117 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals, 
MODERN THERAPEUTICS. 
In the course of his able address at the meeting of 
St. Andrew’s Association already mentioned in the f Medical 
Press/ the President, Dr. Day, of Stafford, adverted to the 
progress of medicine, which he regarded with hope and con¬ 
fidence. The recent advances in medicine and surgery were 
spoken of as illustrations of what had been done, and might 
be expected. On therapeutics Dr. Day said : 
Three remarkable progressions seem to my mind to 
distinguish modern therapeutics. The first consists in the 
study of the action of medicines by the investigation of the 
physical characteristics of each medicinal substance; the 
second consists in distinguishing the special action of 
different remedial substances on particular parts of the living 
organism; and the third consists in bringing the art of 
prescribing to the utmost simplicity, so that when we pre¬ 
scribe we know precisely on what we wish to rely for the 
good we would secure. All these methods of improvement 
hang closely together, and yet they are often distinctly 
pursued, not only by different men, but by men of diverse 
modes of thought. They are all good and productive of the 
best influences. It would be incredible to our forefathers to 
hear that we have men now, who—if you give them a 
chemical substance and tell them, this substance is composed 
of the following elements, it is of this specific weight, it is of 
this reaction, it is of this solubility, and it has certain other 
physical qualities therewith named—will tell you, in return, 
with an absolutely near approximation to the truth, what will 
be the physiological action of the said substance. Yet this 
is an accomplished fact, and, in the matter of those agents 
we employ to relieve pain, it has been one of the most fruitful 
means of the development of the triumph of human art over 
human suffering; a development belonging truly to the whole 
Christian era, but most to this latter-day section of that mar¬ 
vellous testimony of c the ways of God to man.’ 
“ Equally strange would it be to our forefathers to hear 
that we can now predict where a medicine shall, to speak 
plainly, go into the organism, and on what it shall act. Yet, 
in the case of some of our most potent agents, such as 
arsenic, nitrite of amyl, woorali, we know, when we give 
them, what will be the seat in which their influence or force 
