Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

102

Materia Medica

Astringents

and Anasarcous legs which have a tendency to mortification, is the most efficacious remidy. I prefer a blister to lead as in the case of external inflamation as Erysipelas. It It is employed in burns but should not be applied to a large surface at once, it is used in combination with mercury with advantage in Scrophulous Ulcers of young people but is improper in old people. I shall proceed to speak of its internal use first in epilepsy. Dr Rush and myself have both used it in this disease with advantage, it has been recommended in Chorea a disease nearly allied to Epilepsy with success it is recommended in several as mania, purtusses &c. I have no experience of it in those diseases of it is highly spoken of in intermittans Sach. Sat. is verry effectual in lowering the pulse it was given in a case where the puse [pulse] was 109 and in six or eight minutes it was reduced to 96 strokes a phasycian in this state has used it combined with a poisonous plant, the kalmia latifolia, for two years in inflamitory fever without success I am almost afraid to tell you it was successful, but an excess of timidity in a phasycian is worse than boldness, it has proved usefull in consumption when combined with opium in the course of the last five years I have employed the Sach.

184

Materia Medica

Tonics

for the most part from the same cause as remitting or intermitting fevers, Dr Cullen thought it improper in the first stage but this opinion was not drawn so much from experience as from his theory of the cause of the disease which he supposed to be a spasm of the colon, this I have before controverted and said it depended on an inflamation or febrile action in the intestinal membrane of the lower intestines. Dr Cullen thought when dysentary puts on the tertian type bark is necessary, and it frequently assumes an intermittant type; and this circumstance induced physicians to use the bark in this disease. Dr Morton used the bark and opium combined in dysentary and he deserves credit for using opium first in this disease he gave it in the intermission of the parexia. Cleghorn observed the simularity between tertian and dysentary and hence employed the bark in the latter, some have given it merely to prevent mortification, in the year 1745, 6 and 8 in, Philadelphia, Dysentary expressed the form of tertian fevers, and I think it much more connected with fever than at present. Cholera Morbus verry often requires bleeding, but sometimes yields to diluents and opium, it is sometimes of

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

546

Materia Medica

Cathartics

than Emetic effects, if the Sulfuric Acid be distilled several times from antimony and this be ground to a fine powder, it may be used as an Emetic and Cathartic, Bernhoff approv’d of this medicine as a Purge, there is a medicine called Antimonia Cathartica, which Mr Wilson of England assures infallibly produces an evacuation.

Miscellaneous Cathartics. Or such as cannot be referred to either of the above heads.

Clysters. These are certainly some of the best cathartics we use they are of various forms, as with Oil, Water, Salt &c.

Carbon. You may be a little surprized at my introducing this substance as a purgative, it has long been used as an antiseptic in ulcers to correct the factor and prevent mortification, from its known efficacy in that affection I was led to give it internally in ulcers of the throat, attended with intolerable factor and succeeded completely. I have since used it frequently and with the same success, in a dose of one table spoonfull 3 or 4 times a day in removing costiveness by a safe and lenient Catharsis. I have used it in Dyspepsia but I cannot say within a success, also in acidities of the stomach attendant upon pregnant women but with the same effect. Yet I have used it with great advantage in the fevers attended with foetid stools which is a fact of some consequence to be recollected.