Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

56

Materia Medica

Astringents

an attraction between the particles of the skin, and the astringent principle which in some manner produce condensation, but reasoning on the operation of medicine from what takes place on dead matter is extremely fallacious, corrugation and increased absorption would seem to have taken place in the following instance. A physician injected into the stomach of a dog two ℥ [ounces] of a strong astringent decoction, two days after he opened the dog and found the stomach contracted. Its cavity nearly obliterated, and its pylorus closed. I have seen the most obstinate costiveness induced by eating a few tamarinds. The power of astringents are communicated verry rapidly to distant parts, we need not be surprised at this, since stimulants and tonics act with equal rapidity. I onc attended a Lady labouring under quotidian fever which had resisted the common remidies. I gave her arsenic pills, composed each of one sixteenth of a grain, one to be taken night and morning, they had the effect of checking the paroxisms in twenty four hours. Astringents also act on vegitables. I cut three slips of a branch in a horisontal direction, to the one was applied sulfate of allum in solution, to an other