Читать книгу The Body at Work: A Treatise on the Principles of Physiology онлайн

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It is curious to note that an internal secretion is essentially a drug. Faith in drugs has suffered eclipse in latter days, and with good reason. The medicines of fifty years ago so little resembled Nature’s pharmacy that there is cause enough for astonishment at the credulity of a generation that believed them to be charms by the exhibition of which they could direct the working of the body. To be quite just, our forebears did not exactly adopt this view. They still believed in remedies. Docks grew in the same hedgerow as nettles. Therefore the juice of the dock was an antidote to nettle-stings. Washerwomen found wasps vexatious, but, fortunately, “blue-ball” cured the pain of their stings, and prevented the swelling which otherwise would have occurred.

A new pharmacology is rapidly developing. The physiological action of every substance likely to be of service as a drug is put to the proof. Having ascertained what is wrong, and knowing exactly what effects his drugs are capable of producing, the physician devises the adjustment which he may attempt without risk of making matters worse. He then seeks, if possible, a chemical messenger near akin to the messenger whom Nature herself would send; at least, this is the ambition of the modern pharmacologist.