I) 
EDITORIAL.  187 
ity.  Scores  of  poor  investigators,  whose  only  recompense  for  long  days  of 
unremitting  labor  in  the  laboratory,  or  study  in  the  closet,  has  been  the 
gratification  arising  from  a  public  acknowledgement  of  their  services  to 
science  by  the  authors  of  the  profession,  are  passed  over  in  silence,  whilst 
the  results  of  those  labors  are  appropriated  with  an  unscrupulousness  as 
unsparing  as  it  is  thankless.  These  remarks  are  intended  in  no  invidious 
sense  ;  they  apply  to  a  number  of  works  of  the  Eclectic  school,  the  scope  of 
which  are  sufficiently  great  to  indicate  at  least  the  authorities  on  which 
much  of  their  text  is  founded  ;  and  without  which  reference,  the  value  of 
the  book  is  injured  for  those  students  who  desire  to  seek  knowledge  in 
its  original  sources.  In  a  work  on  Materia  Medicaand  Therapeutics,  which 
pretends  to  enter  fully  on  the  details  of  the  subject,  the  author  must  give 
the  authorities  as  he  proceeds,  else  the  veracity  of  the  work  will  rest  merely 
on  his  unsupported  statements,  and  leave  no  means  of  correcting  by  compari- 
son with  the  original  papers.  In  glancing  over  the  treatise  before  us  we 
find  it  obnoxious  to  criticism  for  the  same  short-coming,  though  perhaps 
in  a  less  marked  degree.  We  look  in  vain  for  evidences  of  that  laborious 
research  which  has  ransacked  the  primary  depositories  of  scientific  know- 
ledge— the  Journals — and  for  that  accuracy  of  observation  and  comprehen- 
sion of  the  subject  which  characterize  the  standard  treatises.  Avoiding  the 
rock  upon  which  a  contemporary  split,  the  author  has  been  careful  to  keep 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  law  of  copyright  in  making  copious  quotations  from 
Royle  and  Pereira,  which  are  interspersed  through  his  pages,  like  patches 
of  silk  on  garments  of  cotton. 
The  author  describes  Eclecticism  to  be  that  school  of  medicine  which  is 
based  on  «  Physio-dynamic  action,"  or  the  power  of  nature  ;  and  disclaim? 
the  use  of  poisonous  agents  as  means  of  cure.  Physio-dynamic  remedies 
are  described  to  be  such  as  are  dependent  for  their  action  upon  the  natural 
vital  force  of  the  system,  and  not  upon  chemical  and  mechanical  laws.  The 
arrangement  adopted  is  therapeutical :  1st,  Evacuents,  as  emetics,  cathar- 
tics, diaphoretics,  diuretics,  expectorants,  emmenagogues,  anthelmintics, 
sialagogues  and  errhines.  2d,  Immutantients,  or  non-evacuents,  as  stimu- 
lants, tonics,  astringents,  nervines,  alteratives,  rubefacients,  derivatives,  or 
revellents,  &c.  3d,  Chemical  remedies  :  acids,  alkalies  and  earths,  anti- 
dotes and  mechanical  remedies,  emollients,  &c. 
The  author  is  evidently  a  disciple  of  Thompson  when  he  treats  of  lobelia 
and  capsicum,  and  in  his  repudiation  of  the  very  word  narcotic  ;  yet,  unlike 
that  noted  individual,  he  is  a  strong  advocate  for  cathartics  and  anodynes, 
and,  while  he  repudiates  opium,  and  does  not  give  it  even  the  small  corner 
conceded  to  mercury  and  antimony,  he  devotes  four  pages  to  morphia,  dis- 
guised under  the  erroneous  name  of  papaverine,  a  term  already  applied  by 
Merck  to  one  of  the  opium  alkaloids  wholly  distinct  from  morphia.  There 
is  so  much  cool  assumption  in  the  wording  of  this  article  that  we  must  give 
it  a  little  space  : 
