Page:Thruston speech upon the progress of medicine 1869.djvu/14

12 instrument, combined with several new methods of decomposition of organic compounds (chemolysis, physiolysis, biolysis, patholysis By these means he thinks that he has separated several new fluorescent bodies, and modifications of albumen, and regards it as probable that some of the characteristic products of such diseases as tetanus and hydrophobia may be discovered by these processes.

It is not only as interpretations of the 'dark sayings' of nature, not merely as contributions to science, that the discoveries now detailed are interesting and important. All of them have a bearing upon the art of healing, and may serve at least to direct the treatment of disease; but chemistry gives still more direct aid to the therapeutist; it has added not a few contributions to the materia medica— new weapons to the physician's armoury. Every new substance discovered is, in fact, a possible remedy, and may ultimately be used to cure or alleviate disease. A few years ago no one would have supposed, that so recondite a substance as the Terchloride of Formyle would come to be used in medicine, and yet who is there now who would not recognise it under the name of chloroform, as one of the greatest boons ever given to mankind?

Within the last year or two this class of anæsthetic or pain-quelling medicines has been largely increased; not only has our old friend the nitrous oxyde or laughing-gas been pressed into the service, but also such compounds as the following: amylene, nitrite of amyl, the chloride, iodide, bromide, and acetate of methyl, methylic ether, the nitrite and nitrate of methyl, the tetra-chloride of carbon, and bichloride of methylene. All these substances have been tested by Dr B. W. Richardson, and some of them, given by inhalation or applied as spray, have been shown to possess valuable and distinctive properties as anæsthetics.