer the following suggestions. 



1 . Has not the doctrine of the humoral pathology been 

 too hastily and entirely discarded, and would not the admis- 

 sion of it, to a certain extent, tend to elucidate some of the 

 phenomena, connected with our subject .'' 



The extravagance of theorists, in almost any department 

 of science, has sometimes carried them so far beyond 

 the bounds of rational induction, as to involve in one com- 

 mon condemnation both truth and error ; and this perhaps, 

 has been the fate of the Humoral Pathology. Very lately 

 this subject has been ably treated by Professor Cooper, of 

 Philadelphia, in his ingenious discourse upon the connex- 

 ion of chemistry with medicine, and in which it has been 

 plainly shewn that the applications of chemical science 

 throw much light upon the reprobated doctrine. As an ad- 

 ditional proof to what has been there and elsewhere stated 

 of active substances being found in different viscera of the 

 human body, after being taken into the stomach, it may 

 be observed that Mr. L'Heiminier, an able French chem- 

 ist and naturalist, now resident in Charleston, found the 

 phosphate of mercury in the urine of a child, that had been 

 taking calomel internally for some time previously. 



2. Is it not of great importance that those, who undertake 

 to practice the healing art, should be well acquainted with the 

 principles of chemical science, inasmuch as it is only by such 

 an acquaintance that they can, in many cases, be directed 

 to a correct understanding of the subject before them.f* Th^^ 

 observations which have been made respecting the use of 

 remedies in calculous complaints, obviously indicate the ne- 

 cessity of a well informed and discriminating judgment, and 

 they prove farther that a particular knowledge is requisite 

 for the successful treatment of the diseases of such com- 

 pound fluids, as are found in the living system — the very 

 nature of such fluids demanding an accurate and compe- 

 tent attention to the various changes, which may be produ- 



