Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

420

Materia Medica

Stimulants

sensibility and secretion of the organ. I have been informed that the same application cured earache, garlic is said to make the hair grow longer and blacker &c. As a medicine garlic is used in different forms sometimes a clove is dipt in the oil and swallow’d, in this form it does not heat the stomach as much as in others, it is sometimes made into an oxymel.

Assafoetida. This comes in with propriety after the alliacea, it is a foetid concrete juice obtained from a large umbellifferous plant like the fennel, the juice is obtained from the root of the plant and hardened in the sun, the plant is a native of Persia. Assafoetida has a bitter acrid and pungent taste with a strong smell the latter of which is the best criterion of its power and purity, its active principle resides in the volatile part therefore it suffers from keeping, it is not a gum but a gum resin and is well entitled to attention, it is the most powerfull of the foetid gums, that are used in practice. Bergius has exhibittid it in intermittants but has found it of little service in recent cases. In obstinate ones however it performed some cures when combined with the bark. It has been employ’d in nervous* [footnote back 1 page] diseases and is usefull in spasmodic affections of the stomach also of dyspepsia, it has been employ’d advantageously in flatulent colic &c. Dr Cullen thinks it acts more readily on the nerves than any other medicine and was

604

Materia Medica

Emmenagogues

action, this Idea is novel to you but I am not the first who advanc’d it. My opinion is that no two medicines exert the same effect upon the system and instead of the usual arrangement of Materia Medica think that one founded on Physiology would be far the best. Thus we have Columbo, quassia & Gentian acting peculiarly on the bowels, Bark on the bloodvessels, Amber on the muscles. Foetid gums on the nerves, Digitalis on the secrition, Sulphur on the surface, and Mercury on the glandular system, but it has been urged as an objection to specific that it must act on some other part at the same time it produces this effect, to this we may advance that there are some medicines which act banefully on one part and benificially on another, thus Carbonic Acid introduced into the lungs produce death, while in the stomach it moderately stimulates and disposes to health, the Viper’s venom in the stomach produces no effect while on the skin it gives rise to all the Phenomena of violent inflamation; matter of Gonorrhea in the stomach is innocent, while in the eye it produces inflamation.

Argot.* [footnote back 1 page] Smut, Citale Cornutum & is the rust of Common rye, & is now almost universally used by the Physicians of New York to promote a speedy delivery in which