Please handle this volume with care. The University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs hbl, stx RV 3.T52 Tfionjsonian materia medica: 3 1153 D0Sb7QS2 fl H ;.v'grert puix^ C yht^^ 7^x^<^-t.^cyf e^/x^?^'T^^^'X His S//yh//i ,///,/ ^-rtti ■//,/■ ^ '/•////////////// //■//// //////sr//; /U'/n Fr/r ." "77^>V THE THOMSOMAN MATERIA MEDICA, BOTANIC FAMILY PHYSICIAN COMPRISING A PHII.OSOPHICAL. THEORY, THE NATURAL ORGANIUTION AND ASSUMED PRINCIPLES OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE: TO WHICH ARE ADDED THE DESCRIPTION OF PLANTS AND THEIR VARIOUS COMPOUNDS: TOGETHER WITH PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING MUCH OTHER USEFUL MATTER. WITH PLATES. BY SAMUEL THOMSON. " See thyself reflected here." "He that wishes to be counted among the benefactors of posterity, must odd by his own toil, to the acquisition of his ancestors." — Rambler. TWELFTH EDITION, ENLARGEDj CORRECTED, REVISED AND IMPROVED. ALBANY: PRINTED BY J. MUNSELL, STATE STREET. 1841. 3 . T52 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1841, by SAMUEL THOMSON AND JOHN THOMSON, in the Clerk's office for the Northern District of New-York. TO BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE, M. D. LL. D. FELLOW OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY, LONDON ; AND OF BATH AND MANCHESTER, ENGLAND: OF THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, BELLES-LETTRES, INSCRIPTIONS AND COMMERCE, MARSEILLES J AND OF THE NATIONAL MEDICAL SCHOOL OF FRANCE : FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA J AND PROFESSOR OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PHYSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, IN THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA J AS A MARK OF RESPECT FOR HIS PRIVATE CHARACTER, PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE, INDEPENDENCE IN GIVING COUNTENANCE TO THE TRUTH, AND JIEDICAL FACTS, WITHOUT REGARD TO EARLY EDUCATION, OR PROFESSIONAL PREJUDICES ; INVESTIGATING THE PRINCIPLES, ADVOCATING THE PRACTICE, WITHOUT REFERENCE TO POPULAR OPINION ; AND FOR OTHER KIND OFFICES AND SUGGESTIONS, THIS WORK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BT THE AUTHOR. TO THE READER. In compiling, condensing, collecting, re-writing and composing matter for the present work, it has been the principal object of the subscriber to present many additional facts, to strengthen and make more steadfast if possible, that which was immovable before — the system and medical practice discovered by his father, which has acquired standing and repu- tation for the time, unparalleled in the annals of the world. All pre- vious systems of medicine, like the dew of the morning, when investi. gated under the sun-light of science, have vanished into thin air, to give place to another theory, yet to be still overthrown in its turn, by some future ambitious aspirant after a medical reputation. The more such theories are investigated and compared with truth and reason, the more rapidly they go to decay. Where are the theories of Paracelsus, Cullen, Brown, Rush, and many others of like reputation in their day? Alas for the instability of the inventions of men, that are not founded in truth and experience! They are among the things that were! The closer the in- vestigation, the less confidence in the principles laid down. Not so with the system of practice of Samuel Thomson, The closer the criticism the more confidence in its utility. Or like silver, the more it is burnished the brighter it shines. For those who examine it become its permanent friends. In this case there is no drawback, and all, in time, must become Thomsonians. Hence the certainly of its durability to the latest genera- tions. Doct. Samuel Thomson has the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has established for himself, by his system of practice, a monument in the hearts of the people more durable than marble, and more valuable than precious metals. Whatever inaccuracies or errors may appear in this work, in relation to the Thomsonian theory or practice, I assume; knowing as I do my inability to do the work that justice, which the nature and importance of the subject requires. But for the want of a more experienced person, I with diffidence, attempt to do justice to a work that requires a gigantic mind to perform. My method of arriving at facts may appear crude and undigested to many minds, but my object has been to get at the facts in that way, and manner, in which I could make myself best understood — whether by comparison, anecdote or fable. And therefore we are in hopes that the matter, nnd not the manner, ■will be the guiding star to the reader. We desire, therefore, that our motives may be duly appreciated, and our errors excused, as emanating from an honest intention to do justice to the name of a venerable parent, who has cast into the general fund his mite for the health, peace, comfort and happiness of future generations. Mbany^ January, 18U. JOHN THOMSON. Key to the Arfangement of this Work. Page 1. The apology to the reader, 4 2. Prefatory remarks,, or a comparison between the Thomsonian and regular physician — giving a brief history of the rise, progress, op- position, and persecution, which those who embrace the Thomso- nian, or new system of practice, have to contend, 5 3. The Thomsonian theory, or the philosophy of respiration, and the principles necessary to be observed, to continue it illustrated by an egg, with the history of the growth of the different functions of the animal with which it is inhabited, 13, 14 4. On vitality or animation, or the principles of life, 23 o. Scientific Botany, by which vitality is sustained, 30 THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 1. Matter, or, earth, water, air, and fire, and their constituents, of which the human system is composed, 170 2. Matter organized, or the outlines of anatomy and physiology, with plates, exhibiting in miniature, diflerent views of the human skele- ton, and the internal vicera or internal organs of the body, both col- lectively and sepai-ately, by illustrations, together with the muscles, fascia, arteries, veins, nerves, &c., 211 3. Matter organized and animated; or, man possessing his faculties under the influence of the five senses, whicli makes him subject to disease and death, and a return to matter again, to assist in the organization and animation of other bodies, illustrating the organs of sense, by cuts, representing the eye, ear, skin, Sec, 457 4. The history of the efforts of Doctor Samuel Thomson to sustain his system of vitality in matter, embracing much of his practical life and experience, 492 .'). A description of the vegetable substances used by Doctor Thomson to sustain his system of vitality in matter, 581 <3. Introduction to the theory of disease, and the preparation and use of medicine, together with rules to be observed by practitioners in the treatment of disease, 691 11 KEY. Page ~. Medical compounds, or rules for tlie compounding and preparation of a great variety of medicines, for the use of the sick, when the elements become deranged in their equilibrium, and appear disposed to resolve back to their original matter, 699 8. Philosophical observations upon the various climates, complexions, habits, forms of disease, derangements, and accidents, to which mat- ter becomes subject, by being organized and animated. Also, useful observations to man, or animated matter, how to resist or repel the encroachments upon his territory, by this enemy to his organized and animated state, which requires constant vigilance and warfare upon his part, to repel the intrusions of the invader, or this enemy to life, by food, drink, Avarmth, clothing, fuel, and such other means as are calculated to make the body and mind secure and happy, by being far removed from the giasp of this fell destroyer— death, 742 9. Rules to be observed in rescuing for a time, from dissolving nature, animated matter, which has fallen within the grasp of this enemy to life. Or, rules to be observed in rescuing persons who have fallen into deep water. Also, for resuscitating the drowned, 773, 774, 775 10. The Thomsonian theorj"^, or unit of disease, showing that all disease originates from the same cause, directly or indirectly — which brings, sooner or later, all flesh back to primitive matter, from whence it originated, and the spirit returns to God, who gave it — thus winding up man's career upon this stage of action, 780 11. Disease receives its name from the part which has become so weak as to be subject to its attack by the loss of vitality or animal warmth : hence, if the liver be the weak part, it is the liver complaint — if the pleura, the pleurisy — but if the lungs, it is the consumption — or if it be the bowels, cholera or cholera morbus; notwithstanding the dif- ferent names these various complaints so called, assume, they were brought about by one general cause, that is, the loss of vitality, ani- mal warmth, or taking cold ; and the name arises from the diiTerent symptoms, forms, and location, which the disease assumes in the body, 780 DmECTIONS TO AGENTS. In filling out a certificate for a family right, where the individual makes his first purchase of one, the price is invariably twenty dollars, — and llie blank should be made out as follows: — " Received of A B, twenty dollars, in full for Ihc first right of preparing and using," &c. But if the individual has legitimately purchased one of the old rights of a regular constituted agent, and has not disposed of it again, he is entitled to one of this edition by paying ten dollars, and giving up his old certificate to the agent. Then his certificate should be made out, — " Received of A B, ten dollars, in full for tlie seco7td rtj/i( of preparing and using," &c. J. T. ILLUSTRATIONS. FRONTING TITLE. 1. Doctor Samuel Thomson's Portrait. 2. Certificate of Family Right. ON ANATOMY. OSTEOLOGy. Page. No. 1. Front view of the skeleton, 228 2. Back view of the skeleton, 230 ON THE VISCERA OF THE BODY, AS ORGANIZED. 3. Front and first view of the chest and abdomen, 234 4. Second view of the chest and abdomen, 236 5. Third view of the chest and abdomen, 238 6. Fourth view of the chest and abdomen, 340 7. First view of the thoracic and abdominal viscera, from behind, 242 8. Second view of the thoracic and abdominal viscera, from behind, 244 ON THE VISCERA OF THE BODY, SEPARATELY. 9. First view of the heart 246 10. Second view of the heart, 247 11. A view of the trunk, or thora.\, abdomen, and pelvis, 248 12. Anterior view of the thorax, .249 13. Anatomy of the circulation through the heart, 250 14. Posterior view of the larynx, 263 do. Side view of the larynx, 263 15. Reflections of the peritoneum, 271 16. The pharynx laid open from behind, 280 17. The upper surface of the liver, 287 18. The under surface of the liver, 289 19. The lobules of the liver. 292 20. A section of the kidney, 302 21. A side view of the male pelvis in situ, 305 22. A tranverse section of the testicle, 316 ANATOMY OF THE F(ETUS. 23. The foetal circulation, 324 24. A section of the thymus gland, 329 25. The course and termination of the absorbent ducts, 330 IV ILRUSTRATIONS. Page ON THE MUSCLES. No. 26. Muscles of the head and face, 337 27. Muscles of the eye-ball, 338 28. The two pterygoid muscles, 339 29. The muscles of the anterior aspect of the neck, 340 30. The styloid muscles and the muscles of the tongue, 341 31. A side view of the muscles of the ptarynx, 342 32. The muscles of the soft palate, 343 33. The prsevertebral group of muscles of the neck, 344 34. The first, second, and part of the third layer of muscles of the back, 345 35. The fourth, fifth, and part of the sixth layer of muscles of the back, 346 36. The muscles of the anterior aspect of the trunk, 348 37. Lateral view of the trunk of the bod}', 349 33. The under or abdominal side of the diaphragm, 351 39. The muscles of the perineum, 353 40. The muscles of the anterior aspect of the upper arm, 356 41. A posterior view of the upper arm, showing the triceps muscles, 357 42. A superficial layer of muscles of the fore arm, 357 43. The deep layer of muscles of the fore arm, 358 44. The superficial layer of muscles on the posterior aspect of the fore arm, 358 45. The deep layer of muscles on the posterior aspect of the fore arm, 359 46. The muscles of the hand, 360 47. The muscles of the gluteal region, 362 48. The muscles of the anterior femoral region, 364 49. The muscles of the posterior femoral and gluteal regions, 364 50. The muscles of the anterior tibial region, 366 51. The superficial muscles of the posterior aspect of the leg, 366 52. The deep layer of muscles of the posterior tibial region, 367 53. First layer of muscles in the sole of the foot, • '368 54. The third and a part of the second layer of muscles of the sole of the foot, 36S THE FASCIjE of THE HEAD AND NECK. 55. A transverse section of the neck, 370 56. A transverse section of the pelvis, 373 57. The pubic arch, with the attacliments of the perineal fascice,. . . .374 68. A side view of the viscera of the pelvis, 375 59. A section of the structures which pass beneath the femoral arch, 376 THE ARTEKIES. 60. The large vessels which proceed from the root of the heart, with their relations, 379 61. The carotid arteries, with the branches of the external carotid, ..383 62. The branches of the right subclavian artery, 386 ILLUSTRATIONS. V Page. Xo. 63. The circle of Willis, 3S}> 64. The axillary and brachial arteries, with their branches, 391 65. The arteries of the fore arm, " * • 394 66. The abdominal aorta, ■with its branches, 396 67. The distribution of the branches of the cccHac axis, 397 68. The course and distribution of the superior mesentric arter}-, 399 69. The distribution and branches of tbe inferior mesentric artery,.. 400 70. The distribution of the branches of the iliac arteries, ••- • 402 71. The arteries of the perineum, 4041 72. View of the anterior and inner aspect of the thigh, showing the courses and branches of the femoral artery, 406 73. The anterior aspect of the leg and foot, ....•• .408 74. A posterior view of the leg,. ... • • • 409 75. The arteries of the sole of the foot, 410 OF THE TEINS. 76. The sinuses of the uppsr and back part of the skull, • • •41.5 77. The sinuses of the base of the skull, 416 78. The veins of the fore arm and bend of the elbow, 4l7 79. The veins of the trunk and neck, 419 SO. The portal vein, 420 81. The course and termination of the thoracic duct, 430 THE KTERVOrs ST5TEJI. 82. The lateral ventricles of tlie cerebrum, 440- 83. The mesial surface of a longitudinal section of the brain. 442 84. The under surface, or base of the brain, 444 85. The base of the brain, 445 86. The anatomy of the sides of the neck, showing the nerves of the tongue, 447 87. The distribution of the fascial nerves, and the branches of the cervical plexus, 44*^ 88. Origin and distribution of the eighth pair of nerves • -449 89. A diagram, showing the fifth pair of nerves, with its branches,. .450 90. The axillary ple.\us of nerves, with its branches, and their dis- tribution, 45.2 91. The lumbar and sacral plexuses, with the nerves of the lower extremity,. ... 453 92. The cranial ganglia of the sympathetic nerve, ^ . . . 454 THE OaGAKS OF SENSE. 93. A longitudinal section of the globe of the eye, 461 94. The anterior segment of a transverse section of the globe of the eye, as seen within, 463 95. The posterior segment of a transverse section of the globe of the eye, as seen within, 465 VI IT.LUSTRATIONS. Page. No. 96. A diagram of the ear, 472 97. The anatomy of the skin, 4S1 ILLUSTRATIONS OF PLANTS. No. 1 Lobelia inflata — emetic herb, 581 2. Capsicum baccatum — cayenne pepper, 590 3. Myrica cerifera — bayberry, 597 4. Nymphx'a odorata — white pond lily, 598 5. Statice limonium — marsh rosemary, 601 6. Rhus glabrum — sumac, 602 7. Hamamelis virginica — witch-hazel, 603 8. Rubus strigosus — red raspberry, 604 9. Chelone glabra — balmony, 613 10. Populus tremuloids — wild poplar tree, 615 11. Populus angulata — balm of Gilead, 615 12. Cypripedium pubescens — yellow lady slipper, 632 13. Solanum dulcamara — bitter-sweet, • • 639 14. Myrica gale — meadow fern, 649 15. Xanthoxylum fraxineum — prickly ash, 650 .16. Galium aparine — clivers, 661 n. Ulmus fulva — slippery elm, 668 ERRATA. In page SOS, for prostRAXE read i>rostate gland. Some other typographical errors, &c., have occurred : but they are probably unimportant, and may be •corrected by the reader. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. To '■^become all things to all men,''^ as St. Paul said, may be appropriately applied to the Thomsonian Practition- er ; because in order to gam the confidence of the people, we must satisfy them, that there are virtues in our iKedicines and truth in our practice. To attain that object, we must " he wise as serpents^ and harmless as dovesJ^ How much has been lost to the Thomsonian practice, by the attempts of those who had full confidence in it, to convince others of the correctness of their opinions, before the mind was ripe for the conviction. For instance, a man who has had his mind and habits formed in a family where the regular practice has always been employed for the benefit of its inmates, is very scrupulous of any innova- tion upon that theory. If a Thomsonian says to him, the calomel and opium which your doctor applies to the use of the sick are poisons, and not to be administered, the mind of man at once, and without regard to the rea- soning upon the subject, refers back and enquires, who ought to know best, the doctor, who has studied the hu- man system anatomically, physiologically, and the theory and practice of medicine, or this Thomsonian, who knows nothing about the subject, except what he has learned from Samuel Thomson's book, which is of recent origin, and very doubtful as to the correctness of the principles laid down. The natural conclusion is, then, that it is impos- sible to reason with such people so satisfactorily as for them to be willing to employ a Thomsonian when sick. They may talk and reason like rational men while in health, but the moment the hand of disease is laid upon them, they seem to say by their actions this is no time to try experiments, and go for the old physician. He comes and commences his attendance as usual. The arguments of the botanic physician are fresh in his mind ; he watches narrowly the operations, and the rationale of the medicine given by the doctor, and compares the arguments of the 6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. two individuals. And notwithstanding, the Thomsonian may have the best of the argument, iie overcomes this obstruction by the anatomical and physiological knowledge of the doctor, without once asking himself this question, is it absolutely necessary that a physician should know the name of every bone of the foot, and every muscle of the arm, to be able to relieve pain in the bowels? If that were necessary, the remedies of the aborigines of our country, and the valuable services of our venerable and worthy matrons in time of sickness, have been given to the wind. But fortunately this is not the case. Who does not know the value of the attention paid by good nurses in time of sickness? also the many cures effected by them, as well as the most ignorant aborigines of our country, after the skill of these beautiful theorists (the doctors,) have failed ? The doctor continues his attentions. He, vulgarly speaking, builds up with one hand, and pulls down with the other ; or in other words, he gives soup to day, and poi- sons to-morrow. One to kill a little, and the other to heal a little. But generally, the poisons get the best of the bargain, as the patient gradually sinks under the treatment, and at length is not expected to live. Yet after all these symptoms of death staring him in the face, the man can- not give up the bugbear, if so you please to call it, that a knowledge of every bone and muscle in the body, is ne- cessary to constitute a good physician. And upon this last hope, he will cling until the doctor pronounces him incurable ; or that the patient from the almost certainty of death, breaks the bonds of his superstition, and says, I must die as I am, and I can but die if I send for the botanic physician. This is a fairspecimen of the manner in which the Thomsonian practitioners generally first obtain em- ployment. Now the new doctor has a chance to prove his theory by his 'practice, and what is still better for the patient, the doctor has no knowledge of the regular theory and practice of medicine, nor of anatomy, or surgery, un- der which to shield his mal-practice as a physician. And if his practice is bad, he cannot arrogate to himself the Latin or Greek names of his remedies, as well as the names of the different functions of the body, which he has learned of others, and which he uses as a shield to screen himself and his quackery from public indignation, as his predecessor has done. In this state of the facts, the fable of truth and falsehood is very appropriate. These two worthies being on a journey together, came to a river, GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 7 Falsehood wished Truth to divest himself and try the stream ; unsuspecting as usual, Truth threw off his clothes and swam the river, and Falsehood, as was natural for him, took the advantage of Truth's honesty, and clad him- self in his garments, under which Falsehood to this day, assumes the robes of Truth, Honesty, and Righteousness, to play off his villiany upon the world. While unsuspect- ing Truth has nothing to conceal, he repudiates Greek, Latin, and every other dead language that may tend to confuse or embarrass the free communication of his frank, unsophisticated ideas, in the plainest possible manner, for the benefit of mankind. In these two different lights, I place the regular and irregular practitioner. One depend- ing upon his theory of poisons, with his shield of techni- calities behind which to screen himself, when Honesty wishes to examine his hydra-head and other deformities. While the plain unassuming Thomsonian takes his reme- dies in one hand, confidence in the other, and truth for his shield, grapples with the hydra; and with these Herculean clubs, we see the heads of the monster dropping daily. The patient is assured of one thing that consoles him ; that is, he is not taking poisons for medicines, consequent- ly, he is in no danger in that respect. But the next thing is, does the name of the doctor, or his Greek and Latin names, alter the qualities of his medicines .? Is not arse- nic ratsbane? And is not ratsbane poison? And will not this poison kill if administered in sufficient quantities by either a wise man or a fool ? So we may ask of mercury, antimony, saltpetre, and every other deadly article, used in the long catalogue of mineral and vegetable poisons in the regular materia medica. Now can the diploma, or the high medical attainments of any man, alter the poisonous quali- ties of these articles, which are poisons by nature? Or, could the ignorance of the Thomsonian be so great as to make red raspberry, witch hazel or peach leaves poisonous, when in themselves naturally they are innocent substan- ces? Who believes that any man, because he can talk Latin, has the power to metamorphose an article that is naturally poisonous, into an innocent medicine ? Or on the other hand, can the fool convert an innocent vegetable substance into a poison, because he does not understand the dead languages ? No, it is impossible that the abilities of the man, either natural or acquired, should alter the qualities of the substances which God by nature has placed upon this terrestrial ball for either goo^ or evil. The ra- 8 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. tional conclusion then is, poison is poison, and harmless medicines are harmless in whatever state they may be found; and that the different hands do not alter the quali- ties of the articles that pass through them. The fact is irresistable then, that the dead languages for the practitioner, unexplained to the sick, are unnecessary; and that the honest physician will never use them to de- ceive, with regard to the articles of medicine he may be giving to his patient. Would it not be attended with much less trouble for the physician, to induce his patient to take a dose of conium macidatum, or datura stramonium^ than if he should frankly say, I wish to give you a dose of the poiiison hemlock, or of the thorn apple, both of which are well known to be potent poisons? It certainly would be. We take many things in ignorance that we would not have taken with full knowledge of their properties. And for the want of correct knowledge in relation to medicine, the sick man is compelled to risk his life many times, where he would not risk a shilling in like chances for loss, in the ordinary transactions of life. It takes much longer for the student to make his shield, or to learn the Latin names in anatomy, physiology, and the theory and practice of medicine, in order to deceive the people successfully, than to learn all the medical com- pounds used in the regular materia medica ! The Thomsonian's shield, is the confidence in his sys- tem and practice, and the curing of his patients after the regulars have pronounced them incurable. Here is the true definition of quackery made manifest to every intelli- observer. One boasts of his acquirements, his book knowl- edge, and his diploma ; while the other modestly shows you his patients in health, after having taken them from the hands of this man of science. The Thomsonian, it is true, labors under many disad- vantages. He is not popular, because the regular phy- sicians who are now in the ascendant in public opinion, not only throw upon them the full weight of their disap- probation, but enlist that of all their friends. And having the advantages of Greek and Latin names at hand, they can always throw a veil over their bad practice, or any incon- sistencies that may arise in argument, by retreating behind this shield. In this manner they force themselves along upon their assumed knowledge, every body admitting them to be learned and skillful, because they do not understand GENERAL INTRODUCTION. \) the medical phraseology which they use, and which is as likely to be wrong as right, in many instances. Tfie Thomsonian is required to give a rational account of himself, to the understanding of those with whom he reasons, dirested of all technicalities, and by this means his theory is discussed, his medicines analyzed, the consis- tency of his practice criticised, and the summing up is com- paring his theory and practice together, and then casting fibout to see how many he has killed, and how many cured, and whether he has been as successful as the neighboring physicians. The question is frequently asked, why do you not re- quire your practitioners to be better qualified to practice medit?ine '.' Or, why dont you get more reputable persons to take hold of your practice, and elevate it in the scale of popular opinion ? To which we reply, those we would like for practitioners have generally other business, and those who have not ambition to seek business for themselves, we cer- tainly do not want. There are three classes of individu- als who would become Thomsonian physicians. The first, and best class, are those who have been restored to health from the last stage of disease, by the use of this me- dicine. They know practically the operations of the me- dicines upon themselves, and their experience in its use, gives them confidence to apply it in other cases. From ill health, they have generally become broken down, or bank- rupts, as to property and business — the doctor taking what little property they may have had, the new doctor finds the patient not only pennyless, but broken down in consti- tution, and run out in credit. Therefore the doctor must take him upon the strength of his promise to pay when he recovers, or lose what he does for him. If he restores the patient to health, and he has no other business,' he gene- rally commences practice upon the fund of practical or empirical knowledge, which he may have acquired in his own case, while taking medicine ; and his practice is gene- rally successful, in proportion as he has had perseverance and judgment, in the business in which he was engaged before he was taken sick. This is the only way we can form an opinion of the person's fitness for a prac- titioner of medicine. If he is a man of common sense in ordinary business, he will be that also in the capacity of a doctor. The second is, the broken down merchant, manufacturer or mechanic, who is out of employ, and casting about ia 2 10 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. his mind for the business by which he can obtain a living with the least capital. He sees that the Thomsonians have plenty of business, with good success attending the patients, and as it requires but a small capital to commence with, his mind is made up at once to become a Thomson!- an. This man, like the regular physicians, must acquire his knowledge by rending the theory, and commence his practice by what he has read, and not by experience upon himself, as the other has. And like the theorist who has read books upon agriculture, he is not so safe a man to take charge of a farm as if he had touched the work by the hand of experience. While he who has been restored, by the use of the medicine upon himself, can enter into every little minutias of sympathy and feeling with his pa- tients, and can increase or diminish his medicines, or dis- continue them altogether, as he may think the state of his patient corresponded with his own, when sick. In fact, there are a thousand little things, where the experienced man may render his patient comfortable, that the inexpe- rienced would not think of Therefore, as life, health and happiness are made up of particles of comfort, we should seek them wherever they are most likely to be found ; and that is, from the fountain of long experience. On which account, we prefer the man who has obtained his know- ledge or theory by his practice, instead of him who has obtained his theory before his practice. The third class, and worst of all, are those who are des- titute entirely of the ingredients necessary to constitute a man of business of any kind. These poor objects, being dregs on hand, their parents would gladly rid themselves of the dolts. They generally live for a day, and die out for want of business, and return like spurious coin to him that first issued it, to lay on hand until another occasion offers to try its currency. Many of this class we sec filling reputable stations, entirely upon their acquired abilities and the respectability and wealth of their friends, without re- gard to their own natural talents. But they will not do for Thomsonians. For in that case, nature must have a hand in the work to give them common sense at least. Again, it is asked, why do not the respectable and wealthy have their sons study our practice, if a person can acquire a Knowledge of it so soon, and the practitioner becomes so successful in restoring the sick to health? To which 1 reply, did you ever see the son of a rich and respectable GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 11 person, but what was designed by his parents to be made a great and popular man? Those people who have become wealthy from indigent circumstances, would have us believ^e that they were never poor, consequently would not demean their sons by edu- catincrthem for botanic physicians. They are destined for the law, physic, or divinity. Do you think such gentlemen would suffer their sons to adopt a profession that is so un- popular;^ Impossible ! So you see we are obliged to take such as we can obtain, instead of such as we would have. Under all these circumstances, who can look upon the prosperity of the Thomsonian practice of medicine at the present day without admiration — spread as it has from Mexico to Canada, and from the sea shore back to the Pa- cific, also in Europe and South America, originating with the illiterate New-Hampshire farmer, less than fifty years since. The mind that can conceive, and put into execution, so gigantic a scheme, and have perseverance sufficient to buf- fet the torrent of opposition, which has been arrayed against Samuel Thomson, evinces that true nobility of character which was ever Napoleon's criterion while selecting his military family. Marshal Soult was taken from the ranks on account of his merit; and who does not know his mili- tary success and reputation? Said Napoleon, ^^behold my right arm,'' having reference to Soult as a military man. Lord Walpole believed true nobility of character comes by wealth, and favor from the crown. With such sentiments and opinions, he saw, with jealousy, the laurels that were falling so abundantly upon the brow of Doct. Franklin the American printer, while in England. And he thought on one occasion at least, he would gratify his caprice at the Doctors expense and mortification, byexposingf to the mul- titude the low cast or grade from which the Doctor origin- ated. So when the greatest number of lords and noble- men were paying their respectful attention to the Doctor, while explaining his scientific theories: says the noble lord. Doct. Franklin I understand you were brou2;ht up in a soap and tallotv c]iandler''s factory ; to which the Doctor smiled, bowed respectfully, and replied, I was sir, and I think if you had been, you would have been there now. So we see, 'the race is not always to the swift, nor yet the battle to the strong, but to those who hold out to the end of the race,' in doing good to their fellow beings, re- 12 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. gardless of the persecution and opposition which they may have to encounter for the sake of truth. JOHN THOMSON. Note. — To assist us in the progression of this work, upon animal and Tegetable life, we have consulted Hippocrates, Galen, Bacon, Boerhaave, Sylvius, CuUen, Brown, Hunter, Goldsmith, Darwin, Thomson, Water- house, Blane, Mitchell, Hearsey, Robinson, Ingalls, Eaton, Tully, Barton, Rush, and various other authors; for the theory and practice or the adaptation of animal and vegetable substances to sustain life, or vitality in animal matter, Samuel Thomson. J. T. THE THOMSONIAN THEORY. "What is Man?" In publishing a new edition of the Thomsonian System of Practice we shall add many improvements and new remedies. We have also thought that a philosophical theory would be ac- ceptable to all who might wish to adopt our practice. We have accordingly put our views before our readers, and leave the subject for them to accept or reject as circumstances may dictate. In the first place, why is here a new system of medicine springing into existence so opposite to the principles of the long estabUshed and popular systems of the present age ? I answer, that it was by the failure of this long established practice to re- store those to health whom we are accustomed to cherish above all other earthly objects; that the mind was led into the wide region of philosophy, unguided by any human theory except reason and common sense. My father's family had been much subject to siclmess, and he was anxious to have the best medi- cal attendance in his vicinity ; and he actually induced the best phj'^sician residing within several miles, to remove and locate himself upon his farm. And while a resident upon the farm, and within the space of a few years, five different members of his family had been pronounced by the doctor as incurable ; and when the patient had been thus abandoned, my father was stimulated to try what he could do to mitigate or alleviate the sufferings of tlie patient, and happily succeded in restoring every individual to health. He then thought if this long established system of medicine, failed to restore the different members of his family to health, and he must then commence and do for them what was expected of those who have the credit of superior skill, was not his treatment the best? From that time forward, which is now near fifty years, he has never employed a regular physician. The neighbors who were called together, as is usual in country neighborhoods in time of sickness, and more especially, when the sick were supposed dangerous, were led to notice the least change that took place with the patient ; and observing the happy effects of my father's nursing upon the members of his own family, became the first messengers to herald the Thomsonian system of practice to the world. In 14 THE THOMSONIAN the course of time, many of the relations or friends of those neighbors were stricken down by the hand of disease ; and the physicians being employed as usual, as the best judges of the appropriate remedies for the sick, as in the case of his family, in many instances, gave over the patient as incurable. The human mmd now being upon the rack for a remedy that would in the least mitigate the pains of the sufferer, it would flash upon the mind, why not send for Samuel Thomson and have him nurse the patient in his peculiar way, as he does those of his ov/n family. This course was usually adopted, and Samuel Thomson never lost a patient to the knov.'ledge of the writer, in his own neijrhborhood. Thus my father's plan of nursing was adopted by his near neighbors, and from them it was promulgated from house to house, from town to town, and from state to state, until now it is known and extensively practiced in every state in the Union. It was by the philosophical experiments upon those who were abandoned as incurable, and the happy results attendant upon the same, that first reminded him of the language of the poet who said, '•' the jjroper study of mankind is man''' Havmg been thus successful in nursing, he was led to inquire upon what principles the animal functions were brought into action ; and by what agency they ceased to act. The prac- tical operation of his medicines was narrowly investigated ; and a reason for the rpecific operation of each article upon the sys- tem, required. He at last settled down upon the principle, that the human system was a species of animal machine, sub- ject to the action of the elements, and when disordered, was to be put in order by a judicious temperament of the same ele- ments by a competent repairer, whose duty it is to know partic- ularly the principles by which the machine is deranged ; and by understanding the deficiency, may know how to restore the absent power in all cases, where the principle of life is not so far gone as not to leave sufllcient to buiid upon, or the machine is so far decayed as to be beyond restoration. For example ; the foetus* is formed by nature with all those • The best desmption of the coxception, progression and final consumma- tion 0/ ANIMAL ORGANIZATION, and the VITALITY which COnstitutcS the PER- TECT MAN, can be better comprehended by a description of a heii-s egg; with the HISTORY of the GROWTH OF THE DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL •WITH WHICH IT IS INHABITED. TMs is as far as God in his wisdom has per- mitted inquisitive 7nan, by occular demonstration, to penetrate the veil. Immediatelj^ under the shell, lies the common membrane or skin, which lines it on the inside, adhering closely to it every where, except at the broad end, where a little cavity is left, that is filled with air; which increases as the animal grows larger. Under this membrane are contained ttvo whites, though seeming to us to be only one ; each wrapped up in a membrane of its own, one white within the other. They differ from each other in specific gravity. In the midst of all is the yolk, \\Tapt round likewise with its own membrane. At MATERIA MEDICA. 