(seq. 65)

56

Materia Medica

Astringents

an attraction between the particles of the skin, and the astringent
principle which in some manner produce condensation, but
reasoning on the operation of medicine from what takes place
on dead matter is extremely fallacious, corrugation and increased
absorption would seem to have taken place in the following
instance. A physician injected into the stomach of a dog two ℥ [ounces] of
a strong astringent decoction, two days after he opened
the dog and found the stomach contracted. Its cavity
nearly obliterated, and its pylorus closed. I have seen the
most obstinate costiveness induced by eating a few tamarinds.
The power of astringents are communicated verry rapidly
to distant parts, we need not be surprised at this, since
stimulants and tonics act with equal rapidity. I onc attended
a Lady labouring under quotidian fever which had resisted
the common remidies. I gave her arsenic pills, composed
each of one sixteenth of a grain, one to be taken night and
morning, they had the effect of checking the paroxisms in
twenty four hours. Astringents also act on vegitables. I cut
three slips of a branch in a horisontal direction, to the one
was applied sulfate of allum in solution, to an other