Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

160

Materia Medica

Tonics

and astringent, it is used by the Indians in Intermittant fevers. Dr Rush has also used it and found it to answer verry well, it is used in Herpatic affections common in Virginia which attacks the body and spreads to the limbs according to Mr Jefferson, this disease is much less common now than formerly. It sometime puked and sometime purged.

Croton Eleutheria or Caskarilla. This grows in the West Indies, it is bitter and aromatic and heats the mouth, it has been smoked and said to induce Intoxication, it has been used and much celebrated as a substitute for the bark, though certainly it is a verry feble bitter, it is one of our cordial tonics and possesses no astringency, it was used in the Plague of Norway, Professor Allinus says it has proved efficacious after retechia appeared. In the dysentary succeeding fever it was also of use. I have never used it but think some advantage may be derived from it as a tonic. Bergius says it is usefull in Hymoptesis, this I doubt. Dr Cullen knew nothing of it from experience. I am inclined to believe that the caskarilla is extremely similar to our sumake and & should not be used only in the decline of fevers, it is said to be of efficacy in intermittants, where the bark has failed this is mentioned