15 little intricacies of machinery, that are designed for usefuhiess in life, viz: the organs of respiration, digestion, the nervous and arterial systems, &c. But iu its present state, the mother's breath, food and beverage, and other support, is that of the child. Its birth changes the scene ; the child then acts for itself; it changes a temperature of about 98 degrees of Fahrenheit, for one of from 65 to 80 degrees. The moment this low tempera- ture strikes the surface, the outward warmth is checked, or re- each end of this are iwo ligaments, called chalaza, which are v/hite dense substances, made from the juembranes, and serving to keep the wliite and the yolk in their places. They are called chalaztc from their resemblance to hail. The ekalricula is the part where tlie animal hrst begins to shew signs of life ; it resembles a vetch or small pea, lying on one side of the yolk and with- in its membranes. The outer membranes and ligaments preserve the fluids in their proper places, the white serves as nourishment ; and the yolk with its membraues after a time, becomes a part of the chicken's body. This is the description of the hcn''s egg, and answers to all others, how large or how smaU soever. Previously to putting the eggs to the hen, Malpighi and Holier first exam- ined this cicatricula, v.iiich they consider as the most important part of the egg. This, which some call the pundiim saliens or punctum vitm, was found in those that were impregnated by the male to be large, but in otliers small. Upon examination with the microscope it was found to be a kind of bag, con- taining a transparent liquor, in the midst of v.hich tlie embryo was seen. The embryo resembled a composition of little threads, which the warmth of future incubations tended to enlarge. Upon placina: the egg in a proper warmth, after six hours the vital speck be- gins to dilate like the pupil of the eye. The head of the chicken is distinctly seen, with the back-bone something resembling a tadpole floating in its am- bient fluid, but as yet seeming to assume none of the functions of animal life. About six hours more the little anim.al is seen more distinctly; the head be- comes more plainly visible, and the vertebrae of the back become more easily perceivable. All these signs of preparation for life are increased in six hours more ; and, at the end of twentv-four, the ribs begin to take their places, the neck begins to lengthen, and the head to turn to one side. At this time, the fluids in the egg seem to have changed places ; the yolk which was before in the centre of the shell, approaches nearer the broad end. The watery part of the white is diminished, the grosser part sinks to the small end ; and the little animal appears to turn towards the part of the broad end in which a cavity has been described, and with its yolk seems to adhere to tlie membrane there. At the end of forty hours, the great work of life seems fairly begun, and the animal plainly appears to move ; the backbone thickens ; the first rudi- ments of the eyes begin to appear ; the heart beats, and the blood begins al- ready to circulate. The parts, however, as yet are fluid ; but, by degrees, tecome more and more tenacious. At the end of two days, the liquor in which the chicken swims, seems to increase 5 the head appears with two lit- tle bladders in place of eyes ; the heart beats in the manner of every embryo where the blood does not circulate through the lungs. In about fourteen hours after this, the chicken is grown more strong ; the veins and arteries begin to branch, in order to form the brains; and the spinal marrow is seen stretching along the backbone. In three days the whole body of the chicken appears bent; the head with its tv/o eye-balls, with their different humors, now distinctly appear ; and five other vesicles are seen, which soon unite to form the rudiments of the brain. The outlines also of the thighs, and wings, begin to be seen, and the body begins to gather flesh. At the end of the fourth day, the vesicles that go to form the brain approach each other ; the wings and thighs appear more solid ; the whole body is covered with a jelly like 16 THE THOMSONIAN duced, having the same effect as the immersion in water of the same temperature. The atmospheric pressure being near IGlbsi weight to the square inch, presses in upon the kings, or organs of respiration, and they are at once inflated. The temperature being so much greater upon the hinsfs. (say 98*) than upon the surface (from 65 to 80") that the inward warmth immediately rarifies the air to nearly the temperature of the blood ;, by which it becomes so light and expanded that the external pressure will not admit of its continuing longer upon the lungs ; and, flesh ; the heart that was hitherto exposed, is now covei-ed up within the body, by a very thin transparent membrane ; and at the same time, the umbilical vessels, that unite the animal to the yolk, now appear to come forth from the abdomen. After the fifth and sixth days the vessels of the brain begin to be covered oA'er ; the wings and the thighs lengthen; the belly is closed up, and turned ; the liver is seen within it, very distinctly, not yet grown red, but of a dusky white ; both the ventricles of the heart are discerned, as if they ■were two separate hearts, beating distinctly; the whole body of the animal is covered over, and the traces of the incipient feathers are already to be seen. The seventh day the head appears very large; the brain is entirely coA'ered over; the bill begins to appear betwixt the eyes, and the wings, the thighs, and the legs, have acquired their perfect figure. Hitherto, however, the anW mal appears as if it had two bodies; the }olk is joined to it by the umbilical vessel that comes from the belly; and is furnished with its vessels, through Avhich the blood circulates, as through the rest of the body of the chicken, mak- ing a bulk greater than that of the animal itself. But towards the end of i]> cubation, the umbilical vessel shortens the yolk, and M'ith it the intestines ar» thrust up into the body of the chicken by the action of the muscles of the bellj^ and the two bodies are thus formed into one. During this slate all the organs are found to perform their secretions ; the bile is found to be separated, as ia grown animals ; but it is transparent, and without bitterness; the chickeo then also appears to have lungs. On the tenth, the muscles of the wings apw pear, and the feathers begin to push out. On the eleventh, the heart which hitherto had appeared divided, begins to unite, the arteries which belong to it, join into it, like the fingers into the palm of the hand. All these appearances come more into view, because the fluids the vessels had hitherto secreted, were more transparent ; but as the color of the fluids deepen, their operations and circulations are more distinctly seen. As the animal thus, by the eleventh day, completely formed, begins to gather strength, it becomes more uneasy ip its situation, and exerts its animal powers with increasing force. For some time before it is able to break the shell in which it is imprisoned^ it is heard to chirrup, receiving a sufficient quantity of air for this furposOf from that cavity which lies between the membrane and the shell, and which must contain air to resist the external pressure. At length, upon tiie 20tb day, in some birds sooner, and later in others, the enclosed animal breaks th& shell within which it has been confined, with its beak ; and by repeated ef- forts, at last procures its enlargement. From this history we perceive that those parts which are most conducive to life, are the first that are begun ; the head and the backbone, which no doubt enclose the brain and the spinal marrow, thousli botli are too limpid to be discerned, are the first that are seen to exist ; the beating of the heart ia seen soon after ; the less noble parts seem to spring from these, the wings, the thighs, the feet, and lastly the bill. The resemblance between tlic beginning- animal in the egg, and the embryo in the womb, is very striking. An eifSf may be considered as a womb, detached from tlie body of the parent animal, in which the embryo is but just beginning to be formed. It may be regarded as a kind of incomplete delivery. The similitude between the ess and the embryo in the womb has induced many to assert (and with great probability) that aU animals are produced from eggs. MATERIA MEDICA. 17 the air* by its expansion and buoyancy acquired from the inter- nal warmth, seeks its equilibrium by rising in consequence of the heavy external pressure upon the region of the chest, which ejects it from the lungs, and with it the first sound of the voice, is a cry. This is the first movement of the machine in producing sound, which by cultivation is made to e-xpress every passion, and emotion, and want, both of the body and the mind. A judicious practitioner of medicine, is the proper repairer of this machine. To keep it in active operation until it wears out in old age, every wheel having borne its proportion of labor. This frail bark beincr thrown into life, and he that modeled • Respiration is the scientific name of the process of breathing, or drawing air into the lungs, and expelling it again. A full grown person, who respires 20 times in a minute, inhales each time 40 cubic inches of air, which is 48,000 solid inches in an horn', or 1,152,000 cubic inches in a day : a quantity equal to nearly 70 hogsheads. The room in which I sit, is a chamber of modern size, say 15 feet square, and 74 high. At the above rate, a person would respire once over, all the air in it, in about 2^ days; or twelve persons, in five hours. But twelve persons can- not breathe in a close room with safety, till the air has aU been breathed once aver. The whole becomes in a degree impure from mixture, long before. Bo- Bides, the bad air is heavier than other air, and is most abundant in the lower part of the room. I have seen many a school-room, not larger than this, with forty children in it. If shut up closely, and the room air tight. I think they would breathe the whole over, as high as their heads, in about forty minutes. It happens, how- ever, that rooms — school-rooms especially — are not thus air tight. Atmospheric air is supposed to contain 21 parts of oxygen to 79 parts of nitrogen ; and in proportion as either of these principles is increased or dimin- ished, the air becomes more or less unfit for respiration. Heat, that subtle agent in nature, by its powers of penetration, rarifies the air witliin its influ- ence, so as to cause it to ascend, and the cold or dense air, presses in to sup- ply its place. So there is, or should be, a perpetual motion in this elastic fluid. But when it is confined, in a tight room, continually receiving heat from a, stove, furnace or fire-place, and rarified hv the heat, the warm or light aix cannot make its escape, neither is there as free access of cool or fresh air by «-hich the body may be continually kept pure. After a room has been thus enclosed till all the air in it becomes heated, let a person enter it, and he im- mediately experiences symptoms of suflbcation ; and if a door be left partly open, he may observe a current of air forcing its way out at the top of the door, and a pouring in at the bottom. It is the rarified air that passes out of the room, and the pure cool air, that seeks admittance. One reason why heated air gives suffocating feelings, is becair c the oxygen Is considerably diminished, therefore we inhale too freely of the light air, coiv- taining an undue proportion of nitrogen, which causes an unnatural distention of the lungs, closes the air vessels, and liinders the free circulation, by which means respiration soon becomes laborious and difficult. Great precaution is necessary, in regard to airing rooms where sick people ate confined. The effluvia, arismg from the sick-bed render the atmosphere In the room very unwholesome, both for the sick and those persons in attends ance. Where opportunity affords, such rooms should be frequently ventilated. The best method is, to drop a window down from the top, when they are ecu- 8-tructed so that it can be done conveniently, and the putrid air passes iff; or when it has become very much impregnated by filth, to burn vinegar or any regetable acid on a heated metal supplies the deficiency or oxygen, and de- stroys the stench. Pure, wholesome, fresh air, is of the utmost importance to the sick. 18 THE THOMBONIAN it pronounced it "very good," therefore, he does not design, that we should take away any part, more than that we should add t'> it; since we can do the one in a philosophical point of view, as well as the other. The physician as t!ie repairer, has only to remove the clogs and obstructions that retard tlie motion of the Avholc without removing any part of the machinery. For if you take away any portion of the complicated works, it is never as perfect af- terwards; and you obstruct to a certain degree, the whole work the same as in any artificial machine, for instance a clock of steam-engine. The cliild if healthy, commences and continues to grow ; his arms, legs, body and face, are plump and full ; you see no indications of old age, such as wrnikles, or loss of flesh : he comes up to youth, to manhood, or the meridian of life, which is from 25 to 35 years of age ; the members of his body may now be said to have acquired their full vigor ; and it may be truly said of the man, as of fruit, he is ripe. He turns tlie point or meridian of life from the zenith, and begins to go to decay. You will hear him remark, " I cannot do quite as much as I could once ; my food does not appear to afford me that substan- tial support as formerly; my rest is deficient ; my nerves have, become tremulous ; wrinkles are fast gathering in my face and hands ; my limbs fall away," and why is all this decay 7 The man does not know ; he says " I am growing old ;" but that does not answer the question. The fact is, the first part that gives away is, the organs of digestion, by which the whole fab- ric is supported. These organs have first become blunted, and are not capable of extracting the same quantity of nourishment from a given quantity of food as before the man had attained the meridian of life, or before the fruit became ripe. Well, under this^state of things something must be done to keep up vital energy. It should be remembered that wlijle the man was coming to maturity he was laying up in store strength of blood, size of muscle and bone, and a good siore of flesh — the fuel of life. If his appetite and digestion should fail, the man would not die until his flesh is exhausted, and he be-- comes literally a wreck of skin and bones. For in proportion as the organs of digestion fail, the appetite is lost and the taste vitiated and gone. Nature now calls upon the stock or supply of flesh and blood, already in store, which was accumulated in early life to support the body in its decline, the same as a man who is ambitious in youth to lay up a suflicient compe^ tency for the interest to support him ; but if the interest fails ici giving him n good and sufficient support he must make drafts upon the principal, light or heavy as the circumstances of tho case may require. MATERIA MEDIC A. 19 It is precisely the same with the human system. You will perceive an old gentleman far advanced in life, if he has not injured his constitution in his younger days by taking medi- cine,or lost any of the vigorous properties of the first or primi- tive stock of his blood by taking a part of it away or by weak- ening the same by injuring the digestion, through which the blood and from it the_ body receives its support, by animal or vegetable poisons, he will run gradually down. As the digest- ive powers fail, the drafts upon the substance of the flesh and blood are more urgent and heavy, and it is not unfrequent that we see the person at the advanced age of seventy, eighty, nine^ £y, and even one hundred years, while apparently in his nsual health, die sitting in his chair, in the field, or in (he midst of his avocation, the fuel of life having become com- pletely exhausted, or the lamp of life being drained to the very bottom, and the light become extinct for the want of oil ; or nature having completely exhausted from her store house the means necessary to sustain life. Such a constitution we con- sider has been under the supervision of a judicious engineer or physician if you please; has been brought to maturity by pro^ per management ; has nurtured and invigorated a robust con* stitution, and by prudent manasfement has laid aside for future use, a suitable quantity of the requisite material to sustain and prolong life after the person has passed the meridian to bus last moment. Thus you will perceive the Thomsonians, by understanding tlie above theory and practicing upon the same principles, are treating the human system philosophically. As our th.eorv was formed from our practice, and our remedies are in harmony with life ; as they will assist nature in her most depressed situ- ations, or when there is sufficient left to build upon, and the remedies will not prove detrimental if jriven by the practitioner whose juds^ment has been matured and regulated by a scale es- tablished by extensive experience and observation by the bed- side of the sick, no other standard can so readily be depended upon. How applicable to the Thomsonian cause are the remarks of Sir Gilbert Blane, Bart.* who after fifty years service in the State and in that of his Majesty's Persox and Family, says : "If the benefits derivable to medicine from physiological science, are so limited, from what other and better source is improvement to arise ? The answer is, from accurate ob- servation ; in other words, from evliffhtened ewpiricism. It seems an abuse of words, to restrict the term science to physi- • Sir Gilbert Blank, Bart., fellow of the Royal Societies of London, Edin- burgh, and Gottingen; member of the Imperial Academy of Science of St. Pe- tersburgh ; and Phtsician to the King. 20 THE THOMSONIAN ology and pathology, and to withhold it from those processes of the understanding, by which lacts are ascertained and accumu- lated, and useful inferences deduced from them constituting OBSERVATION. Shall we dignify with the title of science, the absurd positions of Pitcairn, the puerile and shallow hypothesis of Boerhaave, and Silvius. and deny it to those solid and ap- plicable trutiis, the fruits of chaste observation and sober experi- ence, ascertained by those methods of induction which it was the great aim of Bacon to recommend, and his great glory to in- troduce as the only parent of legitimate, substantial, and useful knowledge? Oti the contrary, the tnit/i seems to be, that a higher order of intellect, a more rare and happy genius, a more correct and better tutored understanding, is required to elicit j)rac!ical truths by observation, than to invent tlieories. By empiricism, is vulgarly understood that knowledg-e of the virtues of divers medicines, whicii have been ascertained by ex- perience ; as applicable to their respective maladies. We have already more than once adverted to that profound wisdom displayed in the constitution of our mental faculties, whereby they are made responsive to the constitution of exter- nal nature, in the same manner as our senses, and that this is strikingly exemplified by the susceptibility of the human mind to those associations and habits which arise out of the repetition of events durably connected together by the constancy of the laws of nature. Unless these were indelibly imprinted, or re- corded, as it were, in the mind during the early stages of our existence, life could not be maintained ; all those instincts, by which we pursue what is salutary, and eschew what is noxious and dangerous, being founded on this principle. The avoiding of fire, and of precipices, the collision of hard and pointed bodies, may be quoted as examples of this. And what is called saga- city, in the adult stage of life is a sort of approach to, or imita,- tion of this intuitive faculty ; biu, instead of being the immedi- diate sug;o;eslion of nature, is acquired by cultivation, so that by practice we learn to connect cause and effect, means and end, operations which, in well turned minds, are performed with promptitude and precision, by interpreting fairly the ap^ pearance of nature, and stripping them of those adventitious fallacies, which mislead ordinary minds. In order to attain this there are required an appropriate natural capacity, the good fortune of not having been beset ivith prejudices iii early life, and habitual exercise in the observation of nature, a can- did and ingenious disposition, an ardent love of truth, an exalted sense of duty, a large store of facts in a correct and tenacious memory, the poicer of combiuing, cotnparing, and discriminating these, by an intuitive glance, in the momeyit 9f 0'Ppi!/^"a them to the practical end in vieio. This is what MATERIA MEDICA. 21 is understood by the term tacijin English and French. From this it will be seen, how vain all acquired knowledj^e is without practical habits. It is evident, that, as the action of life must depend on the compound operation, and reciprocal influence of all these powers, those who propose to found practical medicine on their knowledge of the laws of life, must encounter such difficulties in estimating and ascertaining the result of them, as must appal the boldest theorist. For, as in an algebraical prob- lem, if any one element of the calculation should be omitted, or mis-stated, the result must be erroneous ; so if in taking our measures in medicine, if due weight is not assigned to each of those influences, our practical inferences must bo illusory. Ths knou'ledge of nature^ in all its branches, is an i?idispen- sable requisite in the cultivation of the mind. There is nothing better known to those, who are conversant in medical practice than that the most ignorant and shallow, those of the least learning, nay those of no learning at all, are the most ad- dicted to hypothetical reasoning, the most infected with pre- sumption and self-conceit. The only means, therefore of guarding ourselves from being misled by false theories, or by the misapplication of those that are true, is to gain a thorough acquaintance with both. When it is considered, what a mass of credulity and error has actually accumulated in medicine from the presumptuous attempt to grasp at such objects, and to make hasty and dangerous application of them to practice ; when we cast our eyes upon our shelves, loaded with volumes, few of which contain any genuine profitable knowledge, the greater part of them composed chiefly of matter, either migatory, erro- neous, viapjAicable, or mischievous, in u'hich the dear bought grain is to besought in the bushel of chaff, m^ay it not be questioned, whether such researches have not tendedj more to RETARD and CORRUPT, than to advance and imqnove practi- cal medicine. The study of riature is surely the most salu- tary of all intellectual exercises iri the practical arts, partic- ularly that of medicine, inasmuch as it comprises the know- ledge of the mutual agencies, about lohich it is conversant. The habitual meditation onnatural causes, tends to banish superstition, and to abolish the frivolous practices riveted in ordinary minds by early impressions and imjwsing author- ities, or sanctified by immemorial usage and tradition. It is very remarkable, that theories though widely diflerent do often wonderfully coincide in matters of practice with each other and with well established empirical usages, eacli bending and conforming in order to do homage to truth and expe- rience.^^ Such are the natural qualifications, says the learned Doct. Blane, to constitute a judicious, and successful practitioner of 22 THE THOMSONIAN medicine. If Doct. B. had been inspired to have given a de- scription of Samuel Tliomson, his early impressions, education, natural abilities, turn of mind, promptitude and decision of character, his ability to treasure up useful knowledge in medicine, and accumulate facts, the power of comparing, combining and discriminating at a glance, at the moment, in the time of distress, he could not have entered more completely into every minutiae and have given a more perfect picture. VVe are led to exclaim with the poet " see thyself reflected herer If such is the opinion of a '■'•giant in medicine,'' in relation to empiricism, or Thom- sonis'm if you please, why should Thomson regard the thou- sands of pigmies in intellect which are flooding the country like the locust of Egypt, or like an overgrown incubus settled upon the peace, prosperiti/ and happiness of the community, and are described by Doct. Blane as follows : " There is nothing better known to those v/ho are conversant in medical practice, than that the most ignorant and shallow, those of the least learning, nay, those of no learning at all, are the most addicted to hypothetical reasoning, the most infected with presumption and self-conceit." Who will presume that the Doctor had no correct knowledge of these facts vSies fjly years of experience in the army, navy and royal family of Great Britain ? The presumptive evidence is then that the Thomsonians have the right track. Therefore, as in nautical phrase, after having run by dead reckoning, guided only by philosophy and reason, for near fifty years, we are happy to find on comparing notes with so experienced a seaman, that our calculations agree. The latitude, longitude, bearing, and distances of the breakers and quicksands, place us both upon the same and safe ground. Thus it is truly cheering to the weary mariner, who, after having been beat about by storms and tempests upon the track- less ocean without a guiding star from heaven, after the toils, dangers and doubts that iiarrass his mind haA^e passed, to find on the first glimpse of light from the firmament, that his calcu- lations are correct, and will compare with the most experienced seamen. He can pursue his usual course with renewed confi- dence that ultimately he will be crowned with success at the conclusion of the voyage. J. T. METERIA MEDICA. 23 ON VITALITY OR ANIMATION. " Soul* of surrounding worlds ! AVithout whose quickening glance, this cumbrous earth Would be a lifeless mass, inert and dead, And not, as now, the green abode of life." The subject of animation is not merely curious, but leads to usefulness. It has arrested the attention of philosophers in almost every age of the world. Some of the ancients reasoned thus on it : Matter of itself cannot move, yet it is evident all things change, and that nothing is lost; the sum total of mat- ter in tlie Universe remains perfectly the same ; and as it was the work of 0^I^7IP0TENCE to create something out of nothing, the same Omnipotence is required to reduce any thing back to nothing. It is apparent that there is an universal change, or mutation of all things into all, then must there be some one primary matter, common to all things out of which they were made — They went still further, and enquired into the moving principle^ the efficient cause, that is to say, that cause, which associates, the elements of natural substances, and which em- ploys them v/hen associated, according to their varions and peculiar characters. This moving principle they called the Anima. 3'Iimdi, the SrAil of the World. Thales, one of the seven wise men of Greece, maintained, that Water was the subtle principle that moved all things. He concluded that matter was chiefly dealt out in moisture ; that the seeds of plants so long as they are in a grov\nng state, are moist; and that a vegetable will grow to a considerable size from v/ater alone ; that the earth is refreshed, recruited, and made fruitful by water : — that the air itself is but an expansion, or expiration of water. He reminds us of the immense quanti- ties in the subterraneous reigns, v.'hence fountains, and river?, like so many veins in the body, convey water over the sur- face, and through the bowels of our globe, to vivify and sustain the whole. Heraclitus maintained a very different doctrine. He taught that ^re was the vivifying principle of all things. He allowed the truth of Thale's doctrine, but observed that j?re had such an universal sway in nature, that water itself v/r.s not with- out a mixture of it ; for that water grows hard and congeals into ice whsn fire leaves it, and is only restored to its fluidity by entering it again. He remarked that the whole mass of wa/- ters in the sea, was actually an ocean of fire, seeing there were not two distinct drops of water, which do not owe their fluidity • The sun. 24 THE THOMSONIAN to some portion of fire enclosed within them. So deeply root- ed was the doctrine that fire was the first or animating principle, that there were, and still are, whole nations who worship it as a deity.* An'aximenes contradicted both these philosophers ; and con- tended that Air was the vivifying principle and first mover of all things. He observed that ahhouCTh the water of Tliales could not subsist without the fire of HeraclUits, yet fire itself could not exist without Air. which was the very spirit of flame, and the breath of life : that no seed of vegetables, eggs of ani- mals, be they ever so ripe, or pregnant, and cherished with ever so kindly a warmth, will ever bring forth the embryos contain- ed in them, if they be totally deprived cf air. We shall see hereafter the necessity of attending to these powerfiil agents, Jire and air, in the resuscitation of those apparently dead by suspension, submersion, or frost. Let us now examine the subject of animation with the light afforded us by more modern Philosophers. From them we learn that matter is inert ; that any one par- ticle of matter left to itself will continue always in the same state, with regard to its motion or rest. There are, however, certain powers, which tico particles of matter have of acting on one another, as in gravitation and cohesion. We learn also that there is an attraction of cri/staUizatio7i, by which bodies when fluid become in time solid, and assume a particular figure ; that there is an attraction of magnetism, by which a piece of iron in certain circumstances, attracts another piece of iron ; that there is an attraction of electricity, by which a substance charged with more electric matter flies to another charged with less. There is moreover, chemical attraction, by which tvi"o particles of diflerent bodies rush together, and form one. If we add that most of these have their opposite repulsions, we can say that they are all the known properties of mere matter ; and there is nothing in them that can merit the name oi vitality. But there is in a growing vegetable a power beyond all this, viz : a power which ^r.?/ moves, and then conducts that latent process by which a seed becomes a plant. Now, every body capable of growing, has a certain internal •That venerable sect of Philosophers, the Stoics, taus^ht that there was one Infinite, eternal, almighty mind, which, diffused throuijh the whole universe of well ordered and regularly disposed matter, actuates every part of it, and is as it were the soul of" this vast body. The parts of this body they say, are of two sorts, viz. the Celestial, as the planets and fixed stars : and the Terres- trial, as the earth, and all the other elements about it. The celestial continue without change, or variation. But the whole sublunary world, is not only lia- ble to dissolution, but often hath been, and shall again be dissolved by fire; and that the reciprocal deaths, dissolutions and digestions, which support by turns all the substances which we see, are the efi'ects oCfire. MATERIA MEDICA. 25 adjustment, disposition, or arrangement of its matter, which is called organization ; and being capable of increasing in bulk, has a certain degree oivitality. There is a scale of life, stretch- ino" in uniform gradation from human excellence downwards, tilf it disappearsin a shade of ambiguity, in the living state of vegetables. Life, says the Bishop of Landaff, belongs alike to both the animal and vegetable kingdom ; and seems to depend on the same principle in both. Stop the motion of a fluid in an animal limb, by a strong ligature, the limb mortifies beyond the ligature and drops off; a branch of a tree, under like circum- stances, grows dry and rots away. Both animals and vegeta- bles are subject to be frost bitten and to consequent mortifica- tions ; both experience extravasation of juices from repletion, and pinings from inanition ; both can suffer amputation of limbs without being deprived of life, and in a similar manner both from a callus ; both are liable to contract disease by infec- tion ; both are strengthened by air and motion. Every seed of a plant is an organized body endowed with vessels, and contains under several membranes the plant in miniature. If this seed be put into the moist earth and a cer- tain degree oi heat applied, with access of air, the three princi- ples of the ancient Philosophers, the juice in these vessels will expand by the warmth ; and being thus once put in motion gradually increase, and grow up into a plant; which plant pro- duces a similar seed capable of propagating its kind forever. In like manner, an e^g is an organized body, which contains under several envelopements the chicken in miniature ; and may be considered as a womb, detached from the body of the parent animal, in which the embryo is just beginning to be formed ; if warmed to a certain degree, whether by the parent animal, or by art, the fluids which surround that speck in the egg called the punctuin vitcc, expand, and the little vessels swell and extend themselves ; and the motion or oscillation once began, it develops, by degrees, until it becomes a perfect animal, capable of all the fimctions common to its kind. The seed of the vegetable, and the egg of the animal would remain, or rather become effete and inanimate, unless some stimulus, some agent from, without^ excited or began a motion in them. But what is this agent, or stimulus? For that is the question. This stimulus, or animating principle in a natural body, does not depend on its organization, nor its figure, nor any of those inferior forms, which make up the system of its visible qualities ; but it is the power, " which not being that organization, nor that figure, nor those qualities, is yet able to produce, to pre- serve, and to employ tbem. It is therefore the -power, which 3 26 THE THOMSONIAN departing;, the body ceases to live, and the members soon pass into putrefaction and decay."* From an attentive observation of animated nature, we dis- cover that life is caused, and continued by something which acts from without ; and this somethin«; is, as lar as we can dis- cover, heat^ acting on the seed or egg. I say heat^ according to the common acceptation of the term: but to speak more phi- losophically, it is that subtle electric fluid, which Jills the iin- mejise space of the whole universe, pervades all bodies, and actuates every particle of matter. Heat is only one eti'ect of its motion. In whatever manner a susceptible, or irritable body is ope- rated upon by this exciting power, a certain quantity of it, or a certain energy, is assigned and belongs to every individual sys- tem upon the commencement of its living state. Now a living animal lias, besides those attributes common to all bodies, as solidity, extension and gravity, a peculiar some- thing, which distinguishes it from a dead one ; for a muscular fibre will contract, and that not by the power of gravitation, co- hesion, crystaUization, magnetism, or chemical attraction. That state of an animal fibre, in which a contraction, or os- cillation, is produced by the influx or contact of a stimulus, is called irritability, or snsceptibiliiy, and excitability. That principle in animals, on which sensation, motion, and all the animal powers depend, is called the Vis Vitalls. By the action of stimuli on the solids, particularly heat, the vis vitalis is excited and preserved ; when diminished it may be increased, and when suspeiided it onay be restored. Within every one of us, there is an innate and active poiver, which ceases not its work, when sense and appetite are asleep; which without any conscious co-ojieration of the man himself, carries him from a seed or embryo, to his destined magnitude. This is strictly speaking the Animal (Economy, and is as per- fect in the brutal Hottentot, as in the brightest genius of human kind. All this depends on a principle which some call the Vis Actuosa, others the Impetxcni Fociens. This power is innate. and is that by which man lives : it forms him, it nourishes him, moves him, animates him. By it he feels, he desires, refuses, sleeps and wakes ; nevertheless, it is totally different from the Mind ; For, In our bodies is found something of quite a different nature from what has been mentioned ; a power of thinking, reflect- ing, comparing, choosing, and representing to itself past, pre- sent and to come. This power in relation to its several opera- tions, is termed comprehension, understanding, reason, mind, • See page 14. MATERIA MEDICA. 