69 d 
ON THERAPEUTICS. 
cavil at the use of such terms would be productive of no 
benefit. At the same time, it is only fair to say that we 
employ them with the understanding that they express only 
the immediate and specific, or local action of the drug under 
ordinary circumstances, without any allusion to the after effects, 
or to effects modified by disturbing agencies. The science of 
therapeutics does not insist upon a slavish adherence to the 
letter of its technicalities, in face of the fact that no one 
word can usually express the operation of the simplest agent. 
Medicines, of the first group, we consider to possess a 
stimulant action, as they excite the function of an organ 
or part; still many of them, as will appear hereafter, will 
induce debility of the system when it is subjected to 
their continous action. There is nothing really inconsistent 
in this; on the contrary, a knowledge of the laws re¬ 
gulating the organism will prepare us for the reception of 
such facts. It is perfectly natural, we know, for excessive 
action to be followed by diminution of the general tone; what 
therefore may be stimulating to a part may depress the whole 
body, and excited secretion of one organ may be synonymous 
with diminished secretion of another, as diminished action 
in one part may cause excessive action in another. With 
such evidence before us, we cannot consent to confine our¬ 
selves to a single expression, for the purpose of indicating the 
action of each agent, except as a matter of convenience. 
Nor can we still further consent to, what would seem a natural 
consequence of our line of argument, viz., of universal employ¬ 
ment of agents capable of producing one action upon the body 
for a disease whose apparently principal element is the 
opposite. We admit it to be a law of the allopathic system 
to treat disease by medicines which produce the opposite 
conditions ; but in making this admission, we must be under¬ 
stood to object altogether to the treatment of a symptom , for 
the disease. Constipation may be effectively opposed by 
cathartic action, and this would be allopathic practice; but no 
reasoning pathologist would at once feel justified in the em¬ 
ployment of a cathartic, merely because he discovered such a 
symptom of disease; his first object would be to ascertain 
the cause. He would at once comprehend the possibility of 
a number of circumstances being concerned ; to wit, defective 
secretion of bile, debility, congestion of some distant organ, 
or inflammation of the intestines, or some other part; and 
after deciding upon the cause, he might discover constipation 
to be only such a minor element that a purgative would in¬ 
crease the real disease. 
As an axiom, we repeat the statement, that medicines 
