THERAPEUTICS. TREATMENT. 



Definition. Mechanical and Medicinal Therapeutics. Adaptation to each 

 case of disease. 



The ultimate object of all medicine is to prevent disease, or 

 when it cannot be prevented, to cure. The term therapeutics 

 covers all measures applied with curative object. Therapeutics 

 are naturally divided into Mechanical and Medicinal. To me- 

 chanical therapeutics pertains the whole domain of sttrgery. Me- 

 dicinal therapeutics has to do especially with internal medicine. 

 Each of them, however, encroaches more or less on the other. 

 Modern surgery is essentially aseptic or antiseptic, and antisepsis 

 is secured by medicinal agents. In medicine when cups are ap- 

 plied we adopt an essentially mechanical treatment. Both meth- 

 ods then must remain open to physician and surgeon. Another 

 and no less important branch of treatment which is open to phy- 

 sician and surgeon alike is diet and general hygiene. The same 

 care must be given to the use of these in the treatment of disease 

 as in its prevention, and in many cases a judicious use of these 

 may almost entirely obviate the necessity for medicine. 



It would be useless to enter here into the subject of therapeu- 

 tics. Suffice it to say that the choice of a system and of individual 

 agents must be determined by the particular conditions of the 

 case, its cause, and nature, the strength, vigor, and genus of the 

 patient, the organ involved, the extent and stage of the disease, 

 the existence of a relapse, or complication, and all other circum- 

 stances that would affect the action of the remedy. Specific 

 statements must be made with the several diseases. 



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