27 will, freedom, or collectively, by the single word Soul. But to return to the innate principle of animation in man. Every body knows that although the child is formed, and lives, and grows, and moves in the womb of its mother, it never breathes there. It receives its animating principle, its heat, motion and life, from the mother, by a nerve and artery, which enters at its navel and conveys the blood to the heart of the in- fant, without ever passing through the lungs. The blood in this case goes directly on through the body of the heart, by an opening called the Foramen Ovale, and from thence to the Aorta, or great artery, by which it is driven to every part of its body ; so that the circulation, nutrition and life, are kept up with the motlier, as if they were not t\ro bodies but one. It is remarkable that the fruit of vegetables is, in like manner, nour- ished, and supported by a slender stalk issuing from the parent stock. When the child is born it becomes dependent on a neio prin- ciple for the continuance of its existence. When it passes from the watery habitation into the atmosphere, a new determination takes place ; and instead of the umbilical cord from the mother, the common air becomes the main-nprijig of all its actions and functions. When the child opens its mouih to cry, in rushes the air,* and expands the lungs. The blood, which had hitherto passed through the heart, now takes a wider circuit, and the foramen ovale closes forever. The lungs which had, till this time, been inactive, now first begin their functions, and they cease not their motion as long as life continues. Hence then it appears that next to the expanding power of heat, Respiration, or breathing is the privium mobile in the human machine. Atmospheric. air contains a certain vivifying spirit, Vfhich. is necessary to continue the lives of animals, and this, in a gallon of air, is said to be sufficient for one man during the space of a minute, and not much longer. Air that has lost its vivifying spirit, deadens fire, extinguishes flame, and destroys life. It is well known that there is a set of vessels in the lunges which contain air, and another which contain blood. The air in the lungs is in constant motion ; for either that which is at present contained in the cells, is passing through the wind-pipe into the atmosphere; ora fresh parcel is passing from the external atmosphere throuo-h the windpipe into those cells. The whole of this compound motion is called respiration. If the air continue at rest in the lungs for many minutes ; or if a man continue to respire the same air ; or if he breathe air that has served for the inflammation of fuel ; or pure fixable air, or any other vapour, excepting respirable air, he dies. • See page 14, atmospheric pressure. 28 THE THOMSONIAN From the organs of respiration ; or rather from what may be called the systema spirituale jineiimoniciim^ all the actions of the body, and all the power which it exerts are ultiniutely de- rived. It appears from a train of experiments, that the common air communicates a vivifyinj^ something to the blood, when drawn into the lungs, and gives to it a stimulating quality, by which it is fitted to excite the heart to action ; and that the chemical quality, which the blood acquires in i)assing through the lungs, is necessary to keep up the action of the heart, and consequent- ly the health of the animal. For no sooner are the lungs qui- escent than the heart ceases to contract, the blood stops, all the intellectual operations cease, sensation and voluntary motion are suspended, and all external signs of life disappear. All which are admirably explained by Dr. Edmund Goodwin. When the fluids in the human machine are thus at rest, what do we see? A mere carcase — we see the person dead.* But after what manner? Hero are all the solids, and all tlie fluids too. What then is lacking ? A gentle oscillation, or motion of the fluids, a circumgyration of the liquors ; for let there be by what means soever an oscillation, a concussion, or excitement of the nervous enerjjy, which may impel the fluids to move the lungs and heart, life immediately returns, with the usual circu- lation of the blood and other fluids, heat, colour, agility, cogita- tion, and every vital, natural, and human action. If it be asked, roJiat is that vivifying something which, through the medium of the atmosphere, gives this oscillation or concussion, and continues life ? I answer ; it is a portion of tJiat suhtile electric fluid, which fills the immense space of tlie wliole universe, 'pervades all bo- dies, and actuates every parti ch of matter. By it the j)heno- mena of 'magnetism, fire, and light are produced ; and on it the various and astonishing phenomena 0/ Vegetation and Animation depend. If it be asked further, what and where is the source of this all powerful agent ? I answer, the Sun is the efficient cause of the motions of this fluid, and the various j)henomena of our system are the effects of these ^notions. I am aware that analogical arguments are probable, but not conclusive ; and that plausible inferences from well known facts in brutes, have occasioned many errors respecting man. Yet I cannot but believe from what we observe in the resuscita- * There are several instances of people buried alive, even in this country. Oh reader ! But that I am forbid To tell the secrets oi the prison-house, "| I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up th}' soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres. X The Grave. MATERIA MEDICA. 29 tion of swallows, after lyine: four months in the bottom of a pond; of snakes frozen stiff as a stick; of flies corked up in a bottle of Madeira in Virginia, and brought to life again in Great Britain ; I say, I cannot help believing from these and similar facts, tliat it is possible to restore to life a human being who has been frozen some days. We have well authenticated accounts of not only birds frozen to death (as it is called) but of the hu- man species too, who were even for days, without pulse, breath- ing, or the least natural heat, and yet resuscitated.* In this case, the application of heat should be conducted, says Dr. Goodxcin, on the same plan, which nature points out for the hybernating, or torpid animal ; that is to say ; it should be applied gradually and uniformly. It may be raised to 98 de- grees of Farenheit, but not above 100. To blow one's own breath into the lungs of another, is an absurd and pernicious practice. The consideration of the facts just related, have led some to conceptions of the *Som7, which have puzzled them, and created doubts rather unfavourable to the opinions entertained by the majority of christians. '• What is the condition, say they, of the soul all this time." — In animal bodies there are only two gener- al conditions, life and death ; and if by death we understand the privation of life, there can be no intermediate state between them, says Dr Goodwin ; for no human art can communicate life to dead matter. Dr. Whytte thinks it is not only probable, but even demonstrable, that the soul does not immediately leave the body upon a total stoppaoe of the heart's motion, and of the circulation of the blood, that is, upon what we usually call deaths but that it continues for some time at least present with it, and ready to actuate it. He thinks, with Gassendi, Dr. H. More, Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. S. Clarke, and some other of the greatest philosophers of the last and present age, that the soul is extended. The apparently dead carcase, therefore, which has lain three or four hours under water, is as much alive as a sound hen's es,g ; they v/ould both putrify and dissolve if let alone ; but ap- ply a due and uniform degree oiheat to either, and you change the seemingly dead body into a live and active animal. The union of soul with body, is the most abstruse contempla- tion that can exercise the mind of man. "How is it that one painful idea alter the course of the blood! Who can explain how the blood in return, carries, its irregularities to the mind ! What incomprehensible mechanism has subjected the organs to sentiment and thought ! What, says Voltaire, is that unknown Jiuid, which is quicker and more active that light, and flies in • See the writings of Rcdi and Whytte. The Flora Siberica. Also Payer Knatom. 30 THE THOMSONIAN the twinkling of an eye, through all the channels of life ; pro- duces memory, sorrow or joy, reason or frenzy, recalls with hor- ror what one would wish to forget, and makes of a thinking be- ing, an object of admiration, or a subject of pity and tears !" The intellectual scheme, says the autlior of Hermes., which never forgets Deity, postpones every thing corporeal to the PRIMARY MENTAL CAUSE. It is here it looks tor the origin of intelligible ideas, even of those, which exist in human capaci- ties. For though sensible objects may be the destined medium, to awaken the dormant energies of man's undprstanding, yet are those energies tliemselves, no more contained in sense, than the explosion of a cannon in the spark which gave it fire. This then, like all other sound philosophy, leads us at lasf, Dp to the GREAT FIRST CAUSE, the ENS ENTIUM, the SUPREME AUTHOR OF ALL, who is evcr to be adored with the most pro- found reverence by the reasonable part of this creation.* BOTANY: OR, VEGETABLE MATTER AND ORGANIZATION. -" Who, ere the morn of time, On wings outstretch'd, o'er Chaos liung sublime; Warm'd into life the bursting Egg of Night, And gave young Nature to admiring Light. We shall now present our readers with a concise History of Botany from the earliest ages, until this Science came finished from the hands of our great master LinuEeus. * It would seem that the Parent of Universal Nature has ordained, that to a certain degree of exquisite organization tlie soul should adhere; for between organization and function there exists a coi\nexion proportioned and insepara- ble. When that subtile organiziiticn is ruined, the soul flies back again, like quenched fire, to the source whence it came. If so, then are not our bodies vessels, immersed in the vivifj'ing spirit, the " anima mundi?" If the mate- rials, which compose these vessels be arranged after a certain manner, life, or the spirit adheres to us. If the vessel is cracked, to a certain degree, it can hold no water. If the body be to a certain degree marred, it can hold no lif'e. If the deranged organization banish life, for fifteen or twenty minutes, as in per- sons who have lain that time under water; and if, bv communication of warmth, and agitation of the lungs, and of the heart, life should be restored, what shall we say then? where? and in what state was the soul, or immortal part? We can only say, that being still immersed in the anima mundi, the body is ren- dered, Ijy the means used, capable of imbibing again the needful portion of that spirit in whicli " we live, move, and have our being." I say, imbibing again; {oT in the heg'inmng '' He breathed info man the breath of life, and the conse- quence was, " he became a living soul." We are confident that there is something in us that can be without us, and •will be after us ; what it was before us we know not ; nor can we tell how it entered us. MATERIA MEDICA. 31 BoTavT] in the Greek language means an herb, whence is de- rived botany, which at this day signifies the science relating to vegetables, for which the ancients had no name; as it was not in their days erected into a regular science. Although botany, as a science, may appear to some a study too dull for an exalted and refined genius; yet if we cast our eyes back on the earlier ages, and trace this branch of knowl- edge down to our own times, we shall find that it has been cul- tivated by those of the brightest parts, and fostered by men of great distinction. We need only mention him who is called by way of pre-eminence "^Ae ivise many Though born to a throne and destined to rule over a powerful people, yet was Solomon so captivated with the charms of botany, that he is said in the scriptures to have known plants ^^from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that spriiigeth out of the ivallf and we find in his ''book of wisdom," that he not only ^^knew the diversities of plants, but the virtues of their roots.^' Solomon flourished about 170 years after the siege of Troy, or in the year of the world 2129, and is said to be the first bo- tanist on our records of mankind. But on examining the old- est book we have, the Bible, we find an account of a plan for establishing a Botanical Garden as early a 899 years before Christ. The account of it is contained in less than three ver- ses in the first book of Kings; — jbid it came to pas5, after these things, that Naboth, the Jezreelite, had a vineyard, which loas in Jezreel, hard, by the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. ^«c^ Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard that 1 m,ay have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near to my house. And Naboth said to Ahab, God forbid ! But in order to force it from him, they set two sons of Belial to bear soilness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king : and they stoned hiin so that he died. But divine justice, which forever pursues dis- honorable and base deeds, avenged the cause of persecuted Na- both ; for the dogs in the streets licked up the blood of the two principal contrivers of this plot. We find no mention of a botanist, from the glorious Solo- mon down to the venerable father of medicine, Hippocrates. He gives us the names and virtues of two hundred and thirty- four plants, but no description by which we can ascertain what they were. Cotemporary with the father of physic, lived Cra- tevas, who he calls the prince of botanists. A considerable space after him appeared Theophrastus ; who wrote ten books on plants, of which nine have reached our hands. These merit the highest encomiums. Theophrastus was a disciple of Aristotle, and flourished in the third century : he may justly be considered as the father of JZ THE THOMSONIAN botaily. He treats of the vegetable life ; and the anatomy and construction of plants, and of their origin and propagation. He divides vegetables into seven classes, which division is founded on the generation of plants, their place of growth, their size, as trees and shrubs, their use, and their lactescence, which last circumstance respects every kind of liquor, of whatever color, that flows in great abundance from them when cut. This golden monument of botany cannot be too strongly recommend- ed to the curious. The Romans were devoted to Victoria ; a deity so adored by that rough people, that they paid little attention to natural his- tory. Pliny says that they were strangers to botany till Pom- pey conquered Mithridates. the most philosophic king of the age. His observations on the medicinal virtues of plants fall- ing into the hands of Pompey, were, by his orders, translated into Latin. Dioscorides, tliough by birth a Grecian, lived un- der the Roman empire. He was the next botanist of note after Theophrastus. It is highly probable, that several botanists lived between the time of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, a space of nearly 400 years; yet if we except Antonius Mnsa, Euphorbius, and Jilmilius Macer, who was a soldier, poet, and botanist, and the first who clothed botany in poetry, we find no mention of any one who paid attention to this science. Dios- corides mentions about six hundred plants: four hundred and ten of which he described, together with their medicinal vir- tues; about five hundred of them are mentioned by the father of botany. Dioscorides arranged plants, from their uses in medicine and domestic economy, into four classes, viz. aromat- ics, alimentary vegetables^ medicinal, and vinous; a vague and fallacious distinction. Pliny, in his immense compilation, called the history of the world, mentions four hundred plants more than are to be found in Dioscorides ; and yet he lived but about forty years after him. lie, who wishes to see all the natural history of the an- cients at a glance, may consult Pliny to advantage. The famous Galen flourished about 130 years after Christ. He was, for that day, a great traveler, and might have increas- ad the catalogue of plants ; but he contented himself in des- canting on the medicinal virtues of those mentioned by his predecessor. After the sixth century, learning was almost entirely abolish- ed by the Goths. Whilst a swarm of northern barbarians were destroying taste and learning in the western empire, the Ara- bians who were followers of the renowned IMahomet, over-ran the eastern. By conquering Greece, they monopolized all the writings of that famous nation. During 400 years there was no attempt to draw from its obscurity the botany of the ancients. MATERIA MEDICA. 33 At lena^th one of the Saracen califs ordered the Greek books on medicine to be translated into Arabic, or their mixed Saracen ians^naoe; and botany, which is a branch of medicine, attract- ed their notice. Serapio collected the Greek and Arabian au- thors, who had written on plants ; and after him followed Razis, Avicenna, Averhoes, Actnarins, and several others of less note. They were more attentive to the materia medica in general than to plants in particular. To them we owe the knowledge of sugar, of distilled spirits, of rheubarb, senna, and most of the milder cathartics. After a dark and dismal period, emphatically styled the bar- barous or dark ages, a dawn of light began to appear, first, in Italy, and from thence, a second time, over the world, when Medicine, and her hand-maid Botany, emerged from the gloom of barbarism; for in 1440 Theodore Gaza, a Greek refugee at Rome, resuscitated philosophy by making elegant translations of Aristotle and Theophrastus, who were commented on in the sequel by Scaliger and Stapel. Dioscorides was likewise trans- lated into pure and beautiful Latin by a "Venetian nobleman. John Parkinson wrote his Paradisus Terrestris in 1629. He was apothecary to the king. The history of flowers he gave at great length. In his Theatrum Botanicum he has com- prehended more species of plants, than were to be found in any history of plants published before liis time. Among public gardens, in which plants were demonstrated by professors, that of Padua is the oldest. It commenced about the year 1530. From that period, professors of botany have been established in almost every school of medicine. The famous Cosmo de Mef/ici5 founded a botanic garden at Pisa ; and committed it to the care oi Andreas Casalphms, a celebrated physician, botanist, and anatomist, the father of the botanic system and professor of botany at Padua. Prosper Alpimis v/as nearly as eminent in botany as in physic. He made a large and rare collection of plants in Egypt, and afterwards read lectures on botany at Venice. The famous Henry the fourth of France founded the botanic garden at Montpelier in 1598; the care of which has success- ively been committed to distinguished botanists, who were also physicians. Francis the first was a great admirer of botany, and a lib- eral encourager of every plan that could improve and ad- vance it. Lewis the fonrtee7ith founded a noble garden in the suburbs of St. Victoris at Pans, and put it under the care of Heroard, his chief physician, and Guide Borossceas, his physician in or- dinary. It is about 150 years since botanic gardens were established 34 THE THOMSOWIAN in England. Those at Chelsea and Oxford are the most an- cient. About the same time, botanic gardens were formed in Holland. The garden at Leyden is the most celebrated. The great Boerhaave was professor of botany there, at the same time that he filled Europe with his fame as a professor of physic. Prior to this period two illustrious brothers appeared, who alone have done more for the advancement of botany, tlian all the rest together, who preceded and followed them, until Tourne- fort. Rare geniuses ! says the celebrated Rousseau, whose vast knowledge and solid labors, consecrated to botany, rendered them worthy of that immortality which they have acquired. For. till this part of natural history foils nito oblivion, the names of John and Caspar Bauhin will live along with it in the memory of mankind. Each of these indefatigable men, par nobile fratrum^ undertook an universal history of plants and to add to it a synomjmy, or exact list of the names that every plant bore in all the writers v/hich preceded them. John nearly completed his undertaking in three volumes folio, but did not live to publish the whole. Caspar labored forty years, but the life of man is too short for the execution of a plan so extensive. Their works are still the guide to all those, who wish to consult ancient authors on botany. John Bauhin was born at Lyons in 1541, and died in 1624. Caspar was born 1560, and died 162-4. After this period, scarcely an author wrote on medicine, but wrote more or lesson botany; of these we must not omit Fuch- sius, who in 1530 published five hundred and ten figures of plants ; nor Rondeletius, a physician of Montpelier. Nor may we forget Turner a learned English physician, who published the first history of plants in English, with most of the figures of Fuchsius. He gave the names of the plants in Latin, Greek, German, and French, in alphabetical order. Hyeeronymus Bone, a German, was the first of the moderns who has given a methodical distribution of vegetables. In his history of plants published 1532 he divides the eight hundred species there described, into three classes, founded on their qualities, habit, figure and size ; Clusius endeavored soon after to establisli the natural distinction of Theophrastus, which was into trees, shrubs, and under-shrubs. Others attempted to char- acterize plants by the roots, stems and leaves, but all were found insufficient. If Natural History forms, as Lord Bacon says, the basis of all the sciences^ it is certainly a study of the first importance. It is of more importance than even Natural Philosophy, which only aims to teach those quiescent forms of Nature, which all fjodies indiscriminately possess, as extension, figure, durability, MATERIA MEDICA. 35 and vis inertia : whereas the natural historian describes and aims to explain the growing, or living state of organized bodies, as well as their structure after life has departed. It is not, as they conceive merely, a dry description of tiiat which strikes the eye only of the spectator. The Natural His- torian is led to explore the origin, or primordinm of organized bodies; and to trace their gradual developeraent to a perfect plant or animal, and to expatiate on their accretion, or growth up to their destined magnitude ; and from thence to their dissolu- tion. The naturalist treats not only of matter^ as an ele- mentary constituent in composite substances, which appertains in common to all bodies, but he is compelled to investigate also that efficient cause, or movins' principle which associates these elements ; and which employs them when associated, accord- ing to their various and peculiar characters. Within this wide view of Nature, its historian discovers, or imagines that he dis- covers a division of things, which he calls the Three Kinct- DOMS of Nature, namely — the Mineral, the Vegetable, and the Animal. One of them only attracts our attention, at this time, viz. the Vegetable. We wish to give to the term i?o^ony a wider scope than is gen- erally allowed to it. We would define Botany to be that branch of Natural History which teaches the anatomy, physi- ology and economy of vegetables. We shall give our doctrine a dress partaking more of the popular, than of the scientific garb ; as much of the former, as not to disguise this beautiful handmaid of Medicine ; and yet not so divested of the latter, as to displease the eye of the most rigid disciple of the Linnasan school. AVe avow Linn.^us to be our lawful chief; and his Philosnphia Botanica our rally- ing point and standard. In acknowledging him our teacher and leader in the field of Botany, we wish to refer the learned reader to his admirable writings for the reasons of this our at- tachment. Whoever casts his eyes on the surface of the earth, in June, will .see that it is covered and adorned with a beautiful green carpet of vegetables, which carpet is spread anew every year. If after viewing and admiring its agreeable effect, and after re- flecting on its annual renovation, the student of nature should take the pains of examining any individual plant, of which this carpet is composed, he will find that the stem, or trunk of each vegetable is not lilve a lump of clay, or piece of dough ;: but that it has an internal adjustment, arrangement, or disposi- tion of its matter into tubes and vessels, which is called for that reason, organization. If he view the plant through a micro- scope, he will discover in it different orders of vessels, like those of an animal ; and should he submit it to a careful and 36 THE THOMSONIAN nice anatomical investigation, he will be convinced that a plant posseses a vascniar system. If he compares it with those things which belong to the otlier two kingdoms, he will see that a plant occupies a middle space between animals and minerals. On still closer examination he will find that it partakes of the nature of both. If he pluck it up by the roots, he perceives that its appearance is directly changed, for it loses its turges- cency, color and specific odor ; or in other words, it fades, wilts and dies, and is finally decomposed. Hence the inquirer learns that a growing plant is not only a regularly organized body, possessing avascular system, but is, while attached to the ground by its roots, a living one. That this view of a plant is agreea- ble to truth may be inferred from consulting the best authors on Botany : thus the illustrious Boerhaave defines a plant to be a hydraulic body, containhig vessels, replete with dif- ferent juices, by means of which it derives the matter of its nutriment and growth ; to which he miofht have added, pos- sessing the power of producing its kind forever by seed. Although agriculture and gardening are of prime impor- tance to civilized man, they have continued to be only arts, consisting of detached facts, and vague opinions, without a true history to connect them. And the first step towards giving Botany the stability of a science is to submit a plant to anatomical investigation, as we do animals ; that being, says Dr. A. Hunter, the only rational method of arrivinof at any certainty concerning the laws of the vegetable economy ; and witliout it, agriculture, that useful, important, and hon- ourable profession, must ever remain a vague and uncertain study. In teaching Botany, different authors have adopted different plans. Some begin with a description of the leaf; then of the stem ; next the flower ; afterwards the fruit, strictly so called, and lastly the seed. Others commence with the flower, then they describe the fruit and seed conjunctly, and lastly the root. We shall pursue a difterent order. We shall begin with des- cribing a seed ; after demonstrating its structure, we shall show that every seed contains, under several membranes, the future plant in miniature. There we may see by the help of a microscope, that the embryo plant has, not only a little radicle, which is hereafter to become the root, but also two diminutive leaves, which hereafter become the herb. We shall then en- deavor to show how the embryo plant, when placed in a due degree of moisture, and a just degree of heat, and at such a proper depth in the ground, as not to exclude it from the vivi- fying influence of the air, gradually unfolds itself; the radicle extending itself into a root, which attaches itself to the earth, and the little leaf aspiring into a stem. We shall show how MATERIA MEDICA. 37 the foetal plant is supported by that part of the seed, which an- swers to the albumen, or white of an egg, until it is able to ap- pear above ground, when this temporary nutritive part drops off and decays, leaving the plant, in future, to ^row, and to flourish, by imbibing solid nourishment from its mother earth ; and by inspiring vital air ; and by inhaling the celestial light. Delightful as Natural History really is, tlie- study of it is not here recommended to amuse the idle, or gratify the fanciful. We Americans dwell in an agricultural country ; and agricul- ture is the sure and certain support of a nation. It gives to a country the only riches that it can call its own. Tacitus says, that the Romans were several times reduced nearly to famine. by dependig on Egypt and Africa for gram; instead of relying on the prolific vigor of their own Italian soil : and thus says this celebrated historian, were the lives of the Roman people committed to the caprice of the winds and waves. If commerce bind the world together in a golden chain, that chain is fre- quently broken by the wars of men, and by the wars of the ele- ments ; while agricnlture gives us the staff of life, and the chief support of our independence. Commerce is congenial to all of us who sojourn near the sea; and is indeed the grand source of wealth, comfort and power : but with riches, commerce too often imports effeminat- ing luxuries; whereas agriculture is an athletic task, kindly imposed upon man by a beneficent Creatok, as the best means of preserving his healti; and his innocence. Now the ground-work of this salutiferous and honorable pro- fession is the science of Botany, in the enlarged sense, which we have given to this branch of Natural History. Some complain that the science of Botany is incumbered, and overloaded with technical terms. Our great master Lin- N.'Eus wrote in Latin. Sometimes he gives generic names com- pounded of two entire Latin words; but he uses commonly, such cofupound words in the Greek language, as are more ex- pressive as well as more beautiful. Beginners are sometimes daunted by this terrific style. They are apt to conclude that good sense has not fair play when thu§ oppressed by hard words. They do not perhaps know that Linn^us has simpli- fied the botanical language of his predecessors. Before his day, we had HydrophyUocMr poderidrou , and Slachyarpogophora. To convey botanical descriptions in a plain, simple, yet intelli- gible languaofo to the merely English reader is a difficulty still to be encountered. There is another difficulty of a more deli- cate nature. The sexual system of Botany is founded on a discovery that there is in vegetables as in animals, a distinction of sexes. But there are those who think that Linnteus has drawn the analogy too close and continued it too long. The 38 THE THOMSONIAN. analogy between the structure and functionsof the higher class of animals and vegetables is remote ; but the analogy between the higher order of vegetables and those outskirts of animated nature, the Vermes, and Insects, is closer than is commonly known. SEED AND FOOD OF PLANTS. In describing a Plant, we shall adopt a different order from that commonly pursued by botanists. We deem it more agree- able to the laws of botanical philosophy, to begin with the de- scription of a seed ; and to trace its gradual development into a perfect plant, producing seed again, then to reverse this pro- cedure, as is commonly done, by treating of the seed last. A seed of a plant and an egg of a bird are so analagous in their structure and economy, that we may, without impropriety, use the same term for either. By a seed then we mean an or- ganized particle, produced by a plant, or animal, from which new plants, and new animals are generated. All seeds of plants and all eggs of animals have essentially the same structure, and the same mode of development. A perfect, or fecundated hen's egg is an organized body, per- vaded by vessels, and endowed with that humble portion of life, or capability of living, which, in the scale of vitality, we denote by the term excitability ; and is replete with a movea- ble fluid, and inclosing, under divers membranes, the animal ni miniature. The egg-shell is almost entirely filled with a glu- tinous substance, laid up for tbe nourisliment of the fostal ani- mal : the one is called the albumen, or v/hite ; the other, vitel- lu9, or yolk. In the latter is the cicali icula, or punclu?}i vita;, which is about the size of the seed of the vetch, or small pea, and has a considerable resemblance to the pupil of the eye. It is in this spot that the first palpitation, or signs of life appear, in consequence of the apphcation of heat. If the etrg be kept in a certain degree of warmth, whether by the natural heat of tlie parent animal, or by art, as in stoves, it occasions an increased action of that vis vita, or living pow- er, which every organized body, susceptible of stimulus, natur- ally possesses; and which, being a momentary distension of the smallest vessels, is similar to a blush, or ratber tliat state of them, which immediately precedes the slightest inflammation. Motion thus begun, the vessels, surrounding and pervading tbe pxiuctuin vilcc, expand ; and tbe embryo appears spontaneously to unfold itself, until by slow degrees it develops, like a flower, and becomes a perfect animal, capable of producing a similar Now every seed of a plant is, in like manner, an organized METER [A MEDICA. 39 body, endowed with vessels, and contains, under several mem- branes, the plant in miniatnre, which seed requires a due por- tion of moisture, and a just degree of heat for exciting the dor- mant vegetative life, which distending gradually the vessels, expands Uie several membranes, and develops the plant. The embryo plant lies in a sleeping state, though alive ; but exerts not its lite, until it is put in proper circurnstcvnces, which pro- per circumstances are moisturejieat, and some exposure to the influence of the air. Every seed of a vegetable, and every e^g of an animal hith- erto examined; are in structure essentially the same. To grow, that is, to nourish itself, by changing a foreign matter into its own substance, and to continue its kind, is the end and aim of every living organized body. Let us examine the seed of a vegetable, that we may see how far such a body is adapted to effect these important purposes. The Windsor bean, or. as wg call it in this country, the English hean, from its size and shape, affords us the fairest example. .If, when such a bean is fully ripe, you cut through its membranes lengthwise, in the direction of the eye, hilian, or little scar, it will naturally sepa- rate into halves. Simple maceration will have the same effect without cutting. These smooth and equal parts of the bean are called seedlobes by gardeners, and cotyledons by botanists. Of tiiose seeds, that we use for food, they form the more farina- ceous or nutritive part: thus in wheat, rye, and Indian-corn, they form the meal, while the investing membranes form the bran. The most important part of ths seed is the embryo ; and the most important part of the embryo is the corculum, or little heart, punctum vita°, or speck of life ; because at this point in the lien's e^g the first pulsation of life is discovered ; but in the seed of a plant there is no palpable motion. The whole semi- nal apparatus contained within the external membrane of the bean, and which corresponds with the albumen, and viielhts, in the bird's ecrg^ conspires, when acted upon by heat, to elicit the latent spark of vegetative life ; and to nourish afterwards the unborn plant. When the miniature plant is separated from the seed lobes, we can easily discern the leaf which is called the plvimila, or that part which is hereafter to beconie the herb of the bean ; and likewise the rostellufn, or radicle, which creeping down- wards becomes the root. The cotyledons, or lobes of the bean taken collectively, without any discrimination of albumen, or viielius, appear through a microscope, to be of a glandular struc- ture ; and to have a regular system of vessels, resembling the placental veins in quadrupeds ; and to run together, like them, in a {Q'fi trunks, precisely at that point of the lobe where the embryo grows to the cotyledons. 40 THE THOMSONIAN Botanists define cotyledons to be the lateral, bibulous, per- ishable lobes or placenta of the seed, destined to nourish the corculum, and then to fall off. Now, these lobes afford a nutritive juice, resembling milk, for the sustenance of the unborn plant : but when the tender veo^etable is so far ad- vanced as to merit the name of an infantile plant, these evan- escent lobes are converted into a pair of thick seed-leaves, which compose a shield of defence, until the plant has fairly and firmly taken root in the earth ; then these two protect- mg leaves drop off and decay. And now the little, erect plant, depends, like the just born infant, on a new principle for its future existence. From what has been said, it is apparent, that when a hen's egg is alive, it is fit to be eaten ; but if killed, whether by too much heat, or by too great cold, or by violent con- cussion, or by being sat upon by the bird, and then aban- doned, it soon becomes rotten. So in like manner a seed, though kept several years, is not a dead substance, like a pebble or a pearl ; but is a body regularly organized, and arranged harmoniously into a system of vessels, glands, and membranes, and it is moreover, like a prolific egg, aUve, or at least in a state or fitness to be acted upon by certain ex- ternal agents, which agents are fire, air and water. Some seeds will retain the vegetative life a great number of years. Indian corn has vegetated after keeping it upwards of seventy years. We neglected to mention that there was a smvill quantity of vital air in a sack, bladder, or partition, at the big end of every bird's egg; and we presume that there is a portion of the same kind of fluid in every seed; or it may be oxygen in a concentrated state, which is after- wards combined with caloric in the process of incubation. It appears also, that the most important, nay the essenlial part of that organized body denominated a seed, is the embryo; for it is that part alone which grows into a new plant, be- ginning again a new prog;eny. It likewise appears, that all the other parts of the seed are subservient to this ; and that they are employed chiefly in converting the farina, or mealy substance of the seed into a lactescent fluid, which is con- veyed by the lactiferous vessels to the embryo for its nour- ishment, which, like the infantile animal, is supplied with milk, until it can stand alone m the ground. AUhoui::h nature has establislied a marked uniformity in the internal structure of seeds, she nevertheless displays an as- tonishiu": variety in their external appearance. Neither math- ematician nor painter can ever convey adequate ideas of their different shapes and variegated colors. Some shine like sil- ver, and some like gold ; whilst others appear like little balls of fire. It is remarkable that seeds are seldom of the same color MATERIA MEDICA. 