Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

146

Materia Medica

Tonics

but it is not. It is the produce of a tree in the East Indies, where it is used as a specific for the bite of a snake. The seed of the plant is the nux vomica of the shops, it is of an Orange colour and intensely bitter and disagreeable to the taste. It contains a gum and a resin. It is fatal to dogs Conrad Gisnac gave a dog ℈fs [½ scruple] he fell a sleep and died convulsed in a few hours, but it was not a true sleep accompanied with stupor and insensibility. It has been used in intermittant fevers in doses of grs v [5 grains], it is internally and externally as an anthelmintic, the spiritous tincture has been found usefull in Lumbrica cotton dipped in it and appli'd to the umbilicus has expelled them.

Fumaria Officinalis. Fumitory is not a native of this country, but will grow in our gardens, it is a bitter without odour, the inspissated Juice when efforesced leaves a substance which diflagrates like nitre on the coals. Hoffman esteemed it the sweetener of the blood, by this he ment a purifier, he held the humeral Pathology, we may observe that some of those medicines called sweeteners are verry active. Dr Hutchinson says he cured a case of leprae, accompanied with glandular swellings by the use of this medicine. Stanbury found it usefull in herpes,