Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

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Materia Medica

Tonics

Cullen used it with advantage in cutaneous affections of the Leprous kind.

Tanacetum. Or Tansey, this is a powerfull bitter, the less so than chamomile. Dr Black used it in gout, with him it proved diuretic and laxative, Gardiner considered it rather an innocent than a usefull medicine, Hoffman thought it an excellent anthelmintic, and from my own experience I am inclined to think it may be of service.

Anthemis Nobilis. Or chamomile have long been celebrated as a stomachic, it was employed in the 17th Century, before the discovery of the bark in intermittant fevers. Morton thought it as usefull as the bark, if given in substance, in the other forms they prove cathartic. Hoffman cured intermittant fevers by it. Berjius and Pitcairn both used it and the latter thought it an antidote to a flatulent colic; this I cannot believe, it may be usefull by its cathartic quality. Dr Cullen and Pringle supposed it relieved the tenesmus by means of an antispasmodic power. Cullen found it rather injurious in Diarrhea, he used it in intermittants. It has somewhat of an emetic quality, a simple aqueous infusion is frequently as an assistant in emetics, the bitter to most people is less disagreeable than any other.

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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