41 with the flower, which produced them. Seeds of a deep green aj'e rare ; blue still more uncommon. Beside the essential parts of a seed already described, there are certain accessory parts, which, whilst they add to the beauty of the seeds, serve important purposes in their migration : such, for example, are the feathery crowns, or aigrettes^ which serve as wings to waft them to a distance, as we see in the Dande- lion, Lettuce, and Thistle. Who, walking the fields, has not observed. Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze, A whit'ning shower of vegetable down ' Amusive float? Thomson. If seeds are diversified in shape and color, they vary as re- markably in their size. One thousand and tiuelve seeds of the tobacco plant weigh but a single grain, while a single cocoa-nut weighs several pounds. The Ferns dx^ax from other plants in having their seeds in the leaves. They are very small, and when mclosed in the seed vessel, they altogether form a round ball with a notched band or rim of a beautiful structure. They have some resemblance to the fingers shut up, or clenched so as to form the fist; and when the seeds are quite ripe and dry, they become very elastic ; in which state the seed vessel bursts open, not unlike the suddenly throwing open of the fingers, in changing their position from the clenched fist to that of the open palm. This sudden action throws the seed to a consider- able distance ; and then we see the two hemispheres, which composed the ball, in the situation of two empty cups. This is well expressed by an engraving in Swammerdani's book of Nature. PABULUM, OR INOURISHMENT OF PLANTS. " Hence when a Monarch, or — a Mushroom dies, A while extinct Ih' organic matter lies; But — as a few short hours, or years revolve, Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve; Born to new life iinnumber'd insects pant — New buds surround the microscopic plant. Temfle of Nature. Natural things which are common, are disregarded because they are common : while rare and monstrous productions are gazed at with idle curiosity and stupid admiration. What is more common than a seed or grain ? Yet how few give them- selves the exertion of inquiring what a seed really is ! If a seed or grain answer the whole purpose for which the farmer sup- poses it was created, that of fattening his cattle, and feeding his family, he neither searches into its curious structure, nor in- quires into its physiology. Nor is this to be wondered at. But that the lawyer, the physician, and the minister of religion 4 42 THE THOMSOMAN should fifo on throusrh life as most of them do, without once stopping to inquire into the laws by which the acorn becomes an oak, is to the botanist surprising! There are few httle things in nature more worthy of attention than a seed. It is a system^ or complete whole, wrought up into a narrow compass, retaining a living principle. By system we mean a combina- tion of many tilings reduced to regular dependence and co-op- eration. If we contemplate closely the vegetative life and growth in a seed, our admiration will increase at every view, so that our baffled reason will be compelled to seek a solution of its difficulties in a Power anterior to Water — Air — Fire — or Li^ht. Some of the wise ancients were so impressed with the philosophy of the e^g, or seed, that they taught that the tnirndcme system itself sprung from an eo^^r^ hatched by JSlox. It is only organized bodies that are capable of growth. Every organized body grows; and beside tliem none. There are accretions among minerals ; and concretions and crystalliza- tions without end ; but these do not rise up to our idea of ^/•026'M, which implies matter organized into vessels, containing a moveable succus, or juice, operated upon by a very gentle heat; whereas the changes wrought in the mineral kingdom, are commonly by a very violent one. If we knew how a single fibre grew, we could tell how the whole plant or animal grows; for the bodies of both of them are only assemblages of fibres dif- ferently formed and combined. Growth always operates by nutrition; and nutrition incorporates into the fibre, external matter, or matter taken in, ah extra, and this process always requires heat. Now all bodies in nature are imbued, surround- ed, and penetrated in every way by fire, or rather caloric, whicli is a better and more expressive term for that all powerful agent which transforms solids into fluids, and fluids into vapor. Although heat, or caloric, which is the fluid matter of heat, expands the c.^^ and causes it to grow up into a living animal ; and although it agitates and gently unfolds the plant, causing it to grow from an acorn up to the magnificent oak, yet this query arises naturally in the mind of the young student of na- ture, xvhat is the pahuhtm, or matter, which adds to the bulk, and increases, to a certain size, the vegetable and the animal? For it is evident that heat only causes an absorption of a fo- reign matter. Nutrition, or growth, implies life; but in some vegetables, this life is so low in the scale of vitality as to be almost down to where Nature has marked her degree of o. That an animal receives its pabulum or matter of nourish- ment and increase from without, is known to every one from the irresistible calls of hunger, and the destruction that follows famine. But that plants were nourished, and sustained by food^ in nearly the same way, has not been so generally under- MATERIA MEDICA. 43 Stood. The animal has a warm receptacle, or stomach, of about 98 detjrees of heat, with a due quantity of moisture, and pecu- har compound motion ; whereas the plant has no such recep- tacle, nor any other stomach than the cold earth, which is about 53 degrees of Fahrenheit. The possession of a stomach lays the discriminating line between the animal and vegetable king- dom. All other distinctions fail us. Besides air and water, to which we may add fire, animals stand in need of aliment, or food taken by the mouth, digested by the stomach, forming there a milky liquor, called chyle. The constituent parts of the chyle of quadrupeds and birds, as well as most other animals, are, water— sugar — nmcilage — oil — cai'hon — phosphorus, and calcareous earth. The con- stituent parts of the sap-juice, which is the chyle of vegetables, is, in like manner, water — sugar — mucilage — oil — carbon — phosphorus, and calcareous earth.* Now, sap-juice, or the chyle of vegetables, is absorbed from the earth, by the roots, which have a peculiar structure, adapting them to that opera- tion ; and from this juice, farther elaborated, refined and exalt- ed, is formed the various fluids in the stem, leaf, flower, fruit and seed. Some plants can extract, or compose these nutritive substances from water, and apparently from the air alone. We however find by repeated experiments, that there are certain substances, which contribute more to the production of this vegetable chyle than others. Let us then inquire what these materials are, that afford the food of 'plants? The suliject is not merely curious, but of high importance to our country ; for if we can ascertain the appropriate aliment or food of any particular family of our most useful vegetables, we shall be able to increase their size with as much certainty as a farmer fattens his cattle by giving them corn. It is known from experiment that a plant will grow in sand alone moistened with water, purified by distillation from all ear- thy particles, and m the purest air. But a plant will grow better in a mixture of satid and clay, in which the tenacity is adapted to the pushing power of its roots, than in sand alone ; and it will grow better still, if a pro- per quantity of water be applied. But with both these advan- tages it will not flourish so well as in a rich soil. If a plant be put in a proper mixture of sand and clay, and duly supplied with water, it will grow better than in the same mixture, exposed to the hazards of the weather, and the chances of being too moist or too dry ; but it will grow still better in a rich soil. There is, therefore, in a I'ich soil, something inde- * Calcareous earths are marie of all sorts, limestone, chalk, plaster of Paris, and all earths, formed from the bodies of animals, especially the shells offish. 44 THE THOMSONIAN pendent of texture, or the retention of water, which contributes to the flourishing of plants. From observing the fertih'ty after the ground was divided by the plough, some have imagined that the earth was the food of plants. To this opinion succeeded another equally erroneous, that water was their aliment, when in fact it is only the vehicle of their nourishment. The upper stratum of earth, or garden mould, contains some articles that are soluble in water, and some that are not. Those which are insoluble in water are, according to Fohdyce, sa7id, clay, calcareous earthy rnagncfIAN maceration in water, detaches these plates or coatings from each other ; when they resemble the leaves of the books of the an- cients ; whence arose the name of Zi6er. The liber is softer aixl more juicy than the cortex. It grows, however, harder and harder, until it assumes the quality and name of lignum, or wood. Between the liber and lignum is interposed a peculiar sub- stance called alburnum by Linnceus, blea by the British, are- bier by the French, and sap-ivood by the American yeomanry. It is whiter and softer than either the cortex or liber. It is not at all times easy to distinguish between the alburnum and the wood, the structure being similar. Indeed, the alburnum ap- pears to be but the infantile stage of the wood, progressing from a mucilagenous to the adult state. We have said that the liber grows harder and harder till it assumes the quality and name of lignum; but Du Hamel says that in certain circumstances the wood is capable of producing new bark, A cherry tree stripped of its bark exuded from the whole surface of its wood, in little points, a gelatinous matter, which gradually extended ov^er the whole, and became a new bark; under which a laj'^er of new wood was speedily formed. This gelatinous substance, or matter of organization is called Cambiu?)i, (from, I presume, the Italian word canibio, or cam- biere, to e.vcha?ige, or cominutate^) which Mirbel supposes to produce the liber, or young bark; and at the same time, by a peculiar arrangement of the vascular parts, the alburnum, or new wood. Is this a process similar to the exudation of that part ot our blood called coagulable lymph in consequence of in- flammation in the human body.? When, by inflammation, a vascular part of the body is roused to an extraordinary action, then millions of vessels are called into existence, and glands also, which secrete the coagulable lymph, or matter of organiza- tion, which is one link in the chain of renovation. Oris it like the exudation that repairs the broken shell of the snail ? Or the exudation which forms the callus that reunites a fractured bone. Between the alburnum and the wood lies a fifth ring, or cir- cle of vessels, called the vascular series. Its structure is sim- ple, being a single course of greenish vessels, lodged between two cellular membranes. It terminates, says Dr. Hunter, in the neciaria of the flower. Some botanists consider the vascu- lar series as part of the alburnum. The sixth part in order is the lignum, or wood, which is the most solid part of the trunk, and is defined by our great master to be the alburnum and liber of the preceding year, deprived of their juice, hardened and firmly agglutinated. The wood is composed of concentric rings. The centre of these circles is MATERIA MEDICA. 57 generally observed to be nearer the north than the south side of the tree. On examining a transverse section of a triinlc. or large limb of a tree, an oak for example, we can generally observe, that the interior rings are harder than the exterior. It is a preva- lent opinion, that one of these rings is added every year, and that, regarding the number of circles, we can ascertain the age of the tree. Some have ventured to deny this criterion, al- though they knew that Linnaeus himself examined very aged oaks in some of the islands of the Baltic, with that principle for his guide. This illustrious secretary of nature was persuaded, that he could point out by the ligneous circle the severe winters of 1587, 1687, and 1709, as they were thinner than the rest. This circimistance merits the attention of our rural philoso- phers. Who knows, but we may hence form a probable con- jecture of the age of those surprising antiquities discovered in this new world, on the banks of the Ohio and Muskingum? Substantial as is the wood, or ligneous part of the tree, it is nevertheless so far from beinsr an essential part, that many plants are without it. The arundacious plants, as the reeds and the grasses, and indeed all the graniina, are imturally hol- low. How often do we see trees so internally decayed as to be kept alive merely by a vigorous stale of ilie bark? The seventh and last part is the medulla, or jiifh. This is a spongy or vesicular substance, placed in the centre of the wood, and is, according to Linnaeus, essential to the life of the vegetable. In the new production of trees it consists of a num- ber of oval, greenish, moist bladders, which at length become empty, dry, and spherical, and by degrees assume a whitish color. We know but little of the minute structure of the pith. It resists the tincture of the most subtle colorins" fluids, and is as impenetrable to water as the pith of a goose quill. Ought we to infer, that the pith is destitute of vessels? May it not be like the most subtle parts of the brain of animals, the vessels of which elude the sharpest sight, by renson of their exility? In plants which have hollow stems, the tube is lined with pith. Linnaeus attributes great importance to the pi(h, and asserts, after Bradley, that it gives birth to the buds. Some botanists of the first rank beheve, that the pith is, in a plant, what the brain and spinal marrow are in the inferior order of animals. The pith, says Darwin, appears to be the first or most essential rudiments of the new plant, like the brain, spinal marrow, and medulla oblongata, which is the first visible part of the figure of every animal foetus, from the tadpole to mankind. It seems, however, that the pith is not essential or absolutely necessary to vegetation, as we often observe trees to live and thrive with- out it. The guaicum, or lignum vitas, it is said, has no pith. 5 69 THE THOMSONIAN. If the pith be the brain of a tree, may it not be with some trees as in some animals, in which the brain is not confined to the head, but spread all over them, as in the earth worm and po- lypus, the parts of which, though cut in pieces, live and become entire animals? Some annnals, like some vegetables, are more vivacious than others. A tortoise will live and crawl several days after decapitation ; because his body is replete with gang- lions, which are subordinate brains, having an innate energy independent in some measure of the capital portion in the skull. After all, the office of the medulla or pith in vegetables is among the desiderata iti the science of botany.* There is no part of the anatou:iy of a vegetable involved in more intricacy and uncertainty than the Vascular System, Linnaeus speaks of three kinds of vessels, I. The Sap vessels. II. The Vasa propria, or proper vessels, and III. The Air vessels ; but later botanists have increased their number to seven. The sap vessels convey the sap juice or chyle of the vegeta- ble. They rise perpendicularly, and pass principally through and between the wood and the bark ; and though impercepti- ble, they must pervade the other parts of the plant. The vasa propria, proper, or peculiar vessels, are so called because they contain the peculiar or specific secreted fluids, as the gum in the peach tree, and the resin in the fir. In these vessels are found the medicinal qualities peculiar to a plant. The utricles are small repositories, which contain the coloring matter of the plant. In them the nutritive juice of the plant is lodo-ed, just as the marrow is preserved in bones, whence it is taken both in animals and vegetables, when they are not sufii- ciently supplied with chyliferous nutriment. The air vessels are called Irachece, from their resemblance to the respiratory organs of insects. They are found in the wood and in the alburnum, but not in the bark. In order to detect them, you must take a young branch of a vine and clear away the bark, and then break, it by drawing the two extremi- ties in opposite directions, when the air vessels may be seen in the form of small cork screws. See engraved representations of them in Grew's Anatomy of Plants, and Darwin's Phyto- losria. These tracheae, or air vessels, carry other fluids beside air. Darwin says they are absorbent vessels of the adult vegetable, and the umbilical ones of the embryon bud. • Some have conjectured that the pith was a reservoir of moisture, asjainst a. dry season, like the deposites of marrow in the bones, or rather the fat in onr bodies, and on which it is supposed we subsist during the emaciating state of fevers. METERIA MEDICA. 59 As to the absorbent, the excretory, and the secretory vessels, we shall speak of them when we describe the leaves. To the foregoing description of the parts of a plant, should be added that which contemplates it as a whole. Linnsus in some measure helps us to that view of it, when he says, that the cortex of the flower terminates in the calyx; the liber in the PETALS, or painted leaves: the lignum in the stamina: the vascular series in the nectaria ; and the pith in the SEEDS. It is very diflicult to convey a clear idea of these difTerent parts of a plant; we would therefore refer the reader to Grew's admirable engravings, copied after magnified specimens of va- rious parts of a x^egetable, which, though executed more than a century ago. have not been surpassed. Dr. Greio^nd Blalpighi began their anatomy of plants about the same time, unknown to each other — one in England, the other in Italy. Much praise is due to the Italian, but more to the Englishman. So finished are his descriptions, that he has left but little to his successors but admiration. The best solar and lucernal microscopes of the present day serve to increase our admiration of the accuracy and industry of Dr. Nehemiah Grew in the anatomy of plants. His excel- lencies are numerous, and his mistakes ^e\v. Darwin con- tends, that what Grew and Malpighi called brorichia, or air x-essels, are really absorbents; that they have been erroneously thought air vessels, in the same manner as the arteries of the human body were supposed by the ancients to convey air, till the great Harvey, by more exact experiments and juster reason- ing, evinced that they were blood vessels. We are not entirely satisfied with the account here given of the anatomy of a vegetable, from the epidermis to the centre. Grew, Hales, Da Hamel, Linnaeus, and Darwin, with many living naturalists, have examined the minute structure of a plant, but every one of them has left a wide field for discove- ries to his successor. We in America have not all the means for examining these things, as have our elder brethren in Eu- rope. It is but lately that we have begun to construct micro- scopes ; by whose magical powers men have called things that are not into existence, as well as established the existence of others that were doubtful. 60 THE THOMSONIAN FORM AND STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. When cruder juices swell the leafy vein, Stint the young germ, the tender blossom stain ; On each lopp'd shoot a foster scion bind, Pith press'd to pith, and rind applied to rind. So shall the trunk with loftier crest ascend, And wide in air robuster arms extend, Nurse the new buds, admire the leaves unknown, And blushing bend with fruitage not its own. Several philosophers distinguished for sagacity and industry have devoted a considerable portion of tiieir hves to the exam- ination of the structure of plants, and to the study of the pro- cess of vegetation ; yet the subtile organization of vegetables has baffled their sight, though armed with the microscope ; and the laws of vegetation have been but imperfectly explored. Who has been able to discriminate that peculiar organization in each kind of plant which gives the specific medicinal quality to each? If matter, considered as mere matter, give not the pe- culiar qualities to bodies, they must result from the different ar- rangement of the same matter in diflerent vegetables. It is from the different modification of vegetable matter, wliich pro- duces those various and opposite qualities, obscrvjible in two plants growing in the same bed of a garden, and breathing the same air, and which prodnces both bread and poison out of the same soil. It is, says Dr. Hunter, from the different elaboration of a mass of innocent earth, that gives life and vigor to the bit- ter aloes and to the sugar cane, to the cool house-leek and to the fiery mustard, to the nourishing grain of wheat and corn, to the deadly night-shade and the still more deadly vpas. It is imcompatible with our plan to exercise much attention in describing: the different forms and strnciure of the trunks or stems of plants. Seven are enumerated by Linnaeus. 1. The cmilis, or stem properly so called, bearing the leaves and the flower. 2. The ciib7ius, or straw, which species of stem is generally hollow, as in grasses. 3. The scapus, or stalk, which bears the fructification only, the leaves not being raised above the ground, as in the dande- lion. 4. The pedwicuhis, or flower stalk, which bears the flower or fructification from the caul is. It is the stalk or immediate support of a single flower or fruit. 5. The peiiohis, or stalk of a leaf. It fastens the leaves, but not the fructification. 6. The frons, a vague term, generally used to signify that the root, stem, leaf and fructification are all in one, as in ferns. 7. The stipes, which is the stalk or trunk of a frons, and is applied only to palms, Jilices, SLudfiwgi. MATERIA MEDICA. 61 Turning from these things, let us examine some other ob- jects, of more importance, viz. THE BUDS. A bud is a protuberance, hard body, or pointed button, being a compendium or epitome of its parent plant, jutting out from its stem or branches. A bud is composed externally of scales, which are elongations of the inner bark. It is commonly co- vered with a resinous varnish, to protect it from cold, insects, and moisture; and it contains the rudiments of the leaves, or flower, or both, which are to be expanded or exfoliated the fol- lowing year. Buds are called by Virgil gefnmcB. As many plants have no buds, and some that have are divested of them when removed from cold to warm climates, it is evident that the buds are not parts essential to a vegetable. They are how- ever so very common in these northern states, that oi# Flora would appear awkward without her gems. Of the arborescent plants growing among us, which have no buds, all of them have been brought from warm climates, as the orange, lemon, acacias, geraniums, the oleander and guiacum. If you examine a twig of almost any of our trees in Decem- ber, especially the horse chesnut, you will find that the bud is rooted in or protuberates from the pith. You will also find, that wherever a new bud is generated in the stem or twig, or in the bosom of a leaf, there a membraneous diaphragm divides the cavity. This division, which is covered with a medullary or pithy substance, distinguishes the insertion of one bud from another. Beside the scales of the bark, and the rudiments of the leaves, we discover by searching deeper, that the bud, like the seed, contains the parent plant in miniature. Seeds are vegetable eggs, and buds are foetal plants, both equally adapted to continue their species forever. A bud on the stem or twig of a tree in winter, as well as the bulb of a tulip, is the hybernacula, or winter quarters, of the vegetable ens, where the embryo plant sleeps in safety during the seve- rity of winter, secure from the destructive effects of frost, moist- ure or insects. There are three kinds of buds; one containing a flower, an- other containing only leaves, and a third containing both. A just discrimination of these three kinds of buds is important to g;ardeners. Leaf-buds should be always selected for inocula- tion, although flower-buds are commonly chosen for that pur- pose, because they are fuller, thicker, less pomted, and resemble plump seed; whereas if they should be transplanted into the bark of a tree, they are more apt to disappoint the expectations of the ingrafter than if he used the leaf-buds. An accurate knowledge of these things will tend to explode the vague terms 62 THE THOMSONIAN of '•' barren buds" and "fertile buds." Another illnstration of our former assertion, that anatomical investigation is the only certain and rational method of arrivmo- at certainty in the laws 01 vegetation. By the term foliation, botanists mean the complicaiio7i, or folded state of the lea\'es while concealed within die buds. This intricate and complicated structure was first evolved and dis- played by our great master Linujtus, who has taught us, that the leaves in buds are either Involute, that is. rolled in, when their lateral margins are roiled spirally inwards on both sides. Revolutk, rolled back, when their lateral margins are roll- ed spirally backwards on both sides. Obvolute, rolled a^-ainst each other, when their respective margins alternately embrace the straight margin of the oppo- site leaP Convolute, rolled together, when the margin of one side surrounds the other margin of the same leaf, in the manner of a cawl or hood. Imbricate, when they w^e jmrallel, with a straight surface, and lie one over the other. EauiTANT, riding, when the sides of the leaves lie parallel, and approach in such a manner as that the outer embrace the inner, which is not the case with the CoNDUPLiCATE, or doubled together, that is, when the sides of the leaf are parallel and approach each other. Plicate, p/a«7ec/, v/hen their complication is in plaits lengthwise. Reclinate, reclined, when the leaves are reflexed dovv'n- wards towards the -petiole. CiRciNvL, compassed, or in rings, when the leaves are roll- ed in spirally downwards. Although Loejling's natural history of buds has not been surpassed, as any naturalist will be convinced if he peruses his paper entitled " GenuncB Arborvni,^^ in the Amaifilatcs Acad- emiccE, yet Darwin is more to our purpose, which is to u.ix the utile with the dulce. Dr. Darwin, in his '■'•Philosophy of Agricvlivre and Gar- dening,^'' says, " if a bud be torn from a branch of a tree, or cut out, and planted in the earth, with a glass cup inverted over it, to prevent the exhalation from being at first greater than its power of absorption ;* or if it be inserted into the bark of ano- ther tree, it will grow, and become a plant in every respect like its parent. This evinces, that every bud of a tree is an indi- * In this siUiation, a greater heat may be given them than in hot house«y ■without increasing their quantity of perspiration, which ceases as sooa as th* air in the glass is saturated with moisture. MATERIA MEDICA. 63 vidual vefjetable beinji ; and that a tree tfierefore is a family or swarm of individual plants, like the polypus, with its youns: growing out of its sides, or like the brandling cells of the coral insect." " When the old oaks or willows lose by decay almost all their solid internal wood, it frequently happens that a part of the shell of the trunk or stem continues to tlonrish with a few heal- thy branches. Whence it appears, tliat no part of the tree is alive, but the buds and the bark and the root fibres; that the bark is only an intertexture of the candexes of the numerous buds, as they pass down to shoot their radicles into the earth; and that the solid timber ceases to be alive, and is then only of service to support the numerous family of buds in the air, above the herbaceous vegetables in their vicinity." "A bud of a tree, tiierefore, like a vegetable arising from a seed, consists of three parts — the pluraula or leaf, the radicle or root-fibres, and the part which joins these tu^o together, which is called caudex by Linnegus, when applied to entire plants ; and may therefore be termed caudex gemmcc, when applied to buds. " An embryon bud, whether it be a leaf bud or a flower bud, is the viviparous offspring of an adult leaf bud: and is as m- dividual as a seed, which is its oviparous offspring. "As the season advances, the leaf bud puts forth a plumula, like a seed, which, stimulated by the o.vi/s'cn of the atmosphere, rises upwards into leaves to acquire its adapted pabulun), which leaves constitute its luuffs. The flower bud under similar cir- cumstances puts forth its bractes, or floral leaves, which serve the oflice of lungs to the pericarp and the calyx, and expand its petals, which again serve the office of the lungs to the anthers and stigmas ; and thus, like the leaf bud, it becomes an adult vegetable being, with the power of producing seed." Close observers of nature have remarked^ that about mid- summer there is a kind of pause in vegetation, for perhaps a fortnight; and it is believed that leaf buds maybe changed into flower buds, and flower buds into leaf buds. The probability of this idea of transmuting flower buds and leaf buds into each other is confirmed, says the ingenious author of " The Flower Garden," by the curious conversion of the parts of the flowers of some vegetable ?nousters* into green leaves, if they be too well nourished after they are so far advanced as to be unchange- able inio leaf buds. Instances of this luxuriance are sometimes seen in the chaffy scales of the calyx of the everlasting, in the pink^ and in the rose willoio. The artificial method of * Double, or very luxuriant flower?, however beautiful in the eye of the flo- tiJit, are called monsters by botanists. 64 THE TIIOMSONIAN converting" leaf buds into flower buds, is by disturbing^ the natu- ral course of vegetation, by bindinor some of the most vigorous stalks or roots with strong wire. The success of this operation depends on weakening or strengthening the growth of the last year's buds. Instead of planting buds in the earth, we plant them xvithin the bark of another tree ; taking care to place them so that the pith of the bud comes in close contact with the pith of the branch, in which the slit is made. This mode of propagation is called inoculation." An argument, among others, that the Chinese had no com- municalion with either Greeks or Romans, is their total igno- rance of the art of ingrafting or inoculation. THE LEAF. So from the root Springs lighter the gieen stallc ; from thence tlie leaves More airy ; last, the bright consummate flower. His praise, ye winds, tliat from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud ; and wave your tops, ye pines ? With every plant, in sign of worship, wave ? 0, universal Lord ? be bounteous still, To give us only good ; and if the night Have gather'd aught of evil — . Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark. — Milton. By foliation, English botanists menu the complication or folded state of leaves, while concealed in the bud ; but this term expresses not that procedure of nature by which the leaves are renewed and developed every spring, so accurately as does the Latin word vernalio. We have shown, that the bud springs from the medulla, or pith of tlie plant ; and by searching info the bud we have seen the rudiments of the leaves ; and when we penetrate still deep- er, we discover that the bud, like the seed, contained the epito- me of the future plant ; but during winter it wants the power of unfolding its parts. Both seeds and buds contain the pri- niordia pbintaritm ; buds therefore differ from seeds, only as the living fcetus differs from the e^r^g of the animal ; so that buds are seeds in a more advanced stjige of vefjetation. We have already remarked, that some buds contain flowers, some leaves, and some both ; and that an accurate discrimination of them was of importance in the process of htidding. To watch the vernation of the embryo bud, the gradual unfolding of the fcetal leaves and infantile flower, is a pleasing speculation ; for • In France and in Switzerland they improve the fruit of a tree by ingraft- ing it with a scion from its own branches. This is found to ameliorate the quality of the fruit, and increase the size of it. MATERIA MEDICA. 65 the leaves are completely formed, and fairly rolled np for evo- lution, many months before they begin to expand. The study of the anatomical structure of the full expanded leaf is equally delightful. We shall pass silently over the nomenclature of leaves, which is apt to discourage young botanists, unused to geometiicaJ writers in the Latin tongue, and shall pursue the more pleasant task of exhibitinof, as far as we are able, the structure and the functions of the leaf When we are told that "a leaf is a part of a plant, extended into length and breadth, in such a manner as to have one side distin2:uishable from the other," the naturalist receives but lit- tle information ; and we obtain but little more, when we are told that they are " the organs of motion ;"' but when we say, that the leaves are the hwgs of a plant, we convey an idea more consonant to truth and nature ; for we find that a leaf will die if its upper or varnished surface is annointed with any gluti- nous matter, or when placed in an exhausted receiver. If we should say, that the leaf combines the othce of lacteah and lungs, we shall come still nearer the truth. While our stom- achs dioest solid food, our lungs digest air ; so that what is performed by two organs in animals, is performed by one in plants. Let us then examine this organ and its functions. The leaf is attached to the branch of the plant by a short foot stalk. From these foot-stalks a number of fibres issue, which, ramifying in every direction, communicate with each other in every part of the leaf, and thereby form a curious net- work. The intermediate substance is greenish, and may be eaten by insects or destroyed by putrefaction, while the fibrous part remains entire, constituting the skeleton of the leaf. There are, however, two layers of fibres in every leaf, forming two distinct skeletons, the one belono:ing to the upper part of the leaf, the other pertaining to the lower. It is very diflicult to demonstrate the anatomy of a leaf; but we have reason to con- clude that the seven essential parts of a plant enumerated are ex- tended, rolled out, and extenuated throughout the leaf; so that if you slit a leaf with scissors, you cut through as many differ- ent parts of the plant, as if you cut through the trunk of a tree. The whole leaf is covered with a portion of the epidermis, or the scarfskin, which covers the stem and stalk of the plant. Between this thin membrane and the corticle net work are placed the absorbent vessels, toofether with what we presume to be the absorbent glands. Dr. Darwin assures us, that there is an artery and a vein in a leaf, and that the artery carries the sap to the extreme surface of the upper side of the leaf, and there exposes it, under a thin moist membrane, to the action of the atmospheric air ; then the veins collect and ret.urn this cir- 66 THE THOMSONIAN culating fluid to the foot-stalk, just as the artery and vein ope- rate in our lungs. It is hardly fair to compare the leaves of a plant with the respiratory organs of the more perfect animals; but rather to the breathing apparatus of insects, or, what is per- haps more to our purpose, to the ^ills of fish. When the structure of any organized body is too subtle to come within the scrutiny of the human senses, we must have recourse to analogy ; and from the truths we discover, and the observations we make, we must judge of the operations in sim- ilar bodies ; for we can form our opinion of that we know not, only by placing it in comparison with something similar to what we do know. The structure of certain large leaved pl.ants that grow in water is remarkably conspicuous ; and the gills offish resemble, in structure and office, the leaves of these aquatic plants. Duverny and Monro have scrutinized the gills of fish ; the former found that those of a carp contained four thousand three hundred and eighty-six bones, which were moved by sixty-nine muscles : and the latter informs us, that in the gills of a skate fish there exists one Jntndred and forty- four thousand iold'i, or subdivisions. This manifold structure gives this respiratory organ a surprising extent of surface. These subdivisions, terminating in innumerable points, resem- ble fringe, but when examined by the microscope appear like down ; yet is every part crowded with blood vessels, being ra- mifications of the pulmonary artery and vein. The whole ex- tent of the gills is covered by an exceedingly fine menibrane, in which the microscope discovers a still finer net-work of ves- fich. By such a structure the fish exposes a greater surface of blood to the water, than is exposed to the air by the internal membrane of the air cells of the lungs of quadrupeds ; and that for the same purpose, namely, imbibing uncombined oxygen, which is the materia!, or pabidum vitcp, equally necessary to fish as to land animals. Now, if we compare the f-tructure of the gills of fish with that of the leaf of aquatic plants, we can discern a great similarity. The gills of fish present an immense surface to the water in which they live, in consequence of their innumerable folds of nerves, blood and air vessels. The divisions and subdivisions of this organ are so fine that they resemble a most delicate fringe. In like manner certain aquatic plants, growing in the ponds in this vicinity, have snbaquatic leaves, resembling fine moss, or rather that kind of silk called floss, the structure and use of which are the same as the gills in fish. While those leaves, which are growing under water, have this delicate structure, the leaves of the same plant, when it has shot up out of the water, being produced wholly in air, become entire and firm, having none of those segments or slits which distinguish MATERIA MEDIC A. 67 them when subaquatic ; so that the one leaf under water has the structure and function of gills, while the next above it is a firm leaf, or lungs, by reason of its breathing the open air. Here a change takes place in an amphibious plant, like that which is observed in an amphibious animal on its passing from the tadpole to the frog state ; for in the former state it has gills and in the latter lungs. As a tree cannot go in search of food, like an animal, it is forced to draw its nourishment from within the narrow sphere of its existence; it therefore extends its roots through the sur- rounding earth, by which it draws in sustentation, as through so many syphons. These imbibing vessels of the roots may be compared to the lacteals in animals. This chyle, or sap, as- cends to the leaves, and is there channjed into a more perfect fluid, answering to tlie blood of animals ; it is still further ex- alted in the flower, in order to perfect the seed and continue its kind. The roots are sufficient to supply nourishment to a large tree durins: winter, when divested of its leaves, and when the vegetative life reposes in winter quarters: but stimulated by the warmth of spring, the vegetable ens awakes ; and when the process oi vernation has fairly begun, then the tree has no more to do than merely to support its own existence, and therefore it spreads through the air its numberless leaves, which are nearly equivalent to the stomach and lungs of animals. That the sap ascends to the leaves, is proved by the bleeding of vines early in the spring, before the leaves are formed, there being no leaves to receive it ; but when these elaborate organs are formed the vine ceases to bleed, because the sap flows into them for rectification ;* for while a vegetable is growing it is continually goins: through a reofular series of changes, losing the properties of one substance and assuminij those of another ; thus mucilage in a young plant becomes starch in the old ; what in green fruit is acid, in a ripe fruit is sugar. 