Specific Medication does not teach that
medicines will alleviate or cure certain dis-
eases; that is to say, they will not
cure an aggregate of symptoms arranged
according to the much practiced nos-
ology. Specific Medication is the study
by which we determine the direct action
of remedies with special reference to
their direct relation to pathological condi-
tions; a study which determines a definite
condition of disease, and points out the direct
remedy for such condition; a study which
considers drug action as it relates to disease
expression.
Specific Medicationists (Eclectics) use the
term "specific** with relation to definite path-
ological conditions, and say that certain well-
determined deviations from the healthy state
will always be corrected by certain specific
medicines. That is the way Dr. Scudder puts
it in his work on "Specific Medication/* and
that is the way the thoroughbred Eclectic of
to-day defines his position in therapeutics.
"There are no specifics in medicine** is a
phrase pretty nearly correct when it is in-
tended to mean that no remedy is a specific
for any named disease, such as typhoid fever,
pneumonia, etc.; but that we have specific
medicines prescribed with the intention of
overcoming or opposing well-defined path-
ological conditions is a fact positively estab-
lished.
Introduction. 5

The physician who is always looking about
him for a new remedy for typhoid fever un-
doubtedly is sincere in his search; he either
has been prescribing in a routine manner at
a nosological arrangement and deplorably
failed, *or he has but a limited acquaintance
with the Materia Medica and falls an easy
victim to the inducements held forth by fan-
ciful fads. Specific Medication has stood the
test of experience, and has proven to be the
most rational system of therapeutics extant.
