STIMULANTS

From Agepedia

STIMULANTS are all those medicinal substances, which, applied either externally or internally, have the property of accelerating the pulse and quickening the vital actions. They are among the most valuable and important of medicines, and perhaps are more often the direct means of saving life than any others. But as they are powerful, their injurious effects, when misapplied, have been even more prejudicial to mankind than their best use has been beneficial. In fact, it may be said, thut the abuse of this one class of medicines, under the names of cardiacs, cordials, alexipharmics, &c, was the cause of more numerous deaths during the dark ages of medicine, than the sword and the pestilence united. The dreadful mortality of the smallpox and of fevers during the middle ages, and even during the earlier parts of the last century, were mainly owing to the administration, by nurses and physicians, of strong cordials, and heating stimulants of all sorts, the tendency of all of which was to increase the violence of the disease, although they were intended merely to expel the noxious and poisonous humors from the system. But, happily for mankind, a more cautious use of these articles has been introduced, and they are now the constant means of preserving, when properly applied, the life which they were formerly so quick to destroy. Stimulants are either simple and direct in their operation, as the external application of heat in all forms, dry and moist, by friction, &c, the application to the stomach of hot liquors, spices, camphor, hartshorn, warm and aromatic gums and oils, as mint, cardamom, cajeput, ginger, assafcetida, red pepper, spirits of turpentine, &c.; or they act first as stimulants, but produce afterwards effects of a different character, as is the case with all which are termed diffusible stimulants, as wine, brandy, and spirits of all sorts, opium, &c, all of which are highly stimulant at first, and in small quantity, but afterwards, and when taken in larger doses, produce exhaustion, debility, sleep and death. The first class are, upon the whole, the most safe, and should be always used, in preference to the last, when they can be had, in all cases of suspended animation, from cold, drowning, suffocation, &c.; while the others are more valuable for their secondary and remote effects, by means of which they ease pain, relieve spasm, &c.; and for these purposes they should be used freely, as they can do no hurt, while the violence of the disease subsists. But they should never be resorted to, unless pain is urgent, or debility become so great as to endanger life.