13ut the function of the leaf is not perpetual and uniform, as in the lungs of the more perfect animals ; its operations differ in the day and in the night. In the day, the leaves of plants exhale moisture and oxygen gas ; but during the night, ihey emit carbonic acid gas, and absorb oxygen gas. In plainer terms, they exhale, in the light of the sun, salutary or vital air; but in the dark they emit a noxious air. One of these opera- tions is performed by the varnished side of the leaf, and the other fr.)m the rough or under side. This varnish of the leaf is found to be bees-wax. As air and heat are necessary to the life of a plant, so is light • Rcetificalion, in the language of chemists, means drawing any thing over again by distillation, to make it yet higher and liner. 68 THE THOMSOMAN to its health.* Tlie want of light prevents a plant's forming its proper juices, deprives it of its green color, and prevents the impregnation of its seed. It is the smooth side of the leaf that is acted upon by the light ; and is that part t)y which a plant in a great measure lives ; hence the leaves of many delicate plants shut up, so as to cover this smooth side on exposure to noxious vapor, or darkness, or to screen it from an extremely fierce sunshine. In order to make a distinction between the sensation of heat and the cause of it, the word caloric has been adopted. Caloric is a body, and so is light. The sun is the source of both ; for he emits two kinds of rays, one calorific^ tlie other colorific ; the first occasions heat^ the other color. With what different eyes do the philosopher and the unin- formed husbandman view a tree, waving in the fiiU glory of its luxuriant foliage ! Ask the woodsman for what a tree was made— he will tell you, to bear nuts, to be cut into boards, to burn to keep him warm, and to cook his victuals. Ask the na- turalist, and he will tell you, that they are an important, nay indispensable link in the chain of human existence; insomuch that were the Parent and Legislator of nature to cause every vegetable on earth at once to be annihilated, the atmospheric air would directly become a putrid mais of every thing that is noxious, and man, and other terrestrial animals of similar con- struction, would soon turn into a mortified lump of corruption. The leaves of ail sorts of vegetables are in fact so many labor- atories for purifying the air we breathe. During winter, when the surface of the earth is bound np with frost, encrusted with ice and covered with snow, little or no putrefaction takes place ; then the vegetable kingdom ap- pears as if dead ; the trees, divested of leaves, seem like so ma- ny dead sticks ; but when the sun begins to diffuse its warmth over the earth, promoting that general tendency to corruption to which all dead bodies are liable, then the trees soon exhibit It is remarkable, that the leaves cannot prosper without light ; }'et seeds germinate best in the dark. Light is an elastic fluid, that is reflected from certain bodies which it can- not penetrate ; it is also possessed of chemical affinities, by which it enters into combination with other substances ; sometimes occasioning their decom- position, and sometimes it is extricated from its combinations. It gives to Tegetables their color, and contributes to their smell, and balsamic principle. It enables the leaves of vegetables to emit streams oi" oxygen gas, or pure vi- tal air. OxvGEN-, or the acidifying principle, is found only in its combinations. The o'^ygen gas is the result of the combination of oxygen with caloric. It exists in atmospheric air, in the proportion of 27 to 100, and is heavier than the air of the atmosphere. It is absolutely necessary to respiration — hence termed VITAL AiK. Durino; the action of breathing, it enters our blood by the vessels of the lungs, giving to it a vermillion color, and nn augmentation of vital po-w- MATERIA MEDICA. 69 a pleasing scenery, and the leafless branches, by bursting their buds, and by displaying all at once their foliage, increase their surfaces many tlionsand times. The leaves are so arranged on the branches as to expose their varnished surface to the direct influence of the sun ; and if forced out of that position they will turn themselves ; for leaves an^, more greedy for the light of the sun than for the influence of heat. It is Ironi the under or rough side of the leaf, that the azotic or rather carbonic acid gas, or unwholesome air, is emitted ; while the oxygen gas, or pure vital air, emanates from the up- per or smooth varnished surface; but not before the sun has shone some time upon it. This distillation of pure vital air by the leaf diminishes towards the close of day, and ceases alto- gether after sunset, when unwholesome air is emitted by the rough side of the leaf; and the next day. soon after tlie rising of the sun, the smooth or upper side recommences its function. Hence we see the reason why it is unhealthy to tarry in the deep shade of the forest during the night. " /Surgajfius,'^ says the shepherd in Virgil, "solet esse gravis conta7itibi{s nm- bra.'' Let us r?se, for the evening shade is vnlLcalthy to singers ; and he adds, even the juniper is voiv noxious. Ill- scented and even poisonous plants equally aflbrd salubrious air in sunshine. It is remarkable, however, that while leaves are performino- this salutary process, Jlov)e7's render the surrounding air noxious even iu the day time. The effluvia of a lar^e quantity of «rath- ered fruit, has at all times a deleterious quality. A peach^in a few hours, rendered a body of air, six times its own bulk, so en- tirely poisonous, that an animal could not breathe, nor a candle burn in it. A rose kept in a glass, so much infected the air as to render it unfit for respiration. Persons have been found dead in their beds, whose lodging rooms had been crowded with flow- ers; others Imve been suddenly affected with dizziness, nausea, and head ache, on going into a green-house of flowers that had been shut up closely during the night.* "While a growing ve- getable is capable of this two-fold operation, it absorbs whatever putrescent particles it finds in the surroundino^ earth and air. A sprig of mint put into a jar of air rendered foul by animal putrescency, though faded, will revive, and grow surprisingly ; and will moreover correct air, so that an animal shall be able to breathe in it. Here is the proper place to remark, that the ocean when agi- tated by winds, yields oxygenous gas ; and the azotic, mephitic. * Ingenhouz placed twenty-four French beans in a quart jar, which render- ed the air, in one night, so poisonous, that a chicken, put into it died in about twenty seconds. 70 THE THOMSONIATi or noxious air, is corrected by being strongly shaken with water. Hence we learn that the two grand correctors of the atmospheric air are, first, the agitated ocean, and secondly, living vegetables ichile operated njjon by the rays of the sun. If we reflect upon what has been said, it will appear that plants have their private virtues, and their public ones. Be- sides the pecahar medicinal and nutritive qualities which some possess, the great family of plants, or what is called the vege- table kingdom, conspire to form one grand apparatus for puri- fying the atmosphere and rendering it fit for respiration; these may be called their public virtues. In this view, no vegetable grows in vain, whether in the interior of this vast continent or in the wilds of Africa ; for the leaves of all, whether ill scented, acrid or poisonous, elaborate the air they contain, and pour down a shower of depurated oxygenous or vital air, which, diffusing itself through the common mass of the atmosphere^ renders it more fit for animal life. In this salutiferous process, the fragrant rose and the violet, the deadly night-shade and the still more deadly laurel, co-operate. The animal and vegeta- ble kingdom operate on each other. Putrid animal effluvia, noxious to man, is food for plants; while plants transmit a sal- utary air to man. The winds convey vitiated air from us, for our relief ; and they return salubrious gales, for our refreshment ; "and if these salutary gales rise to storms and hurricanes, let us trace and re- vere the ways of a benificcnt being, who, not fortuitously, but with design ; not in wrath, but in mercy, shakes the waters and the air together, to bury in the deep those putrid and pestilen- tial effluvia, which the vegetables on the face of the earth had been insufficient to consume." These traits of wisdom, visible in the economy of those de- partments of nature which have come under our scrutiny, clear- ly instruct us how kindly Providence restrains, impels, and directs all things to a beneficent end, but in no instance is it more apparent than in the rays of the sun correcting, through the agency of the leaves of vegetables, the noxious influences of the night. MATERIA MEDIC A. 71 WATER. Resistless, roaring dreadful, down it comes, From the rude mountains, and the inossy wild, Trembling through rocke abrupt, and sounding far; Then o'er the sandy valley iloating spreads, Calm, sluggish, silent ; till again constrained . Between iVo meeting hills, it bursts away Where rocks and woods o'erhang the turbid stream, There gathering triple force, rapid and deep. It boils and wheels, and foams and thunders through ; Till pouring on, it proudly seeks the deep ; Whose vanquish'd tide, recoiling from the sho.ck, Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe. Thomson. It is asked, '-Is this season, so full of the bloom of nature, nn propitious to the unfolding of the petals of elocution 7" Let the great Montesquieu answer tlie question. Put a man, says this sage, in a warm, confined place, and he will feelfaint- ness and lassitude. Thus circumstanced, if you propose a bold enterprise to him, you find him very little disposed towards it. His weakness will niduce a despondency ; he will be afraid of every thing, because he feels himself capable of nothing. Faint- ness of body, produced by tlte heat of the climate, is soon com- municated to the mind ; and then there is no curiosity, no noble enierprize, no generous sentiment. The inclinations are pas- sive, and indolence constitutes his utmost happiness. Althougli the botanist has been ready to exclaim with Thom- son, All-conquering heat, oh intermit thy wratli! yet he has not been an idle spectator of the transitory blossoms. For as the vernal sun awak'd the torpid sap, he watched the infant bud and embryo flower; and marked, as they gradually unfolded, the beauties of the breathing leaf. And when the bursting calyx gave the struggling petals to the admiring sight, he hung over their elegant forms and resplen- dent hues enraptured. But while gazing at the glories of the full blown flower, and contemplating its wondrous economy, it shrunk from the intrusion, and, like the hopes of man, withered on the stalk. So passeth away the splendor of this world ! During dry and fervid seasons, the vegetable race has a more melancholy aspect, than in the Irozen gloom of winter, when tlie vegetative ens naturally retires to its cradle, hyherna- cula, or winter quarters, and is resuscitated by the next vernal sun. But in this arid and adust state of the earth and the air, every aimual plant is threatened with speedy destruction : For want of the cherishing influence of supernal rain, Distressful nature pants. The very streams look languid from afar. Thornton. To the laborious husbandman, the gardener, and the botanist, the descent of rain on the parched soil and thirsty plants is the 72 THE THOMSOMAN most grateful phenomenon in the whole economy of nature. Let us put by our flowers then, for the present, that we may consider the nature, and contemplate the source of this pre- cious fluid, which gives heaUh, beauty and vigor to all that lives. Indeed wafer is a wondrous element! Well might the Gre- cian sage contend, that water was the original matter, or prin- ciple of all things ; and that even the air was but an offspring, expansion, or expiration of water. We actually find that water bears a part in the formation of every body in the three king- ■doms of nature. It enters into all the food of every animal, and every vegetable in creation. It is necessary to the free exercise of every animal function and action: and although it is the common cement of all terrestrial bodies, it nevertheless hastens and facilitates the requisite dissolution of every animal and ve- getable, when life has departed ; and is therefore an important agent in that never ceasino; process of mutation, by which one thing is changed out of^ and into every other in creation. Can a Naturalist do better, than solicit the attention of his young readers of both sexes, to the means nature uses to provide the earth with rivers of water ; beasts with running brooks ; plants with refreshing showers; and man with every thing? It is possible that they may never once have reflected on the con- nexion between the sea and vegetatio7i — between the moun- tains and the ocean — between the rivers under ground and the atmosphere above it. They may never have considered, that the Atlantic ocean conspires with our loftiest mountains to fur- nish us with an element indispensably necessary to the life, to the health, and to the beauty of plants, as well as of men. The clouds dispensing refreshing showers, "turning the wilderness into a standing water, and the dry ground into water springs-,"" the flow of rivers, with their long train of beneficial consequences, could hardly escape the notice of any thinking being in any age of the world. We accordingly find the sup- ply of water frequently mentioned, in the oldest book we have, among the most wonderful, as well as valuable of Heaven's blessinofs- whilst the heathen world imagined every river to be under the guardianship of some particular deity, wbo they be- lieved created it, because they knew a river of wjiter to be of more than mortal formation. It has probubly impressed others, as well as the writer, with something bordering on wonder, that during seven and twenty centuries, wherein the memory and learning of mankind have been exercised, there has not been found one philosopher so well instructed in the laws of nature, as to be able to give a complete history and satisfactory explanation of the ascent of fresh wa- ter Jrom the salt ocean; the susj^ensioii of vapors in the air; MATKRIA MEDICA. 78 the formation of distinctly defined clouds; and the descent of raiti, together with a connected chain of causes. What facts and reasonings we have on these subjects are mere fragments wide- ly scattered. Seeing the earth covered annually with a rich and beautiful carpet of vegetables ; and these surprisingly diversified, varie- gated, and developing between "seed time and harvest time," must have led those of ancient days to recognize the proximate cause, the warmth of the sun and the moisture from the clouds ; and these again to that perpetual circulation subsisting between the ocean and the mountains, through the instrumentality of the air, and by the medium of rivers to the ocean again. But the philosophy, or explanation of this vivifying phenomenon is spoken of as something past finding out. They did then, as we do now, push our investigations as high as ever we can, as in the case of gravitation ; and beyond that principle say with them, it is " the hand of Godf' an expression denoting only the last term of our analytical results. Unable to discover the es- sence of light and of fire, the Deity was called by the name of these inscrutable agents. In early times, when the knowledge of nature was confined to narrow limits, they, like our Indians, " Saw God in clouds, and heard him in the -wind." Hence they styled the Deity, ^^the father of the rains^ and represented him, as " calliyig forth the loaters of the sea, and ■pouring them, down according to the vapor thereof." Whence we infer that they believed that the water rose, in form of vapor from the salt ocean ; and that it became freshened in its passage through the air. It moreover appears, that they be- lieved that this process was regularly and perpetually perform- ing, in an unceasing circulation ; for they remarked that, al- though '' all the rivers run into the sea, yet was the sea not full; unto the place ivhence the rivers come, thither they re- turn again." They seem also to have known, that mountains made a part of this grand apparatus ; and to have believed that it was not a fortuitous or casual operation ; but regulated as we now find it, by weight and measure. May not this be inferred from the sublime question of Isaiah — » Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weigh- ed the MOUNTAINS in scales ?" The people of ancient times discerned in part this magnificent apparatus ; and saw its effects; but were restrained by a religious awe, from attempting the investigation of it ; because storms, lightning, and hail^ were conceived to be the precursors of the chariot of the Deity ;— » Who maketh the clouds his chariot — who walketh on the wings of the wind" accompanied 6 74 THE THOMSONIAN with "Aai/ stones''' and ^'firey The origin and the course of the winds, ^^ whence they come, and v:hither they go,'' were all for these reasons deemed mysterious. Hence, instead of scru- tinizing the cause, their pious minds, overwhelmed with awe, sunk into undiscerning amazement. Under such solemn im- pressions, I cease to wonder, that he who wrote that ancient drama, the book of Job, puts, among the most difficult of his questions, that which demands an explanation of " the balanc- ing of the clouds.'' The never-ceasing circulation of water between the ocean and terra fu'T?ia has, it seems, been contemplated from the ear- liest ages with grateful admiration ; but not being altogether an object of sight, was ranked among the inexplicable works of Deity. Des Cartes, Niewentyte, Halley, and a few others among the moderns, have amused the literary public with their hypo- theses; but of their learned theories, which of them is notclosf- ged with objections / That all the rivers of fresh water are de- rived from the salt ocean, no one doubts ; but how it rises from the sea is the question. Some contend, that the particles of water are formed into hollow splierules, or diminutive balloons, which being lighter than common air, ascend and are buoyant in it; and that they rise or fall, or move horizontally, accord- ing to the impulse given by attraction, repulsion, by winds, or by electricity. The public have generally acquiesced in the theory of Dr. Halley, as they commonly do with every hypothesis presented them in the imposing garb of mathematics. Dr. Hal- ley took a vessel of certain dimensions, filled to a certain depth with water, and warmed to such a degree as the air is in the hottest summer months. After standmg two hours, he found on weighing it what it had lost by evaporation. From this da- tum he proceeded in his calculations, and found that a square mile yields six thousand nine hundred and fourteen tons, and consequently that a degree square will evaporate about thirty- three million of tons. He calculated the surface of the Medi- terranean, and estimated that it must lose in vapor every sum- mer's day five thousand tico hundred and eighty inillion of ions. Dr. Halley considers a certain grade of heat absolutely necessary to the ascent of vapors from the ocean ; tut we find that this evaporation goes forward with equal rapidity in the coldest weather, nay in caves at the coldest season, in the fro- zen regions of the north. Strange ! what extremes should thus preserve the snow, High on the Alps, or in deep caves below. — Waller. We must then seek some other cause beside heat ; and the chemico-philosophers have tried to soothe disputants by an hy- pothesis which is void of it. They consider that the air is a men- MATERIA MEDICA. 75 stnmm, capable of dissolvins:, suspending, and intimately mix- ing the particles of water with itself That as a given quanti- ty of water will take up just so much salt and no more, without becoming turbid, and at length precipitating it to the bottom, so air, the most powerful solvent in nature next to fire, will take up, intimately mix, and suspend, just so much Vv'ater, and re- main clear. The mixture will continue transparent just this side saturation ; when satvrated, the abundant waters float in form of clouds ; but when supersaturated^ it lets go the water, which, like a supersaturated solution of salt, falls from the clouds on the earth in the form of rain. Is the probability of this theory diminished by the new chem- ical doctrine, which teaches ihat water is formed by an union oi hydrogen and oxygen I- Tlie pneumatic chemists have, by their curious discoveries, removed the boundaries which sepa- rated, as we once thought, air from water, and have led us to respect that very ancient idea which conceived them to be one element. The salt ocean, which covers by far the greatest part of this globe, has a three-fold motion. The first is gentle, like the breathing of an animal ; by it the sea swells and rises up against the shores, and enters gradually the bays and mouths of rivers, durins; the space of six hours. Then it seems to rest for a quarter of an hour, and then as gradually slides down again; when, after another pause of a quarter of an hour, it begins to flow aorain as before. The second motion is more vehement and incessant, and is like that of the heart, circulatory; where- as that of the tides is merely backward and forward. It comes in the course of the trade winds, which blow everlastingly from east to west — runs past the West India islands — pours into the bay of Mexico — and rushing rapidly out forms the gulf of Flo- rida ; which sweeping along the American shore carries the waters of the Atlantic into the North Sea, whence they pass in a never-ceasing circulation around the globe. The other motion is from th« atmosphere, when agitated by winds. It is local and variable, and seems subservient to the transpiration of the ocean. It rufiles the surface merely, and from this superficial agitation begins that hitherto inexplicable dist'dlatio per ascensiim. By whatever means the water ascends into the air from the ocean, this is briefly the course of it ; in rising from the ocean it leaves the salt behind, as in the common process of distilla- tion. The ascended vapor is probably decomposed, when it forms clouds which are distinctly visible ; these float in the general atmosphere, which appears to be then a different fluid from these circumscribed clouds. Antiquity conceived a cloud to be a congeries of watery vapor, a conservator)'-, in which the 76 THE THOMSONIAN rain is kept as "in bottles." As clouds become fuller of water they gravitate, or are attracted by the loftiest mountains, when they pour upon them their abundant rains. But, according to an ingenious chemist, there are two steps in the process be- tween evaporation and rain, of which at present we are com- pletely ignorant: 1st. What becomes of the vapor after it enters into the at- mosphere ? 2d. What makes it lay aside the new form, which it must have assumed, and return again to its state of vapor, and fall down in rain? And till these two steps be discovered by experiments and observations, it will be impossible for us to give a satisfactory or a useful theory of rain. There are mountains so very large, that even provinces are found embosomed near their summits, as those of Q,nito. The tops of such mountains are constantly enveloped with clouds, especially during the night,* and the waters are constantly dripping down through the crannies and crevices of the stones, forming kindred brooks ; when, uniting with other streams, it rushes with accelerated force to the plains below, forcing a passage through every pliable thing in its way. The river, after rolling its waters into the ocean, is destined to be again exhaled in vapors, and to re-enter afresh the channels of this magnificent circulation ! FLOWERS. " Last, the bright, consummate flower, Spirits odorous breathes." — Milton. We hail with gratitude the returning of spring! In winter when the earth is bound up with ice, and covered with a bed of snow ; when the trees are divested of their leaves, and ap- pear dead, and the very herbage seems annihilated, then " the lord of the soil" casts his eyes over the barren waste with a sigh. As his reason alone could not lead him to believe that the tree would ever again blossom, or the earth be again clothed with a beautiful carpet of vegetables ; so his heart sinks within him,from a fearful apprehension that the Lord of all is unmindful of his necessities. This, ye Legislators! is the period when you should, in imitation of the churches of Rome and of England, appoint your days of humiliation and solemn fasts ; for it is at this gloomy season that man feels his dependency on a pow- er above him. But when the sun so diffuses its warmth through the air as to loosen the flinty brook, and edge it with green ; and when the fuU-bladed grass appears, and awakened nature * It rains perpetually among the Andes, while in Egypt seldom or never. MATERIA MEDICA. 77 sees a new creation, then the husbandman exclaims with exult- ation, '' Man is not forgotten ! for here and there are pledges of an adorable reminiscence, and traits of a wonderful renova- tion !" If in winter the husbandman " Marks not the Mighty Hand Thai, ever busy, wheels the sileat spheres," he cannot miss it in " The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring." The poets have conveyed their idea of spring, by describing this genial season as a youth of most beautiful air and shape, with a blooming countenance, expressive of satisfaction and joy, and clothed in a flowing mantle of green, interwoven with flowers ; a chaplet of roses on his head, a narcissus in his hand, while primroses and violets spring up under his feet.* The ornament and pride of spring, Milton's "bright, consum- mate flower," must therefore be our present theme. Every one may think he knows precisely what is di Jlower : it is however remarkable, that botanists have been not a little puzzled in fixing their definition of it. The celebrated French botanist Tournafort tells us, that "a flower is a part of a plant, very often remarkable for its peculiar colors, for the most part adhering to the young fruit, to which it seems to alford the first nourishment, in order to explicate its most tender parts." Is this & definition ? Pontedra, in his Anthology, tells us that "a flower is a part of a plant, unlike the rest in form and nature." Jus- sieu says, " that is properly a flower, which is composed of sta- mina and of a pistillum." But some flowers have no pistil lum. Vaillant advanced one step beyond his predecessors, and asserts, that "the flower ought, strictly speaking, to be reckoned the organs, which constitute the difierent sexes in plants; for that the petals which immediately envelope them are only the coats to cover and defend them ;" but he adds, » these coats are the most conspicuous and most beautiful parts of the composition ; and therefore to these, according to the common idea, shall I give the name of flower." Martyn went a little farther, and deefined " a flower to be the organs of generation of both sex- es, adhering to a common placenta, together with their com- mon coverings." Nay, if we consult Johnson's Dictionary for a definition, we shall find that "a flower is that part of a plant which contains the seeds" — which definition is more applicable to a pea-pod. The early botanists meant by the term anthos * The poets have described Spring; accompanied by Flora on one hand and Vertumnus on the other, and immediately followed by a stern figure in shin- In^ armor. This is Mars, who, they say, has long usxirped a place among the atteadaots of Spring. 78 THE THOMSONIAN Jlos, or flou'er, what is now understood in common conversa- tion by that term, namely, the rich and deUcate painted leaves or petals which adhere to the seed vessel, or rudiment of the future fruit. In truth, botany was unknown to the ancients as a science. They had no distinct term to express the petals of a flower, so as to disting-nish it from the green leaves of the plant. Virijil. in describing his ameHiis, which is a species of aster, the flower of which has a yellow disk and purple rays, calls it a golden flower surrounded with purple leaves. All his translators, excepting Martyn. the botanist, have mistaken his description. Addison makes the leaves of the plant purple, Dryden makes the bough purple, and Trapp gives the steifi a g-olden hue. All this confusion has arisen from the want of a word in the Latin language to express the petals of the corolla, as distinct from the common leaves of the plant. Since the adoption of the sexual system, the petals, which excite the admiration of the florist, are considered by the bota- nist as coverings only to the essential parts of the flower. A flower, therefore, in modern botan}', differs from the same term in former \vriters, and from the common acceptation of it ; for the calyx, the petals, nay, the filaments of the stamina, may all be wanting ; and yet it is a flower, provided the anthers and stigma can be traced. The essence of a flower, then, consists in the anthera and the stigma ; and they constitute a flower, whether they be supported by a calyx, or surrounded by a pe- tal or j^etals, forming that chaplet, coronet, or little crown, deno- minated in Latin corolla. A patient observer may find these nice distinctions illustrated in ferns. 7?iosses, mushrooms, lin- chens and sea-weeds. Let us now examine a complete or perlect flower ^ and let us first look at The Calyx: which originally meant the green bottom of a rose bud ; but it is now extended to that green flower cup, which is generally composed of five small leaves, and which encloses, sustains and embraces the corolla, or painted petals, at the bottom of every flower, and indeed envelops it entirely be- fore it opens, as in the rose. The calyx which accompanies almost all other flowers, is wanting in the tulip, the hyacinth, the narcissus, and indeed the greater part of the liliaceous tribe. The admirably accurate Greiv called this part of the flower the empalement, and defines it to be the outermost part of the flow- er, compassing the other two, namely, the corolla, or what he called the foUature, and the stamina and pistillum, which he called the attire. MATERIA MEDICA. 79 The terms perianthum, hivolucntm, amentlnmi^ spatha, gliima, calj/ptra and volva, are but different appellations of the varied calyx. Linnaeus tells us, that the cah'x is the termina- tion of the cortical epidermis, or outer bark of the plant, which, after accompanying: the trunk or stem through all its branches, breaks out at the bottom of the flower, in the Ibrm of the flower cup. In the sexual system, or, as some will have it, the alle- gory of the illustrious Swede, the calyx is rarely of one entire piece, but of several, one laid over the other. This structure serves to keep the whole flower or composition tight, and at the same time allows it to recede as the parts of fructification in- crease in size. It is like slackening the laces of the stays, sto- macheJ's, or bodices, in cases and circumstances not entirely dissimilar. Flowers standing on a Urni basis, as tulips, have no calyx ; but where the foot of each petal is long, slender and numerous, as in pinks, they are kept within compass by a dou- ble calyx. In a few instances, the calyx is tinctured with a different color than green, and then it is not easy to distinguish the painted calyx from the painted corolla. Linnajus, howe- ver, gives this simple rule — the corolla, in point of situation, is ranged alternatehj with the stamina, whereas the segment of the calyx stands opposite to the stamina. Thus much for the calyx. The Corolla is the circle of beautiful colored leaves which stand within the calyx, forming a chaplet, composed of a petal or petals ; for so we call those delicately painted leaves, which excel in beauty every other part of the plant. In the piony, the petals are blood red ; in our garden lily, a rich and delicate white; and in tulips and violets, charmingly variegated. The number of petals in a flower is to be reckoned from the base of the corolla, and the number of the segments from the middle of it. If the petals are quite distinct at the bottom, the flower is said to be polypetalous, or to consist of more petals than one ; but if the petals be united at bottom, though ever so slightly, then the flower is monopetalous, or consisting of one petal on- ly ; thus the cranberry is monopetalous, and not tretapetalous, because, though the petals fall ofl" in four distinct parts, they were originally united at the base. A bell-shaped flower con- sists of one petal, and is denominated corolla campcamlata, and a funnel-shaped flower, corolla infundib'nUforinis ; a gap- ing flower, corolla rbis-eiis : but the corolla crvciformeris consists of four petals ; and the butterfly-shaped flower, or co- rolla papilio7iacea, consists of five petals, as in the pea blossom. The number _^ue is most remarkably predominant in the petals of flowers. There are, moreover, irregular flowers, consisting of dissimi- lar parts, which are generally accompanied with a nectarium, 80 THE THOMSONIAN as in the larkspur. The nectarium, so called from nectar, the fabled drinlc of the gods, is that part or appendage of the petals appropriated for containing, if not secreting, the honey, whence it is taken by the bees. All flowers are not provided with this receptacle for honey, although it is probable that every flower has a honey secreting gland. The irregularity of the form and position of this receptacle frequently puzzles young botanists. Sometimes the nectarium makes part of the calyx ; sometimes it is fixed in the common base or receptacle of the plant. Plants in which the nectaria are distinct from the petals, that is. not lodged within their substance, are generally poisonous. If the necta- rium do not exist as a distinct visible part, it probably exists as a pore or pores in every plant.* It may hereafter be demon- strated, that this secretory apparatus is primarily necessary to the fructification of the plant itself Rousseau says, that the nectaria are one of those instruments destined by nature to unite the vegetable to the animal kingdom, and to make them circu- late from one to the other. A flower and an insect have great resemblance to each other. An insect is nourished by honey. May it not be needful that the flower, during the process of fructification, should be nourished by honey from the necta- ries ? Sugar is formed in the joints of the canes, for perhaps a similar purpose. THE STAMINA, AND THE PISTILLA. Within the corolla stands what Grew called the attire ; but what are now called the stamens and pistils, which in the sex- ual system and Linnsean hypothesis of generation are the most important organs of a plant; for on the number and respective position of the stamens and pistils, that prince of botanists has founded his famous sexual system. The stamina are filaments or threads issuing from aboui the middle of the flower. Each stamen or thread is surmount- ed by a prominence or button, containing a fine powder. This protuberance is called the anthera, which is a capsule with one, two, or more cavities. The summit of each stamina is called by way of pre-eminence, anthera, or Jlower. It contains the pollen, which term means in Latin the very fine dust in a mill. Some conceive this dust to be infinitessimally small eggs or seeds, or rather organic particles, or moJecvles ; others com- pare it to the seminal fluid in animals. This pollen, or fecun- dating powder, is very conspicuous in the tall, white garden lily. This powder is collected by the bees, and is formed by some secret process in their bodies into wax, which is a singu- • All the grasses have nectaries. In the Passion flower it is a triple crova or glorjr. MATERIA MEDICA. 