Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

192

Materia Medica

Tonics

the bark will be usefull, by exciting a proper degree of inflamation and suppuration around the gangrenous parts, the bite of the viper causes mortification which has been cured by immersing the part in an infusion of the bark and sprinkling the part with the powder.

Scrophula. I believe with Dr Cullen that laxity and flaxcidity are not sufficient to account for this disease. A theory is advanced by Dr Beddoes who thinks it arises from a preternatural quantity of the base of vital air, but this I consider as a supposition without foundation. Dr Collins says he never saw any advantage from bark in this disease, yet Dr P_ assures us he employ’d it. I have used it in a most inveterate case and can safely ascribe the cure of my patient to the large doses which were given, but it will frequently fail from the invetoracy [inveteracy] of the disease.

Rickets. I cannot think the bark ever cured this disease, without the aid of other remidies. I am of the opinion however visionary as it may appear to you, that rickets depends on a peculiar state of the atmosphere, what this is I know not, but it has been many times epidemic. In the reign of