Volume 1

First lines of the practice of physic / by William Cullen, M.D. late professor of the practice of physic in the University of Edinburgh, &c. &c. ; in four volumes ; with practical and explanatory notes by John Rotheram, M.D.

  • Cullen, William, 1710-1790.
Date:
1791
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First lines of the practice of physic / by William Cullen, M.D. late professor of the practice of physic in the University of Edinburgh, &c. &c. ; in four volumes ; with practical and explanatory notes by John Rotheram, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    32/468 (page 16)
    25 PREFAC E. Nature curing difeafes, the fo much vaunted Hip. pocratic method of curing, has often had a very baneful influence on the practice of phyfic ; as either leading phyficians into, or continuing them in, a weak and feeble practice; and at the fame time fuperfeding or difcouraging all the at- tempts of art. Dr Huxham has properly obfer- red, that even in the hands of Sydenham it had this effect. Although it may fometimes avoid the mifchiefs of bold and rafh practitioners, yet it certainly produces that caution and timidity which have ever oppofed the introduction of new and efficacious remedies. The oppofition to chemical medicines in the fixteenth and fe- ■venteenth centuries, and the noted condemna- tion of Antimony by the Medical Faculty of Paris, are to be attributed chiefly to thofe preju- dices, which the phyficians of France did not entirely get the better of for near an hundred years after. We may take notice of the referve it produced in Boerhaave, with refpect to the ufe of the Peruvian Bark. We have had lately pu- blifhed, under the title of Conjlitutiones Epide- mica, notes of the particular practice of the late Baron Van Swieten; upon which the editor very properly obferves, That the ufe of the barka