81 lar species of vegetable oil, rendered concrete by a peculiar acid in the insect. The pistilliim, which is the Latin word for a pestle, stands in the centre of the flower : this term has been adopted, from the fancied resemblance of a pestle in a mortar. It is placed on the orermen, or seed bud; its summit is called stigma, and in many flowers resembles that bone of the arm denominated the OS humeri ; but its form varies in different kinds of flowers. The surface of the stigma is covered with a glutinous matter, to which the fecundating powder of the anthera adheres. The r^ermen is then the base of the pistillum, and contains the rudiments of the seed, which in the process of vegetation swells and becomes the seed vessels. It answers to the ovari- um, or rather uterine apparatus of animals. The pericarpiuna is the germen grown to maturity, or the plant big with seed. The receptacle is the base, which connects the before men- tioned parts together. Fructification is a very significant term ; it is derived from fructus, fruit, and facio, to make. We are not entirely satis- fied with the definition which our great master has given of this compound word ; he says, it is a temporary part of plants appropriated to generation, terminating the old vegetable, and beginning the new. We have just described the seven parts of fructification ; when recapitulated, they are in order as fol- lows : I. The Calyx. II. The Corolla. III. The Stamina. IV. The Pistillum. * V. The Germen, or Pericarpium. VI. The Seed ; and VII. The Receptacle. Having described the seven several component parts of that beautiful offspring of a plant denominated a flower., we have now leisure to make a few remarks on the whole composition. We cannot readily believe, with most botanists, that the pe- tals, or to take them collectively, the corolla, have no other use in the vegetable economy than merely to cover and guard the sexual organs. It militates against one of the most conspicu- ous laws of nature, where we never see a complicated contri- vance for a simple end or purpose, but always the reverse. There is a pulmonary or breathing- system in every vegetable. An artery belongs to each portion of the corolla, which conveys the vegetable blood to the extremities of the petal, there expos- ing it to the light and to the air, under a delicate membrane, which covers the internal surface of the petal, where it often changes its color, and is seen beautifully in party-colored tulips 82 THE THOMSONIAN and poppies. The vegetable blood is collected at the extremi- ties of what Darwin calls the coral arteries, and is returned by correspondent veins, exactly as he describes it in the ,s;reen fo- liage. It is presumed, that this breathina: ^^^^ circulating structure has for its end the sustenance of the anthers and stigma, as well as for the elaboration of honey, wax and essential oil, and for perfecting the prolific powder. The poetical author of the Botanic Garden imagines, that as the glands which secrete the honey, and perfect the pollen, and prepare and exalt the odor- iferous essential oil, are attached to the petals, and always fall off and perish with them, it is an evidence that the vegetable blood is elaborated and osi/g-enated in this pulmonary system of the flower, for the express purpose of these important secre- tions. We leave to the philosophic botanist to determine, whe- ther there be more of hypothesis than demonstration in this as- sertion. We should, however, bear in mind this fact, tliat as the green leaves constitute the organs of respiration to the leaf-buds, so the hractes perform the same office to the flower- buds. Assuredly there are iew things in nature that deliglit the eye and regale the smell like what Milton calls "the bright, consummate flower.''^ Some of them far exceed the finest fea- thers, the most brilliant shells, or the most precious stones, or costly diamonds. This appears to have been the judgnient of the learned and tasteful in all oges. The iexm flower has been always used to express the most excellent and valuoble part of a thing ; it is synonymous with embellishment, or ornament ; it is used to express the prime, acme, or perfection, of an indi- vidual in the animal kingdom, as well as the most distinguish- ed and most valuable mental acquirement; as the flower of the family, the flower of the army, the flower of chivalry. To say that "he crept the flowers of every virtue," is to express all that can be conceived of human perfection. By tlie expressive term oi friictification* botanists mean, not only the evanescent flower, but the green or imperfect fruit, for they cannot well be separated ; as a growing plant, like a living animal, remains not a moment the same, but is contum- ally changing ; hence fructification is defined by Linnaeus to be a temporary part of plants, terminating the old vegetable, and beginning the new. The perfection of the vegetable con- sists in its fructification ; the essence of the fructification con- sists in the flower and fruit ; the essence of the flower consists in the antherae and stigma ; and the essence of the fruit consists • Fructification comprehends the now state of the flower, and the fuiuri- tion of the fruit. MATERIA MEDICA. 83 in the seed ; and the essence of the seed consists in the corcu- kim; which is fastened to the cotyledon ; and the essence of the corculum consists in the pkimnla, in which is the piinctum vitcB of the plant itself; very minute in its dimensions, but ca- pable, by the combination of intrinsic caloric with its innate oxyo-en, of increasing like a bud, to infinity. From this view of the produce of frnctitication, the disciples of Linnaeus have learned the following principles: 1st. That every vegetable is furnished with flower and fruit ; there being no species where these are wanting. 2d. That there is no fructification without anthera, stigma, and seed. 3d. That the anthera and stigma constitute a flower, whether the petals or corolla be present or not. 4th. That the seed constitutes a fruit, whether there be a pe- ricarpium or not. LinuEcus's theory of fructification is this : he supposes that the medullary part of a plant, that is to say, the pith, must be joined with the external, or cortical part, for the purpose of producing a new one. If the medulla be so vigorous as to burst through its containing vessels, and thus mix with the cortical part, a bud is produced, either on the branches or the roots of vegetables : otherwise the medulla is extended till it terminates- in the'pistillum, or female part of the flower ; and the cortical part is likewise elongated, till it terminates in the anthera. or male part of the flower; and then the fecundating dust, from the latter, being joined to the prolific juices of the former, pro- duces the seeds, or new plants ; at the same time the inner rind is extended into the petals or corolla, and the outer bark into the calyx. This view of a plant will illustrate our assertion, that the seven essential parts, discoverable in the section of a trunk of a tree, may be discerned in its blossom. Plants, more especially "the bright, consummate flower, spirits odorous breathe.''^ On what does this agreeable odor depend? The chemists say, on the oil ; but this is not going far enough. ESSEiNTIAL OILS OF PLANTS. The bright, consummate Fi.ower, say the most learned of poets, ^^ spirits odorous breathes.^' Let us now enquire on what this odor depends. The chemist tells us, that it depends on the oil of the plant. But we are dissatisfied with this vague answer. A vegetable distils two kinds of oil, differing very much from each other; the one is fixed, and the other volatile. The fixed oil is combined with mucilage ; the volatile, with the aroma, or spiritus rector of the plant. The^:re^ oil is found 84 THE TMOMSONIAN. only in the seeds ; and is confined almost entirely to those which have two cotyledons, as in the fltix-seed, almonds and rape-seed. But the volatile oil is found in every part of a plant, except the cotyledons of the seeds, where it never occurs; and is distinguished pre-eminently in Miltoti's bright, consummate flower. When we say that the fine fragrance of a flower depends on its volatile o'\\] or that its aromatic virtue is contained in it, and hence called its essential oil, we do not go quite far enouo-h. We are so ftir from being admitted, says the profound Locke into the secrets of nature, that we scarcely approach the first entrance. We overlook the operations of those invisible fluids, which encompass them, upon whose motions and operations depend those qualities, for which they are most remarkable. Thus this essential oil contains something more subtile and act- ive than itself; a spirit^ an exceedingly minute, volatile, and scarcely ponderable spirit, which, when separated, leaves no- thing peculiar in the remaining oil. This is the spiritus rec- tor of the old chemists, the predominant, prevailing, paramount, or ruling spirit of the plant. This aeriform fluidity, gas, or spirit, denominate it which you will, and which is inimitable by art, imparts that smell, taste, and medicinal virtue to that peculiar species of plants, and is found in no other. The^^^red! oil of a plant is innate; but the essential oil is the eflect, or the result of the vegetable economy, operating in perfect health, and in full perfection, while drawing its sustentation from its native earth and air. The essential oils of plants have their respective characteris- tics from their aroma, or spirits. The volatile oil serves, in some degree, for enveloping, arresting, and preventing a too sudden, and too copious expenditure of them ; while the fixed oil serves only for connecting the solid parts together, like the oil or fat in animals. The diflerence in the nature of these two oils, is therefore very wide. How different must be the medi- cinal virtues of the root — the wood — the leaf— the flower — the fruit, and the seed of the same plant? Yet physicians have been in the habit of pounding up an entire vegetable in a mor- tar, and squeezing out the juices of it, and of giving this mix- ture of every thing to the sick ; and from its operations we pro- nounce on its predominant medicinal virtue. Those who filled our systems of Materia Medica with Ga- lenical preparations, had no idea of the subtile structure and economy of a vegetable. While transforming a plant into an ointment, who ever thinks of its structure ? And who that has attended closely to its structure and economy, can rely on its analysis by fire, which reduces every plant to the same coaly the same earth, and the same salt 7 MATERIA MEDICA. 85 Some of our readers may be of the opinion, that by fixing our eyes too intently on the poetical flower of Milton, we have strayed from the enlightened path of modern chemistry, into such a thicket of odoriferous flowers, as to become, if not stupi- fied, at least so far bewildered as not to be able to find our way out. We are aware that the term spirit is not fashionable. We mean by it, the finest and most subtile parts of bodies ; the most active part of matter, with regard to its facility of motion, in comparison with the grosser parts : we mean that which is discoverable by its smartness to the smell, and that whicli rises first in distillation. The name of spirit was formerly given to any subtile, volatile substance, that exhaled from bodies in a given degree of heat ; and, by a sort of imaginary analogy, was transferred to the human system ; hence the term animal spi- rits, which was ingeniously supposed to reside in the nervous fluid, as the spiritus rector resides in the essential oil of plants. If the term spirit should displease the fastidious critic, we would remind him, that spirit, in the German language, is gascht ; whence is derived the English word ghost, or spirit ; and hence our fashionable word gas, or gaz ; by which we are to understand an excedingly rare, highly elastic, and invi- sible fluid, not condensible by cold. Should the critic persist in refusing his imprimatur to the term spirit, or spiriivs rec- tor, we will compound with him by giving him in its stead the word quintessence ; by which we mean the specific essence, the active principle, by the power ol which medicines ope- rate. By this term was meant the predominant, rulins:, or dis- tinguishing part of medicinal simples, which can be separated in imagination from the tangible body, leaving its organization entire. To be still more particular : the ancient philosophers, and after them our old chemists, conceived that_^re — air — wa- ter and earth, contributed to the composition of all vegetables ; to all which was added bl fifth thing, or ens, which enriched and distinguished the whole, by its own particular efiicacy ; and on which the odor, taste, and virtue of each plant depend- ed : they therefore asserted, that each species of plants was made up of the four common elements ; but to these was add- ed Q. fifth, which, though small in quantity, was the most pow- erful, efficacious and predominant of its component parts; this, therefore, they called the fifth essence — or, as expressed m La- tin, the quinta essentia. The knowledge of quintessences was considered two hun- dred years ago, as the utmost bounds, the ne plus ultra of chemical perfection. Is not this precisely the case, at present, with the knowledge of gases, or spirits 7 We have said, that all aromatic plants contain a volatile oil ; 86 THE THOMSONIAN but this aromatic oil does not reside in the same part in every kind of plant: sometimes indeed we find it distributed through the whole plant, as in the Bohemian angelica: sometimes it exists only in the bark, as in cinnamon. Balm, mint, rose- mary., and icormwood contain their essential oil in their leaves and stems; while the eleca7npane and Jlorentine iris de\)Osite it in their roots. All the terebinihcnate, or resin-bearing tree, have it in their young branches ; while the chamomile and the rose have it in their petals. Many fruits contain it throughout their whole substance, as pepper and juniper. Oranges and lejnons contain it in their rmd or peel. The mitm.eg-tree bears its essential oil in the nut, and its immediate envelopment, or rather its second envelopment, which is mace. The seeds of the umheWferovs plants, such J'cictice ofphysiC) en- MATERIA MEDICA. 89 graved on folio copper plates, after drawings taken from the life. By Elizabeth Blackwell. To which is added, a short description of the Plants, and their common tises in Physic. 1739." 2Vol. fol. The drawings are in general faithful ; and if there is want- ing that accuracy which modern improvements have rendered necessary in delineating the more minute parts, yet, upon the whole, the figures are sutliciently distinctive of the subject. Each plate is accompanied with an engraved page, containing the Latin and English officinal names, followed by a short de- scription of the plant, and a summary of its qualities and uses. After these, occur the name in various other languages. These illustrations were the share her husband took in the work. This ill-fated man, after his failure in physic, and in printing, became an unsuccessful candidate for the place of secretary to the Society for the encouragement of Learning. He was made superintendent of the works belonging to the Duke of Candos, at Cannons, and experienced those disappointments incident to projectors. He formed schemes in agriculture, and wrote a treatise on the subject, which we are told was the cause of his being engaged in Sweden. In that kingdom he drained marsh- es, practised physic, and was even employed in that capacity for the king. At length he was involved in some state cabals, or, as some accounts have it, in a plot with Count Tessin, for which he suffered death, protesting his innocence to the last. So respectable a performance as Mrs. Blackwell's, attracted the attention of physicians on the continent. It was translated into German, and republished at Norimburg in 1750. To this edition was prefixed a most elaborate and learned catalogue of botanical authors. In 1773, a supplemental volume, exhibiting plants omitted by Mrs. Blackwell, was published under the di- rection of Ludwig, Ptose and Boehmer. In this form, the worjc of this learned and ingenious lady surpassed all that had been published. We hope the patrons of botany will gratify the la- dies of America witli a sight of these splendid books, not merely as a valuable treasure of botanical knowledge, but to show the men to what a degree of perfection the other sex may ascend, when their talents are brought forth, and sublimed by conjugal aflection. Prior to the time of Mrs. Blackwell, flourished the very in- genious and indefatigable MARIA SYBIL MERIAN, Who was born in Francfort, in 1G47. Her father was a cele- brated engraver, and from him she acquired a knowledge of drawing. He placed her under the instruction of an eminent painter, from whom she learnt a remarkable neatness of maa- 7 90 THE THOMSONIAN. aging the pencil, and delicacy of coloring. She was particu- larly fond of painting snbjects of natural history, such as plants, reptiles, and insects, which she most commonly drew from na- ture: at the same lime she studied those objects with a curi- osity and with the inquisitive spirit of a naturalist ; so that her knowledge of nature and the work of her hands rendered her every day more and more celebrated. She most commonly painted her subjects on vellum, and in water colors, and she finished an astonishing number. She painted the caterpillar, in all its various changes and forms in which they successive- ly appear, from their quiescent state till they become butterflies. Not contented with pcunting the plants, insects, and reptiles of her own country, this enterprising woman crossed the Atlantic and visited Surinam, to paint those plants, insects, and reptiles which were peculiar to that climate. At her return to Europe, she published two volumes of engravings, which she executed from her own paintings, and which hold a high rank in that art. But they are not equal to her paintings ; for her glistening serpents, her wet frogs, and her crawling spiders, are executed with horrible precision. This celebrated woman died in 1717. She left a daughter, who painted in the same style, and who had accompanied her mother to Surinam. This young lady published a third volume in folio, collected from the designs of her mother, which complete work has been always admired by the learned, as well as by the professors of painting. We cannot too strongly recommend to our fair readers the art of delineation or drawing. What a decided superiority does a facility in this art give to the person who possesses it, over the one who does not? If the time consumed by our young ladies, in learning to play tolerably ill on sundry musical in- struments, were devoted to the charming art of copying; nature, aijd acquiring some knowledge of her works, how beautifully would it embellish our system of female education ? This art is not merely in itself amusinof, but may be highly useful and important, in a change of fortune and utiderthe pressure of ad- verse circumstances, as has been illustrated in the history of the amible but unfortunate Elizabeth Blackwell. CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS. The indefatigable John and Casper Baiikin undertook an universal history of plants, with a synonymy, or exact list of the names that every plant bore in all the writers who preceded them. Their works, which are examples of vast knowledge and solid labors, are still the guide to all those who wish to con- sult ancient authors on botany. After their death, which hap- pened between the years 1624 and 1630, scarcely any author wrote on medicine, but wrote more or less on botany. MATERIA MEDICA. 91 Hyeromjmns Bouc, a German, was the first of the moderns who has given a.??iethodical distribution of vegetables. In his history of plants, published in 1532, he divides the eight hun- dred species there described into three classes, founded on their qualities, habit, figure and size. Clusius endeavored soon af- ter to establish the natural distijiction of Theophrastus, which was into trees, shrubs, and undershrubs. Others attempted to characterize plants by the roots, stems, and leaves, but all were found insufficient. It was thirty years from this time that Ges- ner suggested the first idea of a system founded on the flower and fruit. But the application of this suggestion was not made till twenty years afterwards by Ccesaralpinus, a physician and professor of botany at Padua. Yet this system of Caesaral- pinus, founded on scientific principles, perished, or rather slept for nearly a century, when it was awakened by Dr. Morison of Aberdeen. The next systematical arrangement of plants was given by the learned and pious Mr. Ray. His general history of plants contains eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty-five species and varieties. He allows one division to such plants as grow at the bottom of the sea ; or upon rocks that are surround- ed by that element ; but naturalists have now removed these from the vegetable to the animal kiiio^dom. Then Herman of Leyden [uiblisiied his systematic arransfement ; and soon after the iamous Boerhaaveia.vored the public u'ith his plan. About this time, or a little anterior, viz. the year 1700, the celebrated Toiirnefort came forth with his learned and extensive botanical system; then Knaut, Ludwig, Po7iledra and Magnolms. It appears that Ceesaralpinus followed Gesner ; Morison, Caesaral- pinus ; Ray improved upon Morison; Knaut abridged Ray; Herman formed himself partly on Morison, and partly on Ray; while Boerhaave took the indefatiirable Herman for his guide. But it was Tonrnefort of France who surnasssed all his prede- cessors in supplying a clue to the vegetable kingdom. Intricate as is this system, it was the most complete the world had ever seen. The French nation were proud of it ; and gloried in ^ivins: an everlasting botanical syst(>m to an admiring world. Yet Tournefort did but clear the way for one still greater than himself; for in the year 173.5 arose the sun of the botanical world, LiNX.EUs; of whose system we can ^ive here only a mere sketch or outline. Excepting Aristotle^ the ancient writers on Natural History had no systematical arrangement ; but described plants and ani- mals as they came to hand. The boundaries of natural history have been so enlarged by modern enterprise and industry, that it has become necessary to class and sort this vast multitude, or the student of nature would be lost in the exuberance before him. It is natural enough, says that pleasant writer, Gold- 92 THE THOMSONIAN smith, for ignorance to lie down in hopeless uncertainty ; and to declare, that to particularize each body is utterly impossible ; but it is otherwise with the active, searching mind : no way in- timidated with the immense variety, it begins the task' of num- bering, grouping and classing all the various kinds that fall within its notice ; finds every day new relations between the several parts of creation, acquires the art of considering several at a time under one point of view ; and at last begins to find that the variety is neither so great, nor so inscrutable as was first imagined. It is a diflicult task to find out a particular man in an immense crowd, or mob of people ; but if this promiscu- ous jumble of people be systematized, or arranged into brigades, regiments, companies, and platoons, we shall be able to find the individual without much difficulty. It is thus in a systematical arrangement of vegetables. Bo7inet has, in a great measure, disregarded system ; and Biiffon has treated it with contempt. But the eloquent author of the '■^ History of the Earth and Animated iVa^z/re" justly remarks, that books are written with opposite views, some only to be read, and some only to be occa- sionally consulted; that the methodists have sacrificed to order alone all the delights of the subject, all the acts of heightening, awakening, or continuing curiosity. But he adds, that system- atical arrangements "have the same use in science that a dic- tionary has in language : but with this difference, that in a dic- tionary we proceed from the name to the definition ; in a sys- tem of natural history we proceed from the definition to find out the thing. Without the aid of system. Nature must still have lain undistinofuished, like furniture in a lumber-room; every thing we wish for is there indeed, but we know not where to find it." The opinion of Sir Joseph Banks had no small influence in diverting a celebrated Botanist from his project ; for while under the influence of it, he had written to that celebrated Naturalist. He in answer says : — •' How can you and I correspond about a plant, which you may have found in America, or 1 in Europe, and is known to but one of us, unless we have agreed on a technical language, by which we can describe to each other the constitu- ent parts ; and by that means agree to what known plant it bears the greatest resemblance. The Jiinna-an system is not certainly to be considered as free from faults. All human con- trivance will abound with them. But still I cannot help allow- ing that, as far as I know, it is the best hitherto invented, by a great interval ; and as such, is now, in a manner invariably re- ceived by the whole learned world." We therefore present our readers with a sketch of this famous system. MATERIA MEDICA. 93 THE OUTLINES OF LINN^US'S SYSTEM OF VEGETABLES. The sexual system, as invented and given to the world by Linnceus, is built or founded on the male and female parts of FRUCTIFICATION. By fructificatiou is meant^ower and/n«^; and is disposed accordino; to the number, proportion and situa- tion of the stame)ts or pistils, or the male and female organs. For the sake of brevity of expression, he has had recourse to the Greek language. Andria, from Av/;p, a husband, he has applied to the stamen ; and gynia. from ^ivr;. a wife, to the pis- til. The STAMEN consists of two parts : — first, ihe filament is that part which elevates the anthera; — second, the anthera is the part that bears the pollen, or farina faecundans, that impreg- nates the pistillum or germen. First, The pistullum consists of three parts; i\\e germen or embryo of the future fruit ; — second, the style, which ele- vates the stigma; third, ihe stigma or summit, which is cover- ed with a moisture, that dissolves the farina fascundans of the anthera, fitting it for vivification. Of the CLASSES and orders, with the names of plants exem- plifying them. MONANDRIA CONTAINS II ORDERS. One Stamen in the Hermaphrodite Flower. ria=c r S Order I. Monogynia ? „ p 5 Canna. Class I. ^ Qj.^g^ jj Digynia ^ e- g- ^ Blitum. DIANDRIA CONTAINS HI ORDERS. Tvx) Stamens in the Hermaphrodite Flower. Order I Monogynia ) C Monarda. Class II. < Order II. Digynia > E. g. < Anthoxanthum. ( Order III. Trigynia } ( Piper. TRIANDRIA CONTAINS III ORDERS. Three Stamens in the Hermaphrodite Flower. Order I. Monogynia ) C Crocus. COrd { Ord (Ord Class III. <( Order II. Dizynia > e. G. < Avenna. Order III. Trigynia ) ( MoUuggo. TETRANDRIA CONTAINS III ORDERS. Four Stamens in the Fower with the Fruit. {If two proximate Stamens are shorter, let it be referred to Class XIV.) C Order I. Monogynia ") C Dipsacus, Class IV. < Order II. Digynia > E. G. < Hammamelis. ( Order III. Tetragynia ) ( Polamogeton. 94 THE TUOMSONIAN Class V. PENTANDRIA CONTAINS VI ORDERS. Five stamens in the Herinaphrodite Flower. f* Order I. 3Ionogmia Order II. Digynia ! Order III. Trv^xjnia Order lA'. Tetragytiia Order V. Pentagynia Order VI. Polyginia f Nerium. I Anethum. 1 Tumer.i. 1 Parnassia. I Crassula. l_ JVlyosurus. HEXANDRIA CONTAINS V ORDERS. Six Stamens in the Hermaphrodite Flower. {If of this, tivo opposite Stamens are shorter, it belongs to Class XV.) 1 Class VI. f Order I. Monogynia I Order II. Digynia \ { Order III. Trigynia } e. g. I Order IV. Tdragynia | ( Order V. Polyginia ) f Amaryllis. I Oryza. Rumex. Petiveria. Alisraa. HEPTANDRIA CONTAINS IV ORDERS. Seven Stamens in the ."ame Flower with the Pistillum. (Order I. Monogynia Order II. Digynia, Order III. Telraginia ( Order IV. Heptagynia ) Aesculus. Limeum, ■j Saururus. [Septas. OCTANDRIA CONTAINS IV ORDERS. Eight Stamens in the same Flower with the Pistillum. Class VIII. ( Order I. Order II. Monogynia Digynia Order III. Trigyma Order IV. Tetragijnia f Oenothera. Galenia. Polygonum. Adoxa. Class IX. ENNEANDRIA CONTAINS III ORDERS. Nine Stamens in the Hermaphrodite Fov^er. C Order I. Monogynia ) < Order II. Trigynia > e. g. ( Order III. Hexagynia ) C Cassyta- < Rheum. ( BiUomus. DECANDRIA CONTAINS V ORDERS. Ten stamens in the Hemaphrodite Flower, ^ Order I. Monogynia I Order II. Digynia Class X. I Order III. Tryginia Order IV. Pcnlagynia ( Order Y. Decagynia E. G. fKalmia. Saxifraga. Stellaria. I Oxalis. [^ Phytolacca- MATERIA MEDICA. 95 DODECANDRIA CONTAINS V ORDERS. Stamens, from twelve to nineteen in the Hermaphrodite Flower. Class XL f Order I. Monogynia ^ Order II. Digijnia \ OrJcT III. Trigynia. } e. g. Order IV. Pentagynia I [ Order V. Dodccagynia ) ICOSANDRIA CONTAINS V ORDERS. f Asarum. I Agrimonia. <^ Euphorbia. 1 Glinus. I, Sempervium. The Stamens inserted (not in the Receptacle, but) in the inside of the Calyx.- Commonly twenty, often more. Class XII. f Order I. I Order II. \ Order III. I Order IV. (, Order V. Monogynia Digynia Trigynia Pentagynia Polyginia /'Punlca. I CratJEgus. \ Sorbus. Pyrus. [Rubus. POLYANDRIA CONTAINS VII ORDERS. The Stamens inserted in the Receptacle from twenty to an hundred, in the same with the Pistil in the Flower, Class XIII. <; f Order I. Monogynia Order II. Digynia Order III. Trigynia Order IV. Tetragynia I Order V. Pentagynia Order VI. Hexagynia Order VII. Polygnia 'Sarracenia. Fothergilla. Aconitum. Tatracera. Aquilegia. Stratiotes. , Ranunculus. DIDYNAMIA V CONTAINS II ORDERS. Four Stamens, of which two are close together, and are longer. Melittis. Melianthus. Class XIV. SS'"^"'";, Gymnosper7ma ( Order 11. Agiospermia E. G. TETRADYNAMIA CONTAINS II ORDERS. Six Stamens ; four of which are long, the two opposite short. Class XV. ( Or ^Or der I. Order II. Silicitlosa Siliquosa Lunaria. Cheiranthus. MONADELPHIA CONTAINS V ORDERS. The Filaments of the Stamens grown together into one Body Class XVI. r Order I. I Order II. ■i Order III. I Order IV. I Order V. Pcntandria Enneandria Dccandria Dodtcandria Polyandria ] } E. G. ( Hermannia. I Dryandra. ^ Geranium, j Pentapetes. I. Alcea. 96 THE THOMSONIAN DIADELPHIA CONTAINS IV ORDERS. The Filaments of the Stamens grotvn together into two Bodies. /'Order I. Pentandria ^ ^Monnieria. V17-TT ] Order II. Hexandria I x- r- i Fumaria. UassAVll.j Qj.jgj. jjj octandria [ ^- ^- ) Polygala. ( Order IV. Deeandriu ) (. Lathyrus. POLYDELPHIA CONTAINS III ORDERS. The Filaments of the Stamens grow together imto three or more Bodies. C Order I. Pentandria Class XVIII. < Order II. Icosandria ( Order III. Polyandria Theobroma. Citrus. Hypericum. SYNGENESIA CONTAINS VI ORDERS. The stamens with the Antheras grown together in the form of a cylinder (having rarely Filaments.) _ ("Order I. Polygamia JEqualis ") fLeontodon. 5* I Order II. Polygamia Supen-flita I I Xeranthemum. g; J Order III. Polygamia Frustranea I _ „ 1 Helianthus. ^ j Order IV. Polygamia Nccessaria f f Calendula. ^ i Oi der V. Polygamia Segregata 1 | Echinops. • (^ Order VI. Monogamia. j (^Lobelia. GYNANDRIA CONTAINS VIII ORDERS The Stamens inserted on the Pistil (not on the Receptacle.} Class XX. ( Order I. Order II. Order III. Order IV. Order V. Order VI. Order VII, Diandria Triandria Tetrandria Pentandria Hexandria Dccandria Dodecandria _ Order Ylll.Polyandria 'Orchis. Sisyrinchium. Nepenthes. Passiflora. Aristolochia. Helicteres. Cytinus. Arum. MONOECIA CONTAINS XI ORDERS. The Male and Female Flowers on the same Plant. Class XXI. Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIIl IX." X. XI. Monandria Diandria Triandria Tdrandria Pentrandria Hexandria Hcptandria Polyandria Monadelphia Syngenesia Gynandria E. G. < '' Zanichellia. Lemna. Tripsacum. Urtica. Parthenium. Pharus. j Guettarda. I Juglans. j Pinus. I Momordica, [ Andrachne. MATERIA MI:DICA. 97 DIOECIA CONTAINS XIV ORDERS. The Male Flowers on a different Plant from the Female. Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order Order I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII IX. X. XI. XII. XIII XIV Monandria Diandria Triandria Tetrandria Pentandria Hexandria Octandria .Enneandria Decandria Dodccand.ria Polyandria Monadelphia .Syngenesia .Gynandria Pandanus. Salix. Empetruni. Viscum. Humulus. Tamus. Populus. Mercurialis. Kiggelaria. Menispermum. Cliflortia. Juniperus. Ruscus. tClutia. POLYGAMIA CONTAINS III ORDERS. Hermaphrodite and Male or Female Flowers on the same Plant. Class XXIII. • Monoecia Dioecia Trioecia CRYPTOGAMIA CONTAINS IV ORDERS. The Flowers within the Fruit; or in so singular a mode as not to be perceptibli to the eye. ("Order I. Filices Class AAl V . J Qj.jgj. jjj ji^^ { Order IV. Fungi /"Polypodium. ) Bryum. j Fucus. ( Agaricus. PALM.^. Class XXV. Palms : the flowers borne on a spadix, and witliin a spathe. E. G. Cocos. The ORDERS are taken from the females, or pistils, as the classes are from the males, or stamens ; but in the classes of the Syngenesia the orders differ from the rest. POLYGAMIA .EQUALIS. That is, Of many Fosculi furnished with stamens and pistils. Flowers of this sort are for the most part commonly called Jlosculous. POLYGAMIA SPURIA. That is, Where hermaphrodite flosculi occupy the disk, and that female flosculi surround the margin, which are deprived of stamina, and that in a three-fold manner. 98 THE THOMSOMAN SUPEUFLUOUS. That is. That when the flowers of the hermaphrodite disk are furnished with a stigma, and produce seeds, the female flowers also, that constitute the radius, produce seeds in like manner. FRUSTUANKOUS. That is, When the flowers of the hermaphrodite disk are fur- nished with a stigma, and produce seeds ; but the flosculi constituting' the radius, being deprived of a stigma, cannot produce seeds. NECRSSARY. That is, When the hermaphrodite flowers, through a defect of the stigma or pistil, cannot perfect their seeds; but female flowers in the radius produce perfect seeds, SEGREGATED. That is, When several floriferous calyxes are contained in a calyx common to all, so as to form only one flower. The young student of botany will understand the preceding sketch of the Linna3an System, if he have recourse to the Letters on the Elements of Botamj, addressed to a Lady, by the celebrated J. J. Rousseau, translated by Dr. Martin. If to this pleasant guide, he should add .lohn Miller's engraved il- lustrations of the sexual system of Linnaeus, lie will be soon able to proceed without the help of books, as it regards the system. It is superfluous to add a word to what has been said respecting: the botanical writings of Linnaeus. But " botany is not to be learnt in the closet : you must go into the garden or the fields, and there become familiar with Nature hersell'; with that beauty, order, regularity, and inexhaustible variety, which is to be found in the structure of vegetables ; and that wonder- ful fitness to its end, which we perceive in every Avork of crea- tion. LINN^US. The figure which this learned physician, and illustrious na- turalist made while living, and the great reputation of his works now he is dead, will justify us in devoting some space to his honor. Charles Von Linne, or as the learned throughout the world have Latinized it, Carolus Linn^us, was born at Smaland in Sweden, in the year 1707. It has almost always happened that those who have occupied some of the highest seats in the tem- ple of fame, have been obliged to climb up to it through the rough, dirty and difficult road of poverty, calumny and opposi- tion. It was remarkably so with Linnaeus, who was the son of an obscure clergyman, of an inconsiderable village in a gloomy MATERIA MEDICA. 99 region of the globe. His father's income was so snml], and his family so large and straightened in their circumstances, that this prince of naturalists was on the point of being bound to a me- chanic. The design of binding Linnasus to a shoemaker was over-ruled by his uncle, and he was sent to scbool when he was ten years ot age. At this early period, liis chief amusement was gathering plants and hunting after insects. Almost all young men, when just stepping on the stage of busy life, press forward to the acquisition of riches, as the surest road to power and reputation ; whilst a few, a very few, consider wealth as a secondary object, and pursue with ardor fame or reputation as the first. Hence there have not been many very famous literary characters who have not commenced their ca- reer in poverty; and most of them have found that ^'■Slow rises worth by jioverty depress' d.