(seq. 425)

418

Materia Medica

Stimulants

in healing than one produced by flies, verry few are able to sleep under the
operation of this application, the stimulus given by the garlic is less than
the flies or silaquosa, taken into the stomach it acts as a stimulus and
promotes digestion, it often passes of by the perspiration giving its odour
to that excretion, it stimulates the pulse therefore must be improper in large
doses and inflamitory diseases its stimulus is diffused over the whole system
verry readily, it is a diuretic, and Dr Sydenham has cured dropsy
when the circulation is languid and which are unattended with fever, it
would I think prove usefull in scurvy. Dr Lind recommends it both
as a method of preventing and as a cure of disease, when it occurrd, garlic
promotes the secretion of the lungs and therefore in asthma and other
diseases in which expectorants are requisite garlic will be found usefull
apply’d even to the feet. I have witnessed a case in which the patient was
unable to lie down and her lungs were charged with mucus which
was relieved by the garlic, it prevents the recurrence of the paroxysm of
intermittants beginning with a dose every morning and evening and
increasing gradually, after the cure is effected the quantity should be
gradually diminished. Bergius used the garlic in Rheumatic
deafness he directs the ball made by a silk worm to be dipt in the juice
of garlic and pushed into the ear, it acts probably by restoring the