Therapeutics

“ . . . older modes of therapeutics did not die, but . . . were employed less routinely, and drugs were used in generally smaller doses. Dosage levels decreased markedly in the second third of the century, and bleeding, especially, sank into disuse. . . . Mercury, on the other hand, still figured in the practice of most physicians; even infants and small children endured the discomfort of mercury poisoning until well after the Civil War. Purges were still administered routinely in spring and fall to facilitate the body’s adjustment to the changing seasons. The blisters and excoriated running sores so familiar to physicians and patient at the beginning of the century were gradually replaced by mustard plasters or turpentine applications, but the ancient concept of counterirritation still rationalized their use. . . . It seemed to many physicians almost criminal to ignore their responsibility to regulate the secretions, even in ailments whose natural course was toward either death or recovery. Hence the continued vogue of cathartics and diuretics (though emetics, like bleeding, faded in popularity as the century progressed) (Rosenberg, 18)