^'' In the year 1728, he removed to Upsal, where he obtained the patronage of several eminent men, particularly of Olaus Celsius, at that time Professor of Divinity, and the restorer of natural history in Sweden. Under such encouragement he made rapid progress in his studies, and in the esteem of the Pro- fessors. We have this striking proof of his nierits and attain- ments, that after only two years residence, he was thouoht suf- ficientlyqualified to give lectures, occasionally, from the botanic chair, in the room of Professor Rudbeck. In 1731 the Royal Academy of Sciences, having a desire to improve the natural history of Sweden, deputed Linna3us to make the tour of Lapland, with the sole view of exploring the natural history of the arctic region, to which liis reputation, as a scholar and a naturalist, and his tough constitution, equally recommended him. He traversed the Lapland desert, which was destitute of villages, roads, cultivation, or any convenien- ces. He spent about five months in this tour, suffering innu- merable hardships and privations ; and that too for a very small stipend, scarcely enough to buy him shoes, which must have been an important article of clothing ; for poor Linnaeus traveled ten degrees of latitude on foot. Several years after he traveled through Holland, Brabant, and France, in the same manner, gathering plants on the way, and searching for minerals. In 1733 this indefatigable naturalist was sent by the govern- ment to visit the mines in Sweden. On his return to Upsal, he gave lectures on mineralofry in the university. In 1735, when he took his degree of Doctor of Physic, he published the first sketch of his Systema Natur.e, in a very compendious way, and in the form of tables, in twelve pages only. By this it ap- pears, that he had at a very early period, before he was twenty- four years of age, laid the basis of that magnificent work, which he afterwards raised, and which will ever remain a lasting mon- 100 THE THOMSOMAN ument of his genius and industry. In the same year he retired to Fahhini, a town in Dalecarha, where he gave lectures on mineralogy and the docimastic art ; and where he practised physic, in 1736 he passed over into England, carrying letters of recommendation from the famous Boerhaave, who was at that time Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Leyden, the glory of the medical world, and one of the best botanists of the age. That the sagacious Boerhaave penetrated the true character of Linnasus, and predicted his future fame and greatness, appears by his letter of introduction to Sir Hans Sloarie. Although Boerhaave particularly recommended him to Sir Hans Sloane, President of the Royal Society, Sir Hans paid him but little attention ; for Linnasus was not one of those gay young men that attract much personal attention. He was ne- gligent of dress and diminutive of stature. The patronage of so illustrious a man rendered Linnaeus still more conspicuous ; Boerhaave himself being a cultivator of natural history and botany, the merits of Linnasus could hardly escape his perspi- cacity. Boerhaave's friendship for Linnaeus continued to the latest period of his existence. When Linnaeus visited him in his last sickness, and but a short time before this light of the medi- cal world was extinguished, Boerhaave taking an affectionate leave of his young friend, said, =' f have lived my time out, and. my days are at an end. 1 have done every thing that was in my power. May God protect thee, with whom this duty re- mains ! What the world required of me, it has got; but from thee, my dear Linnaeus, it expects much more !" In 1737 Linnaeus published the Genera Pla?itari(ni, which completely untblded the sexual system, as far as related to classical and generical characters ; and in the same year exem- plified it in the species by the Flora Lappo7iica, and tlie Hoi'- tus Clijfortianns. At the same time, he dedicated to Dil- LENius, the Critica Botanica.,\n which he explains his reasons for the change of names, and for the establishment of new dis- tinctions, both of which, he well knew, would be considered as dangerous innovations. In 1738 Linnaeus really imagined, that he had fixed down for the last time in the practice at Stockholm ; for being now married, he concluded it was time to settle down for life, and give over gathering plants in the arctic circle, and searching the bowels of the earth for minerals. He however met with great opposition in his business. He was too learned and too eminent not to excite all that envy and jealousy could engender and inflict. At Stockholm his enemies oppressed him with many difficulties ; but the abilities and persevering spirit of Linnaeus surmounted them all, so that he came at length into MATERIA MEDICA, 101 extensive practice as a physician. But his vast and ardent mind would not allow him to coniine it to such drudgery ; especially when the fruit of his labor was to be only money. Co7int Tes- sen was his patron, througli wliose influence medals were struck in his honor. He enjoyed also a stipend from the citizens of Stockholm for giving lectures in botany. In 1741 Linnaeus was appointed joint Professor of Physic with Rosen. These two coUeao-ues agreed to divide the medi- cal department between them. Professor Rosen took anatoiny, phi/siologi/, pathology, and iherapeiUics ; whilst Professor Linnaeus toook 'natural history, botany, materia niedica, diet- etics, and the diagnosis morhorwn. The systematic genius of this prince of naturalists displayed itself in his mode of teaching medicine ; for he arranged in the form of a table all the diseases that afflict mankind. Sauvaije in France followed his plan, and made many improvements ; and tlie late Dr. Cullen carried it to a high degree of perfection. According to this plan, dis- eases are arranged, in imitation of botanists, into classes, orders, genera, and species. This mode of arranging disorders is call- ed Nosology, The reputation of the Swedish University at Upsal rose to a height before unknown, during the time when its medical department was under the direction of Linnaeus. But that, which has established forever the name of Lin- naeus ; and which has reflected honor on his country, is the Systema Natupi.e. Nothing since the labors of Aristotle can be compared to it for depth of knowledge and extent of research. From this period the reputation of Linnaeus bore some pro- portion to his merit; and extended itself to distant countries; insomuch that there was scarcely a learned society in Europe but was eager to elect him a member ; scarcely a crctwned head but sought some means to honor him. His emolument kept pace with his fame and honors. It was no longer landa- tur et alget.* His practice as a physician became lucrative : and we find him possessed of his country house ;md gardens in the vicinity of the capital, Linnaeus received one of the most flattering testimonies of the extent and magnitude of his fame, that perhaps was ever shown to any literary character, the state of the nation that conferred it, with all its circumstan- ces, duly considered. This was an invitation to Piladrid from the king of Spain, there to preside as a naturalist, with the of- fer of an annual pension of 2,000 pistoles, letters of nobility, and the perfect free exercise of his religion. But, after the most perfect acknowledgements of the singular honor done him, he returned for answer, '< that if he had any merits, they icere due to his oxen country.^'' * Starviag on universal praise j or living in splendid wretchedness. 102 THE THOMSONIAN This extraordinary man died January 11th, 1778, in the 71st year of his life, leaving a glorioLis reputation. Uncom- mon respect was shown to his memory. At the commemora- tion of his death, by the Royal Academy of Sciences, the king of Sweden honored the assembly with his presence ; nay far- ther, in his speech from the throne to the Swedish parliament, that philosophic monarch lamented the death of Linnaeus as a public calamity. He said, " I have lost a man whose fame was as great all over the world, as the honor was bright, which his country derived from him as a citizen. Long will Upsal re- member the celebrity which it acquired by the name of Lin- iiagus!" Linnaeus had a good constitution, though often grievously afflicted with the headache, and in the latter part of his life with the gout. This great man was of a dimmutive stature, his head large, and its hinder part very hisfh. His look was ar- dent, piercing, and apt to daunt the beholder ; and his temper quick; nevertheless his conduct towards his numerous oppo- nents shows a diii^nified spirit of forbearance. He disavowed controversy, and seldom replied to the numerous attacks on his doctrine. He however, when attacked by Siegesbeck, and some other virulent calumniators, wrote a reply, entitled Orbis eruditi judicium de Caroli Linncci scripiis ; and with it gave a mem^^randa of his life. This Siegesljeck was a brother professor. He laid it down as a firm maxim, that every sys- tem must finally rest on its intrinsic merit ; and he willingly committed his own to the judgment of posterity. Diminutive as was the stature of Linnajus, his mind \vas of gigantic size. He was possessed of a lively imagination, cor- rected by a strong judgment, and fjuided by the laws of system ; added to these, a most retentive memory, an unremitting indus- try, and the greatest perseverance in ail his pursuits ; as is evi- dent from that continued vigor v/ith which he prosecuted the design, that he appears to have formed so early in life, o{ total- ly refonning and fabricating anew the whole science of natu- ral history ; and this he actually performed, and gave to it a degree of perfection before unknown. He had moreover the the uncommon felicity of living to see his own structure raised above all others, notwithstanding every discouragement its au- thor at first labored under, and the opposition it afterwards met Vvith. Neither has any writer more cautiously avoided that common error of building his own fame on the ruin of another man's. He every vv^ere acknowledo^es the several 'nerits of each author's system; and no man appears to be more sensible of the partial defect of his own. Linnasus was of a noble mind ; and his mind was made bet- ter by struggling with adversity. To be poor, and to be at the same time struggling on with some new discovery, or precious MATERIA MEDICA. 103 improvement, is, in the strict sense of the word, to be in adver- sity ; for one thus circumstanced never fails to have a numer- ous host against iiim, chietiy composed of the jealous, the envi- ous, and ihe knavish. But has adversity no consolations? Is it not the ijest course of discipline a wise man can endure ? He who lias never been acquainted with adversity, says Seneca, is ignorant of half the scenes of nature ; for prosperity very much obstructs tlie knowledge of ourselves. And he who was great- er than Seneca, I mean Johnson, observes, that, that fortitude, which has to encounter no danger ; that prudence, which has surmounted no difficulties ; that integrity, which has been at- tacked by no temptations, can at best, be considered as gold not yet brought to the test; of which therefore the true value can- not be assigned. When Linnaeus first pul)lished his sexual system of botany, he experienced the same treatment which generally falls to the lot of those who have enli2:htened the world by the rays of their genius and learning : a tew admired and extolled him ; others ridiculed him, while some laboured to prove that he was desti- tute of common sense ; and that he wrote about that which he did not himself understand. That those rivals who dwelt in the same city should view him with an ^^ evil eye" that is, an eye made sore, by reason of his extraordinary light, which gave it pain, and which they therefore sought to veil, or put out, is not to be wondered at : but that it should give pain to the eye of count Buffon, and other celebrated men in France, is indeed pitiful. In England, and in some other parts of Europe, they received the new doctrine with all that caution which became an enligiitened age and people ; and Nature was traced experi- mentally through all her operations in the vegetable economy before the sexual doctrine of LinncEus was acknowledged. It is now firmly established as any law in nature. Linnaeus not only silenced all gainsayers ; but had the un- common good fortune of living to see the fruits of his own great exertions. He lived to see Natr.ral History raise herself in his own native country under his culture, and the fostering hand of the government to a state of perfection unknown elsewhere. He lived to see it diffused thence all over the civilized world. He lived to see the sovereigns of Europe es- tablishing societies for cultivating that science to which he had so long devoted his head and heart. And when he ceased to live, the philosopher saw with grateful admiration the sovereign of Sweden pronouncing the eulogy of Linnaeus from his throne, and lamenting his death as a public calamity. Linnaeus was well acquainted with the art of recommend- ing science by eloquence of language, and embellishing phi- losophy with polite hterature. INo'man of the age had a 104 THE THOxMSONIAN more happy command of the Latin tongue than Linnaeus ; and no man ever apphed it more successfully to iiis purpose, or gave to description such copiousness, precision, and ele- gance. The glarmg paint of Buffon suffers in comparison with the pleasing but solid manner of Linnaeus ; fo.r this prince of naturalists possessed the sound, distinct, and comprehensive knowledge of Bacon, with all the beautiful light graces and embellishments of Addison. He knew, that those authors who would find many readers, and those lecturers who would secure attentive hearers, must please, whilst they instruct. Physiology owes much to Linnssus. But Pathology, the foundation of the whole medical art, and of all medical theory, has been more improved by Linnaeus in his Clavis Medicina, of eight pages only, which is a master piece in its way, and one of the greatest treasures in medicine, than by a hundred authors and books in folio. The Materia Medica was in a confused state, and many articles were imperfectly known, until Linnaeus reformed it. He was the first who said that all our principal medicines are "poisons ; and that physicians ought not to condemn poisons, but to use them, as surgeons do their knives, cautiously. Besides medals there are several monuments erected to the honor of this great naturalist in the gardens of his admirers in different places in Europe. In 1778, Dr. Hope laid the founda- tion stone of a monument, since finished, in the botanic garden at Edinburgh, to the memory of Linnaeus. CONRAD GESNER. The state of botanical method was quite unsettled when Conrad Gesner of Switzerland turned his eye to the Jioicer' and fruit ; and sus:gested the^rs^ idea of a systemiitic arrange- ment. It was in 1506 that Gesner proposed to the world his idea of an arrangement from the parts of the tiov/er and fruit. No plan however was established by Gesner upon this princi- ple ; he merely suggested the idea; but the application of it was made, twenty years after, by CcBsaralpinus, a physician and professor of botany at Padua, who thus favored the world with the ^/-^^ 5?/.9/e77i of botany ; which occurrence marks the second grand era in the history of this science. It might have been expected, that a method, founded like that of Caesaralpinus upon genuine scientific principles, would have been immediately adopted by the learned, and in estab- lishing itself, have totally extirpated those insufficient charac- ters, which during so many ages have disgraced the science. The fact however is, that this system of Cccsaralpinus perished almost as soon as it had existence ; for with this learned physi- cian died his plan of arrangement ; and it was not till nearly a METERIA MEDICA. 106 century after, that Dr. Robert Morison of Aberdeen, attaching himself to the principles of Gesner and Cassaralpinus, re-estab- Ushed their scientific arrangement upon a sohd foundation ; and from being; only the restorer of a system, has been generally celebrated as its founder. Imperfect as is the mode of distribution by Morison, it has furnished many useful hints to Ray^ Toiirnefort and Liniicius, those great luminaries of the science, who were not ashamed to acknowledge the obligation. Rat/ proposed his method to the world in 1682. It origin- ally consisted of twenty-five classes, two of which respect trees and shrubs, and the remaining twenty-three herbaceous plants. The distinction into herbs and trees, which Ray's method sets out, acknowledges a different, though not more certain princi- ple, than that of Cassaralpinus and Morison. The former, in making this distinction, had an eye with the ancients, to the duration of the stem, the latter to its consistence. Ray has called in the buds as an auxiliary, and denominates trees, all such plants as bear buds; herbs, such as bear no buds. The objec- tion, which lies against Linnseus's distinction into shrubs and trees, from the same principle, may be still more powerfully urged in the present case ; for though all herbaceous plants rise without buds, all trees are not furnished with them ; many of the largest trees in warm climates, and some shrubby plants in every country, being totally devoid of that scaly appearance, which constitutes the essence of a bud. Ray allots one division to submarine plants, or such as grow at the bottom of the sea, or upon rocks that are surrounded by that element. They are either of a hard stony nature, as the plants termed lithophyta, of a substance resembling horn, as the corallines, or of a softer herbaceous texture, as the /wci, spmiges, and sea mosses. It is curious, that the corallines have successively passed through each of the three kingdoms of nature. Some liave classed them with the mineral king- dom; the greater part have arranged them with vegetables; but naturalists have now demonstrated, that they belong to the animal kingdom. The aniraality of this slna'ular tribe of natural bodies was hinted at by Imperati^ an Italian, in the year 1599, and afterwards by Pei/sso7iel, in 1727 ; but it is to M. Bernard Jussieu, a French academician, and Mr. Ellis, of London, that we owe decisive facts, and a regular detail, de- monstrating that corallines are ramified animals. Mr. Ellis has, in his natural history of corallines, parcelled them out into their several genera, by means of fixed and invariable charac- ters, obvious in their appearance. Ray's general history of plants contains eighteen thousand 106 THE THOMSONIAN six hundred and fifty-five species and varieties. His method was followed by Sir Hans SLoane, in his natural history of Ja- maica; by Fetiver, in his British herbal; by Dillenius^ in his synopsis of British plants ; and by Martj/7i, in his catalogue of plants that grow in the neighborhood of Cambridge, in Eng- land. Dr. Herman, professor of botany at Leyden, was the first who introduced into Holland a genuine systematic arrangement of plants from the parts of fructification. Morison's method hud been left incomplete ; and Ray's, though perfect from its first appearance, did not all at once attract the attention of the learned; and was indeed for many years studied chiefly in England, the native country of its author. Ray labored under some disadvantages; he was not a physician, but a divine. The defects of Ray's orig-inal method, and its im practicability, did not elude the observations of Dr. Herman. He had applied himself with unremitting ardor, from his earliest years, to the study of plants ; had examined with attention every plan of arrangement, and actually undertaken a long and perilous ex- pedition into India, with the sole view of promoting his favor- ite science. Herman exhibited such marks of unwearied dili- gence, that he alone, it is said, reared twice as many plants in the garden at Leyden as had been introduced by all his prede- cessors put together, in the long space of an hundred and fifty years. Such a man merited the applause of the public, and at- tained it. Dr. Herman's method consists of twenty-five classes, which are founded upon the size and duration of plants; the presence or absence of the petals and calyx ; the number of capsules, cells and naked seeds; the substance of the leaves and fruit; the form and consistence of the roots ; the situation and dispo- sition of the flowers, leaves and calyx, and figure of the fruit. The method proposed by Herman excels all which preceded it, in the uniformity of its classical characters. The famous Boerhaave, the glory of the medical art, was appointed professor of botany at Leyden in 1700. His method was a mixture of Ray's, Herman's and Tournefort's, The sub- ^narine and imperfect plants, which find no place in the system of Herman, are borrowed by Boerhaave from Ray. Boer- haave's classes are thirty-four in number, and subdivide them- selves into an hundred and four sections, which have for their characters the figure of the leaves, stem, calyx, petals and seeds; the number of petals, seeds and capsules ; the substance of the leaves; the situation of the flowers, and their diflerence in point of sex. 13y this method, Boerhaave arranged six thousand plants, the produce of the botanical garden at Leyden, which he carefully superintended for the space of twenty yeais, and MATERIA MEDICA. ' 107 left to his successor, Mr. Adrien Royen, in a much more flou- rishing state than he had himself received it. Botanical writers were disposed to walk in the track of their predecessors. Few had sufficient courage to venture upon an unbeaten path. Morison followed Csesaralpinus ; Ray improv- ed upon Morison ; Knaut abridged Ray ; and Boerhaave makes Herman his guide. Rivinus, a professor of physic and botany at Leipsic, was the first who, in 1690, relinquishing the pursuit of affinities, and convinced of the insufficiency of the fruit, set about a method, which would atone by its facility for the want of numerous relations and natural families. A method purely artificial appeared to Rivinus the best adapted for the purpose of vegetable arrangement. It rests upon the number and equal- ity of the petals ; a system no less admired for its simplicity, than for the regularity and uniformity of its plan. TOURNEFORT. The celebrity of Tournefort requires that we should dwell a little on his history and character. Jusep/i Pltton de Tournefort was born at Aix, in Provence, in 1656. He was educated in the Jesuits' college in Aix, and, like the great Boerhaave, intended for a divine; but, like that great man, quitted divinity for physic. In early life, he was nearly as fond of anatomy and chemistry as of botany. In 1679 he went to Montpelier, where he perfected himself in an- atomy and physic. The botanic garden, established in that city by Henry IV. rich as it was, could not satisfy his unbound- ed curiosity. He ransacked all the tracts of ground within more than ten leagues of Montpelier, Then he explored the Pyrenean mountains and the Alps, and afterwards examined the vegetables in Provence, Languedoc, Dauphine and Catalo- nia. He travelled through Spam and Portugal. He took his degree of doctor in physic in 169S, when he published his His- tory of the Plants ivhich groiv about Paris, together with an- accouiit of their iise in Medicine. In the year 1700, Dr. Tournefort received an order from the king to travel into Greece, Asia and Africa, not only to dis- cover plants, but to make observations on natural history in o-e- neral ; upon ancient and modern geography; and even upon the customs, religion, and commerce of the people. From this grand tour he brought home one thousand three hundred and sixty-six new species of plants, most of which ranged them- selves under one or other of the six hundred and seventy-three genera he had already established ; and for all the rest he had but twenty-five genera to create, without being obliged to aug- ment the number of classes ; a circumstance which sufficiently proves the advantage of a system to which so many foreign and 108 THE TMOMSONIAN. unexpected plants were easily reducible. When Tonrneforl returned to Paris, he thought of resuming the practice of phy- sic, which he had sacrificed to his botanical expedition ; but ex- perience shows us, says his biographer, that in every thing de- pending on the taste of the public, especially affairs of this na- ture, delays are dangerous. Dr. Tournefort found it difficult to resume his practice. He was at the same time professor of physic; the functions of the academy employed some of his time ; the arrangement of his memoirs still more of it. This multiplicity of business affected his health ; and when in this uncomfortable state, he accidentally received a blow on his breast, which in a few months put an end to his active, useful, and honorable life, which happened in December, 1708. Tournefort surpassed all his predecessors in siipplyingacluc to the immense labyrinth which the vegetable kingdom exhibit- ed to the astonished botanist. He gave the first complete regu- lar arrangement, and cleared the way for one still greater than himself. For in 1735 rose the sun of the botannical world, LinncBUs. MARK CATESBY Was (says Dr. Pulteney,) one of those men whom a passion for natural history very early allured from the interesting pur- suits of life ; and it led him at length to cross the Atlantic, that he might read the volume of nature in a country but imper- fectly "explored, and where her beauties were displayed in a more extended and magnificent scale than the narrow bounds of his native country exhibited. It is but too true, that the world at large will forever treat with ridicule and disdain, that man, who, thus deserting the paths that lead to riches, to pre- ferment, or to honor, gives himself up to what are coiumonly deemed unimportant and triflins: occupations. Few will give him credit for that secret satislaction, for that inexhaustible pleasure, which the investigation of nature, in all her objects^ incessantly holds forth to his mind ; or believe that such em- ployment can possibly compensate for the solid treasures of gain. Mark Cateshy was born about the latter end of 1679, or th«? beginning of the next year. He acquaints us himselt". that he had very early a propensity to the study of nature, and that his wish for higher gratifications in this way first led him to Lon- don, which he emphatically styles "tl>e centre o-f science," and afterwards impelled him to seek further sources in distant parts of the globe. The residence of soiue relations in Tirginia fa- vored his design ; and he went to that country in 1712, where he staid seven years, admiring and collecting the various pro- ductions of the country, without having laid any direct plan for MATERIA MEDICA. 109 the work he afiervrards accomplished. During this residence, he conveved seeds and specinaens of plants, both dried and m asTTowm? state, to Mr. Dale, of Braintree in Essex : and some of hl« observations ou the country bemg communicated by this means to Dr. Witham Sherard, procured him the friendship and patronage of that srentleman. On his return to Cn2land. 1719, he was encouraged by the assistance of several of the nobility, of Sir Hans iSioan, Dr. She- rard. and other naturalists, whose names he has recorded, to return to America, with the professed design of describing, de- iineaiinsr, and paintin? the more curious objects of nature. Carolina was fixed on as the place of his residence, where he arrived in May, 1722. He first examined the lower part of the country, making excur^ions from Charleston; and afterwards sojourned in some rtme amon? the Indians, in the mountain- ous regions at and about Fort Moore. He then extended his re- searches through Georsria and Florida: and ha vId? spent near- ly three years on the continent, he visited the Bahama islands, takine his residence in the isle of Providence, carrying on his plan, and particularly making collections of fishes and subma- rine productions. On his return to England, in the year 1726. his labors met with the approbation of his patrons. Caiesby made binoself master of the art of etching : and, retiring to Hoxton, emplored himself in carryinz on his ereat work, which he published in numbers of twenty plants each. The first appeared in the lat- ter end of the year 1730 : and the first volume, consisting of one hundred plates, was finished in 1732: the second in 1743; and the appendix, of twenty plates, in the year 1748. A rezular account of each number, written by Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, secretary of the Royal Society, was laid before the society as it appeared, and printed in the Philosophical Trans- actions, in which the Doctor has sometime interspersed illns- trative observations. The whole work bears the following title " The Natural His- tory of Carolina. Florida, and the Bahama Islands : contain- ing the fiifures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants : pariicularly the forest trees, shrubs, and plants, not hi- therto described, or very incorrectly fienred by authors; together '.rith their descriptions, in French and English. To which are added observations on the air, soil, and waters : with remarks upon agriculture, grain, pnlse, roots. To the whole is prefixed a new and correct map of the countries treated of By Mark Catesby. f. r. 8. The number of subjects described and figured in this work stands as below : 110 THE THOMSONIAN Plants. - - - 171 Quadrupeds, . - - 9 Birds, - - - - 111 Amphibia, . _ . 33 Fishes, ... 46 Insects, - - - 31 In this splendid performance, the curious are gratified with the figures of many of the most beautiful trees, shrubs and her- baceous plants, that adorn the gardens of the present time. Many also of the most useful in the arts, and conveniencies of life, and several of those used in medicine, are here for the first time exhibited in the true proportion and natural colors. It is only to be regretted, that in this work a separate exhibition of the flower in all its parts should be wanting ; in the defect of which, several curious articles have not been ascertained. It is a requisite of modern date, and without it every figure, espe- cially of a new species, must be deemed imperfect. Most of the plates of plants exhibit also some subject of the animal kingdom. To these our plan does not extend. As Catesby etched all the figures himself, from his own paintings, and the colored copies were at first done under his own inspec- tion, and where it was possible every subject in its natural size: this work was the most splendid of its kind that England had ever produced. We do not know that it had been equalled on the continent, unless by that of Madam Merian, which, how- ever, falls greatly short in extent. Seventy-two plates of Cates- by's work were copied by the Nuremberg artists, and published in 1750. His " Observations on Carolina,^'' 6cc. were sepa- rately printed in folio, at the same place, in 1767. Catesby was the author of a paper, printed in the 44th vol- ume of Philosophical Transactions, page 435, " On Birds of Passage," in which, in opposition to the opinion that birds lie torpid in caverns and at the bottom of waters, he produces a variety of reasons, and several facts which his residence in America offered, in support of their migration in search of proper food. His voyages across the Atlantic had taught him the ability of these wanderers to take long flights. He mentions in another place, his having seen hawks, swallows, and a spe- cies of owl, in twenty-six degrees of north latitude, at the dis- tance of 600 leagues from land. He shows, that birds before unknown to the country find their way annually into various parts of North America, since the introduction of several kinds of grain ; of this the Rice bird, Emberiza orizivoria, and the white faced duck. Anas discors, are, among others, instances sufiiciently known and felt by the inhabitants. Catesby was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society soon after his second return from America, and lived in acquaintance and MATERIA MEDICA. Ill friendship with many of the most respectable members of that body ; beino^ "greatly esteemed for his modesty, ingenuity, and upright behavior." He removed from Hoxton to Fnlham, and afterwards to Lon- don, and died Dec. 23d, 1749, aged 70, leaving a widow and two children. His work has been re-published, in 1754 and 1771. To the last edition a Linnaean index has been annexed ; but it is by no means so copious or perfect as a work of such merit and magnificence demands. BOTANICAL GARDENS. Says Solomon, / viade me gardens and orchards, and I flanted trees in them of all kinds of jruits. 1 made me 2?ools of water' to water thereioith the trees. The island of Crete was the physic garden of Rome. The emperors maintained in that island gardeners and herbarists to provide the physicians of Konie with simples. The establish- ment of professorships, gave rise, in modern times, to Botanical gardens; a new species of luxury to the botanist. The first public botanical garden of this sort was that of Pa- dua, established in 1533. The utility of these institutions is self-evident. By public gardens medicinal plants are at the command of the teacher in every lesson ; the eye and the mind are perpetually gratified with the succession of curious, scarce, and exotic luxuries ; here the botanist can compare the doubtful species, and exam- ine them, through all the stages of growth, with those to which they are allied ; and all these advantages are accumulated in a thousand objects at the same time. The first botanic garden in Switzerland was constructed at Zurich, by Gesner, in 1560. The botanic fjarden at the University of Oxford was founded in 1632, by Henry, carl of Danby; who gave for this purpose five acres of ground, erected gieen-houses and stoves, endowed handsomely the establishment, and planted in it as supervisor, Rohart, a German, who published in 1648 Catcdogus Planta- rtwi Horti tnedici Oxoiiiensis, tj'c, which contained, if we read rightly, sixteen hundred species. The botanical garden at Edinburgh was founded by Sir An- drew Balflonr in 1680 ; and may be considered as the first in- troduction of natural history in Scotland. This garden was so successfully cultivated, that it is said to have contained three thousand species of plants, disposed according to Morison's method. Among those public institutions, which in a singular man- ner invigorated the spirit of natural history in England, the 112 THE THOMSONIAN Royal ^^ociety claims the most distinguished notice. In its de- sign, as in its progress, it was the fostering parent, and guardian of natural knowledo;e. Such was the respectability of this so- ciety, both as a body, and in its individuals, that through its means the whole nation may be said to have amply contributed to its aggrandizements. Under the auspices of this illustrious society, the anatomy and philosophy of plants were illustrated by Grew and Hales. We mention, in connection with the Royal Sf^ciety, the Physic Garden at C/ieZ.*?ea, founded by the company of apoth- ecaries in 1673, but which was not eflectually constructed till thirteen years after ; so slow and gradual is the progress of such institutions at their commencement. From the time o[ Jolinson* who was the editor of that cele- brated English botanist, Gerard, a custom had prevailed among the London apothecariest to form a society each summer, and make excursions to investigate plants. The Itinera^ published by Johnson, may be considered as the fruit of such expeditions in his day. After the foundation of Chelsea garden this lauda- ble practice was fixed to stated periods, and put under regula- tions, the herbarizing being nou'* distinguished into private and general. They first begin on the second Tuesday in April ; and are held monthly on the same day till September inclusive- ly, in some of the villages in the immediate neighborhood of London. These are for the benefit of pupils. At the end of the season the premium o( Hudson's Flora Anglica is present- ed to the youno man who has been the most successful in dis- covering and investigating the greatest number of plants. The general herbarization is annually in July : when the demon- strator and others of the court of a.ssistants belonging to the company, make an excursion to a considerable distance from the city, collect the scarce plants, and dine together near Lon- don. This institution at Chelsea was rendered more stable, and received permanency from the liberality of Sir Hans Sloane ; who in 172] gave foiir acres of ground to the company, en con- dition that the demonstrator should, in the name of the compa- ny, deliver to the Royal Society fifty new plants, till the num- ber should amount io two thousand ; all specifically different from each other ; the list of which was published yearly in the * Johnson received a deLree of M. D. at Oxford in 1643 ; the year following he was kiiied in a desperate action with the parliamentary troops. He was lieutenant-colonel in Sir INtarmadune Rawdon's regiment. Botany owes much to this accomplished scholar and soldier. tin England an apothecary is not, as with ns, a render of drugs ; but a prarlitioner of physic and surgew, and differs principally from a physician in not iiaving taken a degree in medicine. MATERIA MEDICA. 113 Philosophical Transactions. The first was printed in 1722, and the catalncrues have been continued till 1773; at which time the number of two thousand five hundred and fifty was completed. These specimens are duly preserved in the archives of the society, for ihe inspection of the curious. Under excellent superintendents Chelsea Garden has flour- ished ; having been excelled perhaps by no public institution of the kind in Europe, for the number of curious exotics it con- tains. Of this Millers Dictionary afibrds sufficient proofs. In justice to the memory of those, who filled the place of lec- turers and demonstrators in Chelsea garden, we recite the names of the following gentlemen. They were all practitioners in physic. Is:iac Rand from 1722 to 1729 Joseph Miller 1740 1746 John Wilmer 1747 1767 William Hudson 1765 1769 Stanesby Alchhorne • 1770 1772 William Curtis 1773 to his death. Soon after the restoration of Charles II., a growing taste for the cultivation of exotics sprung up among the great and opu- lent in England. Archibald, dnke of Argyle, was one of the first who was conspicuous for the introduction of foreign trees and shrubs. Evelyn, both by his writings and example, en- couraged the same taste ; and the royal gardens at Hampton court were n)ade rich in fine plants. Dr. Compton, bishop of London, had a garden richly stored with plants at Fulham ; and many private ofentlemen vied with each other in these ele- gant and useful atnusements. The growing commerce of the British nation, and the more frequent intercourse with Holland, where immense collections from the Dutch colonies had been made, rendered the gratifications more easily attainable, than before, and from these happy coincidences, science in general reaped great benefit. We oua:ht not to pass over some eminent British gardeners, who, while others were increasing the catalogue of plants and giving accurate descriptions of exotics, were equally servicea- ble to real science in the art of culture. Fairchilds, Knowl- ton, Gordon, Miller, and Forsytlie, have distinguished them- selves in the useful and healthy* exercise of horticulture. In the xxxii. vol. of Philosophical Transactions there is a paper by Fairchilds on the motion of the sap. Knowlton was gardener to the Earl of Burlington, and was much noticed by Sir Hans Sloane. Several of his communications are to be found in the • Cadogan says, he never knew a gardener affliected with the gout, unless he was notoriously intemperate. 