Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

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.