FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 328:215 January 21, 1993 Number 3 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited

By Clifford M. Foust. 371 pp., illustrated. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1992. $35. ISBN 0-691-08747-4.

One of the quotations the author effectively employs to introduce each chapter, a snippet from David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, states, "Nor has Rhubarb prov'd always a Purge, or Opium a Soporific to everyone who has taken these Medicines." Foust uses this quotation to illustrate the fact that rhubarb's pharmacologic action depended in large part on the species and dosage to be administered. But this statement from Hume also captures in a broader sense what Foust's Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug is all about, because this is more than a story about the use of rhubarb in medicine. Rather, this . . . [Full Text of this Article]

HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  TERMS OF USE  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org Comments and questions? Please contact us. The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.