Excerpt from Pharmacology, Clinical and Experimental: A Groundwork of Medical Treatment, Being a Text-Book for Students and Physicians Experimental pharmacology in its widest significance deals with the reaction of living organisms to various chemicals agents or, otherwise expressed, with their behavior under chemically altered conditions of life. Consequently pharmacology is to be looked upon simply as one portion of biology. Among the endless number of possible pharmacological reactions, those possess a special interest, the study of which should aid the physician in practicing his healing art. This portion of pharmacology, "scientific drug therapy" in a more restricted sense, forms the theoretical basis of drug treatment. If it is to serve its full usefulness in explaining the ways and means by which pathological conditions may be influenced by drugs, it must constantly keep in closest relations with general pathology, i.e., the study of the various disturbances which occur in disease. These two sciences working together must endeavor to explain how pathologically disturbed functions of the different organs may be influenced by drugs and be brought back to the norm. Here lies their significance for clinical teaching and medical practice. Scientific drug therapy, as presented by us, consequently is dealt with, in so far as possible, in connection with the physician's point of view as to the seat and cause of pathological conditions. For this reason we have divided the drugs into two classes, organotropic (those influencing organs or their functions), and etiotropic (those acting on the causative agents of disease), and have thought it best to describe and analyze the organotropic pharmacological actions separately for each organ or functional system. It appears to us not at all disadvantageous that this method of presentation requires that we frequently must hark back to a consideration of physiological basic principles, for in view of the fact that physiology has been displaced from among the final subjects in the examinations for license, it becomes more important than ever that experimental pharmacology should refresh and keep alive the knowledge of physiology in the consciousness of the candidate for license. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.