The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 13
Appendix. — Note A
Appendix.
Note A.
So long as the great fact is kept in view, viz.—that the action attendant on the introduction of poisons into the system, is the vital action of the living system, making its best efforts to eliminate the enemy in the shortest and most effective manner, it matters not by what language this idea is conveyed. The great fact Dr Trail labours to enforce is this, that vomiting, purging, perspiration, &c., when induced by the presence of some irritating or poisonous matter in the system, are the acts of the vital economy itself, and not of the drug, which induces them; that they are acts of warfare against an enemy, carried on by the system in self-defence, and accordingly debilitating and exhausting to it. To argue whether the inducing cause acts, and the vital power re-acts on such cause, or that the vital power alone acts, is a metaphysical quarrel about words in no way affecting the essence of the question, provided right views of the process are entertained. If, for instance, whilst sitting in our study, some soot should fall down the chimney on the floor—or if an apothecary's boy (not appreciating at their worth our humble efforts to improve his master's trade) should maliciously throw a stone through the window, and that we immediately proceeded to remove said soot and stone—surely such acts of ours would be vital action on our part on the soot and stone, and not the action of the soot or stone on us, as people when speaking of drugs, suppose. In these instances Dr Trail would truly say that the soot and stone were inactive and inert, and therefore without action of their own; but his opponents considering that unless they acted on us, they could not provoke action on our part, would therefore argue that they accordingly did act on us, and that we re-acted against them; a metaphysical distinction, immaterial as we conceive to the really important point before us. We should not have wasted words on this subject were it not that some writers have criticised Dr Trail's statement as absurd, and rejected it in toto, simply on account of the language employed in this sentence—viz., his denying that drugs have any action of their own—a fact strictly true in the sense implied by him—viz., vital action; that action by which alone all symptoms are occasioned and become evident to our senses.
In the foregoing instances the soot and stone exactly represent, as regards our innate feelings of neatness and cleanliness, the relations of drug poisons to the animal economy. As the soot and stone are inconsistent with the normal constitution of our study, so drug poisons are bodies foreign to and incompatible with the health or normal condition of mankind, and are accordingly ejected as such when met with by the vital powers of the system; which vital power is the vis medicatrix natural, provided by nature for the preservation of her creatures.
Glasgow: Printed By H. Nisbet.