Note 242 — ON THE THEORY AND ART OF PRESCRIBING.

Numerous isolated statements of the same tendency may be adduced, but these cannot invalidate the claim of Dr. Fordyce, as the first person who generalized the fact, and applied it with success to practice. Diemerbroeck, in his notes upon the Theriaca Andromachi, observes that the composition is a more efficacious medicine from the concurrent powers of so many ingredients, alike in virtue: and Quincy, in his Lectures on Pharmacy, which were published by Dr. Shaw in 1723, says “those fetid gums which are generally prescribed in Hysteria, as Ammoniacum, Galbanum, &c. may be conjoined with advantage, because from a concurrence of properties, they all conspire to the same end.”