Heroic. This term is used to refer to the type of treatment or remedies whose effects produce considerable and quick changes in the animal economy; whether by violent stimulation of efforts, movements, extraordinary irritations in parts which are susceptible to it, sudden shakings, strong shakings in the whole body; or by producing a spasm, a constriction or a relaxation, an excessive muscle loss in the parts; or by providing liquifications, evacuations of humors that seem excessive, but are necessary; in all the cases where nature demands to be rescued in a pressing and decisive manner by means appropriate to change the vitiated disposition of the affected parts, and to transform them to an opposite state from one extremity to another.

The means appropriate to bring about these different effects, are plentiful and repeated bleedings in a short span of time, purgative medications, emetics, perspirants and all the strongest evacuants; stimulants, cordials, aperitifs, the most active liquifiers; acrids, epispastics, and astringents of all kinds, used both internally and externally; scarring, scathing, narcotics that are most efficient and at high dosage; numbings, ligatures of nerves, of large vessels, of membranes, etc.; and violent, active, and passive exercises, etc.

Such are the different principle remedies, which can serve a heroic treatment, which always assumes ills proportionate to the importance of the effects that it tends to produce, and which for that reason requires much caution, to decide whether it is necessity to use the means which can carry them out. That must be determined by the indications drawn from the character of the lesion in question, compared with what nature and strength can bear, without prejudices formed based on the temperament of the doctor, who is more or less disposed to action in practice, to the extent that he is more or less lively, violent, hot-tempered, or else benign, tranquil and gentle; or according to the impatience or fear, and greater or lesser sensitivity of the patient. See Physician.

However it is certain that in all instances where nature needs to be powerfully aided to surmount the obstacles which prevent it from acting, or to stop excessive movements, which are caused and produced mechanically or physically by causes which are foreign to it, and when it is not in nature’s power to repress, to correct, to carry off, or to diminish the volume of humors which overwhelms it, etc., the art of healing would be in default, and would miss opportunities where it can be most evidently useful, by supplementing the impotence of nature, which can so often do without help, for the healing of a large number of diseases, see Expectation, if it could not or did not know how to make use of heroic remedies, with which medicine seems to operate and often actually operates wonders; by destroying the different causes of a large number of diseases, both acute and chronic, especially the latter, which would become fatal or would remain incurable, if one could not combat them in a vigorous way and by the most proper ways to produce great effects, or to put an end to major disorders. See Medicine.

It is not out of place to remark here that it is principally to heroic medications that Paracelsus owed his great reputation in Germany, where he was the first to use antimony, mercury, opium, at a time when only the gentle practice of the Arabs was known in that country. See Medication, Remedy.