r the second time into his mother's womb and give her back
the infirmities which twenty generations have stirred into her blood, and
infused into his own through hers, we may be prepared to enlarge the
National Pharmacopoeia with a list of specifies for everything but old
age,--and possibly for that also.

NOTE C.--

The term specific is used here in its ordinary sense, without raising the
question of the propriety of its application to these or other remedies.

The credit of introducing Cinchona rests between the Jesuits, the
Countess of Chinchon, the Cardinal de Lugo, and Sir Robert Talbor, who
employed it as a secret remedy. (Pereira.) Mercury as an internal
specific remedy was brought into use by that impudent and presumptuous
quack, as he was considered, Paracelsus. (Encyc. Brit. art.
"Paracelsus.") Arsenic was introduced into England as a remedy for
intermittents by Dr. Fowler, in consequence of the success of a patent
medicine, the Tasteless Ague Drops, which were supposed, "probably with
reason," to be a preparation of that mineral. (Rees's Cyc. art.
"Arsenic.") Colchicum came into notice in a similar way, from the
success of the Eau Medicinale of M. Husson, a French military officer.
(Pereira.) Iodine was discovered by a saltpetre manufacturer, but applied
by a physician in place of the old remedy, burnt sponge, which seems to
owe its efficacy to it. (Dunglison, New Remedies.) As for Sulphur, "the
common people have long used it as an ointment" for scabies. (Rees's
Cyc. art. "Scabies.") The modern cantiscorbutic regimen is credited to
Captain Cook. "To his sagacity we are indebted for the first impulse to
those regulations by which scorbutus is so successfully prevented in our
navy." (Lond. Cyc. Prac. Med. art. "Scorbutus.") Iron and various
salts which enter into the normal composition of the human body do not
belong to the materia medica by our definition, but to the materia
alimentaria.

For the first introduction of iron as a remedy, see Pereira, who gives a
very curious old story.

The statement in the text concerning a portion of the materia medica
stands exactly as delivered, and is meant exactly as it stands. No
denunciation of drugs, as sparingly employed by a wise physician, was or
is intended. If, however, as Dr. Gould stated in his "valuable and
practical discourse" to which the Massachusetts Medical Society "listened
with profit as well as interest," "Drugs, in themselves considered, may