MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. VA) 
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 lHétel-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 
