(seq. 193)

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