Materia Medica for Nurses

A compact guide to drugs, dosage and therapeutics for student and practising nurses — the third of Sears' three-book nurse-training set alongside Medicine for Nurses and Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses.

Written in the materia medica tradition that British nurse-training inherited from late-Victorian medicine, the volume groups drugs by therapeutic class — analgesics, hypnotics, antimicrobials, cardiovascular agents, diuretics, hormone preparations, antiseptics — and explains the indications, route of administration, dose ranges and observable adverse effects nurses are expected to recognise on the drug round. The treatment of preparation, dilution and storage reflects ward practice of the period, when nurses dispensed many medications from stock bottles rather than from unit-dose dispensing.

The Edward Arnold edition tracked the changing British Pharmacopoeia and BNF drug list across reprints, but the structure remained that of a working pocket reference rather than a pharmacology textbook. It was used at preliminary and Part I level alongside the standard medicine and anatomy volumes through the long final phase of hospital-based nurse training.