114 THE THOMSONIAN Philosophical Transactions, He died in 1782, aged ninety. Gordon was eminent for his successfnl cultivation of exotics. He maintained a correspondence with Linnaeus, and has a plant named after him. The extraordinary merit of Philip Miller demands a more particular notice, as he raised himself to an eminence never be- fore equalled by a gardener. He was born in 1691. His fa- ther was gardener to the company of apothecaries at Chelsea ; and he himself succeeded in that station in 1722. It is not un- common to give the name of botanist to any man, who con re- cite by name the plants of his garden ; but Mr. Miller rose much above this ordinary attainment. He added to the knowl- edge of the theory and practice of gardening that of the struc- ture and character of plants, and was early and practically ver- sed in the methods of Ray and Tournefort. To his superior skill in his art we owe the culture and preservation of a variety of fine plants, which, in less skilful hands, would have failed to adorn the conservatories of the curious. Mr. Miller maintained an extensive correspondence with per- sons in distant parts of the globe, from the cape of Good Hope to Siberia. He was emphatically styled by foreigners Hortiila' norum Princeps. His Gardener''s Dictionary was first pub- lished in folio in 1731, and has been translated into various lan- guages ; the reception it has every where met with is a suffici- ent proof of its superiority. Linnaeus said of his dictionary, Non erit Lexicon Hor till o nor ntn, sed Botanicornm. He was not only a member of the Royal Society, but of its council. This "prince of gardeners" died in 1771, aged eighty years. While Padiia^ Paris, Madrid, Upsal, Oxford, Leyden, and Montpelier, had flourishing botanical gardens, London, so cele- brated in the annals of science, could boast of no public botani- cal garden until 1780. This garden is situated at Queen's Elm, on the road to Ful- ham. The site must be allowed to have been well chosen, for the grounds lie open to the south and west, except where the plantations are intended to exclude the sun, while the north- east wind, by being impregnated with the ignited air of the capital, loses much of its sharpness, and becomes far less perni- cious than it would otherwise be, to such plants as require a bland and genial climate. Its extent is about three acres and a half, including the ground occupied by the hot house, green Iiouses and library; and seven acres more, immediately adjoin- ing, and now in the occupation of the proprietor, con at any time be included. The arrangement is strictly Linnaean ; and every tree, shrub and plant, is labelled, so as to afford the advantage of an easy- reference to the correspondent numbers in the catalogue. MATERIA MEDICA. 115 On approaching from Fulham road, the stranger perceives a door, situated nearly in the middle of the plantation ; and, on ringins: a bell, will be immediately admitted. A broad walk, extending across the garden, presents a parterre on each side, in which all the different varieties and beautiful hues of Flora are exhibited, in regular gradation, according to the season. " Along these blushing borders, bright with hue, Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace." No. 1, contains all those plants that are considered useful in agriculture. Persons skilled in this art have an opportunity of seeing, distinctly arranged, with their proper names and spe- cies, every tree, grass and shrub, that is cultivated as food for both man and beast. This is a most important branch of natural economy. No. 2 is the medicinal quarter, in which the student will find the plants of the London and Edinburgh Dispensatories ; and whether he himself is destined to prescribe, or to make up the prescriptions of others, will here have an opportuity of becom- ing acquainted with the characters of those herbs which form a part of the Materia Medica. Among the curious ones will be found the Assafcelida ; while the poisonous tribe, only thirteen of which will thrive in the open air in Britain, are arranged so as to be hereafter de- tected by simple inspection alone. No. 3, the foreign grass quarter, contains the Lygeum, Spar- tum, the Melica Ciliata, the Triticum gsstivum, the Juncus ni- veus, &.C. No. 4, the British grass quarter. Here the agriculturist will, at one view, behold and distinguish those gramini which constitute the real wealth and fertility of a country. These in- clude every species serving for food for the horse, the cow, the ass, the sheep, and the goat. In this interesting collection is to be found the Meadow Fox- tail, (the Alopecurus Pratensis of Linnseus,) which is the most fattening of this tribe; also the Anthoxanthum Odoratiim., or the sweet scented vernal meadow grass, that confers a fine aro- matic flavor on our hay, together with a complete collection ot all the British species of gramina, may be seen in great perfec- tion in this quarter. No. 5, contains the British plants of large growth. No. 6, the British wood. No. 7, is dedicated to British rock plants and aquatics. No. 8, the hot house and green house. Here may be found the Dioncea Miiscipula, a fine specimen of which was lately pre- sented to the president of the Linnsean Society, for the purpose of elucidating his lectures at the Royal Institute. They have also the Strelitzia Regincn, so called out of compliment to the 116 THE THOMSONIAN queen ; the PoHlandia, the Plumieria, the Vanilla, Catesbea ^pi/iosa, the Ipomcea bona tiox, the Amaryllis reticulata, to- gether with the Crinum crubescens, all in fine bloom. Ill the green house is to be met with, the double Camella Japonica, the Phormium tenax, with a very excellent collec- tion of plants from the Cape of Good Hope and New Holland. No. y, the library. This is an oblonor building, with a lattice work towards the south, through which it is intended that the ornithologist should be recreated with the view of British birds, and enabled to study their habits and manners while alive. Tne collection consists of useful works, either on or imme- diately connected with the science of botany, in all about 500 volumes, uicluding the most celebrated agricultural works of Young, Marshall, Dickson, &c. No. 10, a green house, entirely dedicated to heaths, chiefly from the coast of Africa, of which there are one hundred and fifty different species. No. 11, is appropriated to bulbs and flower roots. No. 12, foreign annual plants. No. 13. This quarter contains upwards of one thousand different species of foreign hardy herbaceous plants. No. 14, foreign Alpine plants. No. 1,5, American plants, and foreign wood quarter. No. 16, is a double border of foreign trees and shrubs, ex- tending all round the boundaries of the gaiden, on each side of the walk. The above is intended as a popular rather than a scien- tific description of a spot, where either the student or the adept may satisfy his curiosity, by means of an arrangement executed in strict conformity to the system of the great Swedish natural- ist. Those, also, who delight in the contemplation of nature, are recreated at a very trifliny expense ; and flowers, plants, and trees, at every season of the year, present an almost endless variety of interesting objects. Mr. Salisbury is often honored with the presence, not only of some of the first botanists of England and other countries, but also with many of the British nobility ; and he has often beheld, with grateful satisfaction, different branches of the royal family, who have honored it with their patronage, walking along the paths, appearing delighted with the arrangement. Such is, at present, the Botanic Garden at (Queen's Elms; in the further improving of which no pains or labor are spared to render it still more useful to the public. It remains lor a nation, not only fond of science, but ever considered as its munificent patron and generous protector, to enable the proprietor to com- plete his plans, extend his views in favor of genius ; and finally MATERIA MEDICA. 117 to form an establishment equally worthy of science, and of the noted liberality of Great Britain. A GENERAL LANGUAGE TO DESIGNATE PLANTS. / have always thou;^ht it possible to be a very great bo- tanist, says the celebrated Rousseau, ivithout knowing so much as one plant by name. He nevertheless exhorts his pupil to pass from his closet to the gardens and fields, to study the sacred scriptures of nature, instead of books written by men. This famous Genevan had doubtless seen persons who bestowed all their attention on the nomenclature and classifi- cation of vegetables, and thought themselves botanists. The celebrated /. Hunter* knew not the names of every individu- al in the armies of Britain ; nor the discriminating mark of each company in each and every regiment ; yet he knew most accurately the anatomy and physiology of every individual. One universal languu'jre should be adopted by botanists; and it is important that it should be well understood : but it is absurd to make this the primary object. If the study of plants do not lead to a knowledge of their uses in rural economy, and to their medicinal virtues, the attention to the aspect and names of plants is of very little importance to the public. Be- fore the Spanish overran Mexico, Montezuma transplanted in- numerable vegetables from the woods and fields into his royal garden ; and it was the business of his physicians to investi- gate and announce the medicinal virtues of his vast collection. Would it not be well, if the philosophers of the north should imitate the wise example of these more than half civilized peo- ple of the south'? The first step we should take towards perfecting the science of botany, is to transplant vegetables from our woods, bogs, fields, and, if possible, marshes, into one garden : and then at- tempt the naturalization of tropical and other exotics. We must not expect to have a garden in which every plant of eve- ry country will prosper, or even grow. To effect this we must imagine a garden planted on a mountain directly under the equator, and gradually sloping to the height of more than two miles above the level of the ocean. There every plant of every climate would grow. Alexander de Humboldt, a Prus- sian gentleman, has given us some very interesting facts to this purpose, collected within a few years past, in the equato- rial region. The vast range of elevation, from the shores of the Atlantic to the heights of the Andes, affords every possible degree of temperature, and exhibits all the diversity of the ve- getable tribes. This distinguished traveler represents the dif- • Late Surgeon-Geaeral in Ihe British army. 118 THE THOMSONIAN ferent kinds of plants as following each other in a regular suc- cession up the mountains. We are told that the inhabitants of New-Spain distinguished the cultivated part of the country into three zones. 1. The tierras calientes, or warm grounds, which never rising above one thousand feet above the sea, have a heat of eighty degrees, and yield abundantly, sugar, indigo, cotton, and plantains or bananas. 2. The tierras templ'ades^ or temperate grotmds whicli lying on the declivity of the great ridge, at an aUitude, from four to five thousand feet, enjoy a mild, vernal tempera- ture, of sixty-eight, or seventy degrees, that seldom varies ten deo'rees through the whole year. 3. The tierras frias, or cold fjrounds, having an elevation of eight thousand feet, and com- prehending the high plains, or table land, such as that of Mex- ico, of which the temperature is generally under sixty-three de- o-rees, and never exceeds seventy de2:rees. ALTITUDE OR LOCATION OF PLANTS. The following account of the succession of plants from the low grounds up to the boundary of perpetual congelation, as marked on the Andes, we esteem both curious and instructive. They are the remarks of Humboldt as given to the English reader by the Edinburgh Review for 1810. " Under the equator, from the coast to the height of three thousand feet, grow the scitaminem of Jussieu, — the palms, the sensitive plants, and the most odoriferous of the liliaceous tribe. In that sultry zone, where vegetation wantons in the rankest luxuriance, appear likewise the theophrasla, the /ii/meti(ca,the cecropia peltata, the allionia, the conocMrpiis, the convolvulus littoralis, the cactus pereskia, the sesuvimn, portulacastruvh, the toluifera halsamum^ and cuspariafehrifiiga, or ihe quin- quina of Carony. Between three thousand and six thousand feet of elevation, occur the nielastomcc, the clusiii alba, the prii- nus occidenlalis, iheficuSy the moroia, the calicarpa, the acros- ticiim, the solanum, the dolichos croton, and the passijlora to- mentosa. Above those limits, the sensitive plant ceases to ap- pear. The tree ferns range from the height of fifteen hundred to that of five thousand feet. The tracts which have an eleva- tion from six to nine thousand feet, and enjoy a mild tempera- ture, varying between thirty-four and seventy-two degrees, pro- duce the fuc/isifn, the lobclirc, the sty rax, the tropmolum, the begonia, and the columella. Towards the upper part of that zone, the accena, the dichondra, the nier ember gia, the hydro- cotile, the nerteria, and the alche)nilla, cover the surface with a fine herbage. This is the region of the oak, or the quercns granatensis, which annually sheds its leaves, and from an ele- vation of nine thousand two hundred feet, never descends near MATERIA MEDICA. 119 the equator below that of five thousand five hundred feet, though it occurs, under the parallel of Mexico, at the height of only- two thousand six hundred and twenty feet. The ceroxylon andicola, or wax-palm, whose trunk is one hundred and eighty- feet hii^h, grows on the mountahisof Q,uindiu. from six to nine thousand feet above the sea. Beyond this limit of nine thou- sand feet, the larger trees of every kind cease to appear. Some dwartish pines, uideed, rise to near thirteen thousand feet. The several species of the cinchona^ which furnishes the salu- tary Peruvian bark, are scattered along the chain of the Andes, over au extent of two thousand miles, at an elevation from two thousand three hundred to nine thousand five hundred feet, and therefore exposed to great variety of climate. The Za?ici- folia and cordifolia prefer the plains ; the ohlongifoUa and loni,nJlora occur somewhat higher ; but the noted quinquina of LiOxa, and which Humboldt proposes to name the cinchona con.fla7ninea, grows at heights from six thousand two hundred and fifty to eight thousand feet, where the mean temperature varies between fifty-nme and sixty-two degrees, on a botlom of micaceous schist in the woods of Caxanuma and Uritucinga. This precious shrub forms one continued forest on the eastern declivity of the Andes, as far as the province of Jaen, and the liills above the river Amazons. Bark of a similar quality is thus obtained from very distinct kinds of the cinchoria ; in the same manner as the caoutchouc, or common elastic gum, is procured from the inspissated juice of a variety of different vegetables — from the ficus, the hevea, the lobelia, the castilloa, and several species of the euphorbium. The icintera and escallonia occur at an altitude from nine thousand two hundred to ten thousand eight hundred feet, and form scrubby bushes in the cold and moist climate at the ;ja;'rt77Z05. Above the height of ten thou- sand five hundred feet, the arborescent vegetables disappear. The alpine plants occupy an elevation from six thousand five hundred to thirteen thousand five hundred feet: there grow the gentians, the stcelina, and the espeletia frailexon, whose hairy- leaves often afford cover to the shivering Indians, when be- nighted in those upland regions. The grasses appear at a height from thirteen thousand five hundred to fifteen thousand one hundred feet. In this zone, where snow falls at times, the jarava, and a multitude of new species of 'panicum agrostis^ avena, and dactylis, cover the soil with a yellow carpet, which the inhabitants call pajonel. From the height of about fifteen thousand feet, to the boundary of perpetual congelation, the only- plants visible are the linchens which cover the face of the rocks and seem even to penetrate under the snow. It is a most curious fact, that those plants which seem to 120 THE THOMSONIAN constitute the natural riches of the equatorial regions, are never found growing spontaneously. The carica papaya, the jatropha manihot, or cassava, the plantain and maize, from which the native Americans drew (heir principal subsistence, were no where seen by Humboldt in the wild state, nor could he discover the potatoe, though this valuable root is, along with the cheiiopodium quinoa, cultivated in the high country of New-Grenada. In the lower grounds between the tropics, the natives raise cassava, cocoa, maize, and plantains. It is the re- gion of the ftiammea^ of oranges, pine-apples, and the most de- licious fruits. The Europeans have introduced indigo, sugar, cotton, and coffee, which they cultivate to near the height of five thousand feet above the sea, chiefly by the labor of negro slaves. Indigo and cocoa require great heat, but cotton and coffee will grow at a considerable elevation, and sugar is cul- tivated even with success in the temperate parts of Q,uito. This is the habitation of the cerealia^ or bread-corn. The introduction of wheat into New Spain, is traced to three or four grains which a negro servant of Cortez picked out from among rhe stores of rice that had been sent from Europe, for subsisting the troops. The monks of Q,uito still preserve, as a precious relic, the earthen jar in which Father Rixi of Ghent gathered the first crop, from a spot of ground cleared away in front of the convent. Wheat, under the equator, will seldom form an ear below the elevation of four thou- sand five hundred feet, or ripen it above that of ten thou- sand eight hundred. Barley is made to grow somewhat high- er, but then with the utmost difficulty. Between the altitudes of six and nine thousand feet, lies the climate best suited for the culture of all kinds of European grain. In the same tract is raised the chenopodium quinoa. From the elevation of four thousand three hundred feet to that of six thousand two hundred feet, grows the erythroxylum peruvianiim, whose leaves, called cocca^ being mixed with quick lime, serve to stim- ulate the exhuasted force of the Indian, during his long and toilsome journies over the heights of the Andes. In the space between the altitudes of nine thousand eight hundred and thir- teen thousand feet, potatoes and the tropoeolum esculenium are generally cultivated." MATERIA MEDICA. 121 IMPROVED SYSTEM OF BOTANY, AS TAUGHT AT THE PRESENT DAY. GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF PLANTS. Phytology, or the physiology of vegetables, may properly be divided into, 1st. The germination and growth of plants from the. seed ; 2. The, propagation of plants ; 3d. The increase of plants, or the enlargement of their volume. 1. The Germination and Growth of Plants from the Seed. If a seed be immersed in warm water for a considerable time, and then subjected to a high magnifying power, the elementary form of the future plant may be seen. In some seeds even the embryo of the future flower becomes manifest. Therefore it may not be absurd to say, that the germination and growth is efl:ected by the development of the embryo plant contained in the seed ; and that this development goes on by means of suc- cesssive supplies of nutriment, which are taken into an oro-an- ized structure adapted to their reception. But where shall we stop in our views of these elementary forms? Shall we say, that within the embryo of the future flower which sometimes becomes manifest under the micro- scope, tiiere is probably another seed containing the elementa- ry form of the next generation, and so on ad injinitiivi 7 Fortunately, the present state of the science presents the means of fixing the limit in the most satisfectory manner. For noth- ing in the physiology of organized beings is better established, than that a perfect future seed cannot be produced without the application of pollen from a stamen to the pistil of a stigma. But if the future seed were perfect in tiie present one, such an ope- ration would not be necessary. Therefore, by the aid of the microscope and this established law, we are enabled to infer that a seed may contain the elements of a future plant as far as the flower and empty tegument of the future seed, and no far- ther. 2. The Propagation of Plants. There are two methods of propagating plants. First, by re- prodiiction ; second, by continvation. 1. A plant is reproduced, when it grows immediately from the seed. The potatoe is reproduced, when the seed is taken from the berry, planted and grows. Apple trees are reprodu- ced in the nurseries from seeds, &c. 2. A plant is continued., when parts taken from its roots, stem, branches, its buds, (fcc. are transferred to difl^erent places, and so cultivated as to continue to grow in several places at the 122 THE THOMSONIAN same time. The living branches or twigs of the same apple tree may continue to grow from the original root and from hun- dreds of other roots in different countries at the same time. And it is a A\ct now well established, that those twigs or grafts, how- ever recently inserted, feel the effects of age in the same degree with the twigs remaining on the original tree ; all other cir- cumstances being similar. The roots of potatoes continue in succession in their native torrid regions year after year for a limited period, like the Mal- axis and some others of the Orchis family in our latitude. Ag- riculturists and gardeners aid their progress here, by housing the roots in winter, and selling them in the earth again in the spring season. These too are greatly distributed ; so that this plant is vastly extended by the continuation of the same indivi- dual. But in due time the effects of age become manifest to the cultivator, and he finds it necessary to reproduce this useful plant from the seed. The Lombardy popular is becoming enfeebled with age in our country, so that very recent shoots will hardly withstand a severe winter. The reason is manifest. There has never been a pistillate tree introduced from Europe ; consequently this tree has never been reproduced here from the seed. We therefore see but the feeble limbs of an exile in dotage though yet sus- tained in a thousand localities. 3. The increase of Plants^ or the enlargement of their vol- time. After the first season of growing, all woody plants continue to increase their size, if no accident occurs, until age terminates their vital energies. Their volun)e is not enlarged hom an ex- tension of each fibre or pore; but from the annual acquisition of new ones. These new ones are always deposited between the bark and wood. In the spring season a mucilage is formed between the bark and wood, called the camb, or camhivm. Towards the decline of the year it becomes considerably indurated, and !?eparates it- self into two concentric hollow cylinders of very difi'erent thick- nesses. The thiner one is attached to the bark, and forms its inner membrane. The thick one is attached to xV.c wood, and becomes the outer layer of the wood for the next year. It is on this account that those trees which long retain their expanding cuticles, present to our land surveyers those para- doxical magic-like marks. A beech tree, for example, if lettered or figured with a board marker, will present these marks twen- ty or thirty years afterwards, both on the cuticle and on the wood, of the year when marked ; while the intervening layers are sound and without a scar. These mterposed woody layers, MATERIA MEDICA. 123 originatinor in mucilage annually deposited between the bark and wood, gradually separate the marked bark and cuticle from the marked wood, while they grow between these marks and become continuous. ELEMENTARY ORGANS. Every plant is either phenogamous or cryptogamous. Phenogaraous plants have their stamens and postils sufficient- ly mariifest for examination. Cryptogamous plants either lose the staminate organs before they become manifest, or they are too minute for inspection. The Classes, Orders and Genera of the Linnaean system, are founded wholly on the seven elementary organs of fructifica- tion. These are, 1. Calyx. The outer or lower part of the flower, generally not colored.* 2. Carol. The colored hlo.ssom, within or above the calyx. 3. iS'lamens. The organs immediately surrounding or adjoin- ing the central one ; consisting of mealy or glutinous knobs, either sessile or supported on filaments. 4. Pistil. The central organ of the flov/er, whose base be- comes the pericarp and seed. 5. Pericarp. The covering of the seed, whether pod, shell, bag, or pulpy substance. 6. Seed. The essential part containing the rudiment of a new plant. 7. Receptacle. The base which sustains the other six parts, being at the end of the flower stem. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE CALYX. Every calyx is either movophylloiis, consisting of one leaf, or pohiphi/llons, consisting of more than one leaf. 1, Perianth. That calyx which adjoms and surrounds the other parts of the flower, as of the apple, rose, &c. About two thirds of all plants have perianths. 2. Involucre. That calyx which comes out at soip.e distance below the flower, and never encloses it. It is commonly . at the origin of the pedimcles of imibels, and sometimes at tached to other aggregate flowers. hivolucres are either universal, placed at the origin of the universal umbel, as in caraway, lovage, &c. ; or j)ar- * In the language of Botany, any part of a plant is not colored when it is green ; as the calyx of the apple is said not to be colored, because it is gi-een j and that of the nasturtion is coloured, because it is not green. 124 THE THOMSOiMAN iial, placed at the origin of a particular umbel, as in cori- ander; or proper, placed beneath a single flower. 3. Spathe. A kind of membrane, which at first encloses the flower, and after it expands is left at a distance below it, as daffodil, onion, Indian turnip. 4. Glmne. That kind of calyx which is composed of one, two or three valves or scales, commonly transparent at the margin, and often terminated by a long awn or beard. All grasses have glume calyxes. 5. Anient. An assemblage of flower-bearing scales, arranged on a slender thread or receptacle ; each scale generally constituting the lateral calyx of a flower, as in the willow, chesnut, pine, (fcc. 6. Calyptre. The cap or hood of pistillate mosses, resembling in form and position an extinguisher set on a candle. Con- spicuous in the common hair-cap moss. 7. Volva. The ring or wrapper at first enclosing the pileus or head of a fungus; and which, after the plant has arrived to maturity, contracts and remains on the stem or at the root. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE COROL. . Every corol is either monope talons, consisting of one petal or flower-leaf ; or polypetalous, consisting of more than one. Monopetaloiis Carols are, 1. Bell form. Hollowed out within the base, and generally di- verging upwards, as Canterbury bells, gentian, &,c. 2. Funnel-form. With a tubular base, and the border opening gradually in the form of a tunnel, as the thorn-apple, the morning glory. 3. Salver-foiyn. Having a flat spreading limb or border, pro- ceeding from the top of a tube, as lilac, the trailing arbu- tus, &c. 4. Wheelform. Having a spreading border without a tube, or with an exceeding short one, as borage, laurel. 5. Labiate. A labiate corol is divided into two general parts, somewhat resembling the lips of a horse or other animal. Labiate corols are either fersonate, (with the throat muf- fled) as snap-dragon ; or ringent, (with the throat open) as mint, motherwort, catnip, monkey-flower. Polypetalous Corols are, 1. Cruciform. Consisting of four equal petals, spreading out in the form of a cross, as radish, cabbage, mustard, «fcc. 2. Caryophylleous. Having five single petals, each terminal- MATERIA MEDICA. 125 ing in a long claw, enclosed in a tabular calyx, as pink, catch-fly, cockle, (fcc. 3. Liliaceous. A corol with six petals, spreading gradually from the base, so as altogether to exhibit a bell-form ap- pearance, as tulip, lily, &.c. 4. Rosaceous. A corol formed of roundish spreading petals, without claws, or with extremely short ones, as rose, ap- ple, strawberry, &c. 5. Papilionaceous. A flower which consists of a banner, two wings and a keel, as pea, clover, &c. If a corol agrees with none of the above descriptions, it is called anomalous. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE STAMEN. 1. Anther. The knob of the stamen, which contains the pol- len ; very conspicuous in the lily, &c. Never wanting. 2. Pollen. The dusty, mealy, or glutinous substance contain- ed in the anthers. Never wantinaf. 3. Filament. That part of the stamen which connects the an- ther with the receptacle, calyx or pistil. Often wanting. SUHDIVrSIONS OF THE PISTIL. 1. Stigma. The organ which terminates the pistil ; very con- spicuous in the lily, and hardly distinguishable in the In- dian corn. Never wanting. 2. Germ. That part of the pistil which in maturity becomes the pericarp and the seed, as in the cherry, the pompion. Never wanting. 3. Style. That part of the pistil which connects the stigma and the germ; very conspicuous in the lily. Wanting in the tulip and some other flowers. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE PERICARP. 1. Silique. That kind of pod which has a longitudinal parti- tion, with the seeds attached alternately to its opposite edges, as radish, cabbage, &c. 2. Legume. A pod without a longitudinal partition, with the seeds attached to one suture only, as the pea, &c. 3. Capsule. That kind of percicarp which opens by valves or pores, and becomes dry when ripe, as the poppy, which opens by pores, and the mullein by valves. 4. Drupe. That kind of a pericarp which consists of a thick fleshy or cartilaginous coat enclosing a nut or stone, as in the cherry, in which it is said to be berry-like ; and in the walnut, where it is diy. 5. Pome. A pulpy pericarp without valves, which contains within it a capsule, as apples, quinces, &.c. 126 THE THOMSONIAN 6. Berry. A pulpy pericarp, enclosing seeds without any cap- sule, as currant, grape, cucumber, melon. 7. Strobile. An anient with woody scales, as the fruit of the pine. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE SEED. 1. Cotyledon. The thick fleshy lobes of seeds ; very manifest in beans ; whose cotyledons grow out of the ground in the form of two large succulent leaves. Many plants, as Indian corn, wheat, the grasses, &,c., have but one cotyledon — mosses, (fcc. none. 2. Corcle. The rudiment of the future plant, always proceed- ing from the cotyledon ; easily distinguished in chesnuts, acorns, &.c. 3. Tegument. The skin or bark of seeds; it separates from peas, beans, Indian corn, &c. on boiling. 4. Hihmi. The external mark or scar on seeds, by which they were affixed to their pericarps. In beans and the like it is called the eye. SUBDIVISIONS OF THE RECEPTACLE. 1. Proper. That which belongs to one flower only. 2. Common. That which connects several distinct flowrets, as in the sun-flower, daisy, teasel. 3. Rachis. The filiform receptacle, connecting the florets in a spike, as in the heads of wheat. 4. Colum,ella. The central column in a capsule, to which the seeds are attached. 5. SpadLv. An elongated receptacle proceeding from a spathe, as Indian turnip. GENERAL DIVISIONS OF FLOWERS. 1. Simple. Having a single flower on a receptacle, as in the quince, tulip, «fcc. 2. Aggregate. Having on the same receptacle several flow- ers, whose anthers are not united, as teasel, button-bush, &c. 3. Compound. Having several florets on the same receptacle, with their anthers united, as sun-flower, China-aster, o w ^ri 14 iO 1^ o w A x: rt r!< o TS CO c o COO aj oj o D ^2.^ 3J CHh c^r^ HHhe^ -d bio bJD bJD be bJD bjp be b jO be be o o CL, K C G O O 1 'B O I n:3 be !^ X X _ O (D O) 3 . . ^. . . . O) E S be C C S J3 oi c 1^ q:i c^ ID o Ph pL, CO Ph Oh Ph "i 1 1 d a; XI 0^ hH 1 ^ 't_i fl4 •r ■- i^ ^ S-c Qj £-.5 « ctf § a, o bO a. c3 ooococcoco >,— G G C O O Pm o Q 144 THE THOMSONIAN NATURAL ORDERS. Plants of (he same natural order agree in habit, and mostly in nipdicinal properties. When they differ in these properties^ the ditference is indicated by the odor. The natural orders of Linnaeus are retained, on account of the books in use which refer to them. Jussieu has improved upon Linnaeus o-reatly. Medical students ouo;ht to arrange their plants according to Jussieu in the herbarium. Students should be told, that many plants may possess the qualities of the orders to wfiich they belong, though in a very feeble and scarcely perceptible degree. NATURAL ORDERS OF LINN.EUS. [Defnilions.) 1. Palmce. Palms and their relatives ; as cocoanut, frog's- bit. Farinaceous diet. 2. Piperita^. Pepper and its relatives. In crowded spikes; as Indian turnip, sweet-flag. Tonics and stomachics. 3. Calamarice. Reed-like grasses with culms without joints ; as cat-tail, sedge. Coarse cattle fodder. 4. Gramina. The proper grasses with jointed culms ; as wheat, rye, oats, timothy-grass, Indian corn. Farinaceous diet and cattle fodder. 5. Tripetaloidecc. Corol three petalled, or calyx three leav- ed ; as water plantain, rush-grass, arrow-head. Tonics, and rough cattle fodder. 6. Ensatce. Liliaceous plants, with sword-form leaves; as iris, blue eyed grass, Virginian spider-wort. Antiscorbutics and tonics. 7. OrchidecB. With fleshy roots, stamens on the pistils, pol- len glutinous, flowers of singular structure, with the germ in- ferioi ; as ladies-slipper, arethusa. Farinaceous diet, and sto- machics. 8. iScitaminecc. Liliaceous corols, stems herbaceous, leaves broad, gferm blunt angular ; as ginger, turmeric. Warming- sto77iachics. 9. Spathaceca. Liliaceous plants with spathes ; as daffodil, onion, snow-drop. Secernant stimulants."^ 10. Coronarice. Liliaceous plants without spathes; as lily, tulip, star-grass. The nauseous scented and bitter are anti- scorbutic and cathartic ; the others emollient. 11. Snrnientaceoi. Liliaceous corols with very weak stems ; as smilax, asparagus, bell-wort. Tonics and secernant stimu- lants. 12. OleracecB, or Holeracece. Having flowers destitute of * Which promote the secretion of perspirable matter, &c. MATERIA MEDIC A. 145 beauty, at least of gay coloring ; as beet, blight, pig- weed, dock, pepperage. If nauseous, cathartic; others, mild stimulants and nutrieniics* 13. Succidentoi. Plants with very thick succulent leaves ; as prickly-pear, house-leek, purslain. Antiscorbutic and eiJiol- lieiit. 14. Gruinnles. Corols with five petals, capsules beaked; as flax, wood-sorrel, crane-bill. Toiiics tind refrigerants. 15. Innndatcc. Growing under water, and having flow- ers destitute of beauty ; as hippnris, pond-weed. Astringents. IG. Calt/ciflorm. Plants without corols, with the stamens on the calyx; as poet's cassia, seed buckthorn. Astringents and refrigerants. 17. Calycanihemce. Calyx on the germ, or growing to it, flowers beautiful ; as willow-herb, Ludwigia, (Enothera. To- nics. 18. Bicornes. Anthers with two straight horns ; as whor- tleberry, spicy and bitter wintergreen, laurel. Astringents. 19. Hesperides. Sweet-scented, leaves evergreen ; as myr- tle, cloves, mock-orange. Astringent and stomachic. 20. Rotacecc. Corals wheel-form ; as St. Johnswort. To- nics. 21. Preci(n. Plants with early spring flowers of an elegant specious appearance; as primrose. Astringents. 22. Caryophyllece. Plants with caryophyllous corols ; as pink, cockle. Astringents and secern ant stimulants. 23. TrihilatcB. Flowers with three stiofmas, capsules in- flated and winged, and generally three seeded, with distinct hi- lums; as nasturtion, horse-chesniit. Tonics and nvtrientics. 24. Corydales. Corols spurred or anomalous; as fumitory, touch-me-not. Narcotic and antiscorbutic. 25. PutaminecB. Plants which bear shell fruit ; as caper- bush. Detergent and antiscorbutic. 26. MidtisiliqncB. Having several pod-form capsules to each flower; as columbine, larkspur, rue, American cowslip. Ca- thartic, narcotic and caustic. 27. RhceadecB. Plants with caducous calyxes, and capsules or siliques ; as poppy, blood-root, celandine. Anodyne and an- tiscorbnfic. 28. Lnridce. Corols lurid, mostly monopetalous ; flowers pentandrous or didynamous, with capsules; as tobacco, thorn- apple, niii^htshade, foxglove. Narcotic and atitiscorbi/.tic. 29. Campanacem, Havins: bell-form corols, or those whose general aspect is somewhat bell-form ; as morning-glory, bell- • Nutrientics of Darwin, which serve as nutriment merely, without produc- ing any extroardinary effects. 146 THE THOMSONIAN flower, violet, cardinal-flower. Cathartics, and secernanf sii- mulants. 30. Contort(B. Gorols twisted or contorted ; as milk-weed, periwinkle, clioke-dos^. Cathartics and antiscorbutics. 31. Veprecidce. Having monophyllous calyxes, colored like corols ; as leather-wood, thesium. Antiscorbutic wwd emetic. 32. PapilionacecB.. Havino: papilionaceons flowers ; as peas, beans, locust-tree, clover. Emollient, diuretic, initrientic. 33. Lomentaceoi Having legumes or loments, but not perfect papilionaceous flowers with united filaments ; as cassia, sensi- tive plant. Emollient., astringent, catharitc. 34. CucurbitacecB. Fruit pumpkin-like, anthers mostly unit- ed ; as melons, cucumbers, passion flower. Cathartic and re- frig-erant. 35. jSenticosce. Prickly or hairy, with polypetalous corols, and a number of seeds either naked or slightly covered ; as rose, raspberry, strawberry. Astringent and refrigerant. 36. Pomacecc. Having many stamens on the calyx, and drupaceous or pomaceous fruit ; as pear, currant, peach, cher- ry. Refrigerants. 37. Columnifer(B. Stamens united in the form of a column; as hollyhock, mallows, cotton. Einollieni: 38. TricocccB, Having three-celled capsules ; as castor-oil plant, spurge, box. Cathartic. 39. Siliquosce. Having silique pods ; as cabbage, mustard, shepherd's purse. Diuretic, Antiscorbutic, Nutrientic. 40. PersonwtCB. Having personate corols ; as snap-dragon, monkey-flower, Deobstrnents and cathartics. 41 . AsperifolicB. Corols monopetalous, with five stam.ens, seeds five, naked, leaves rough ; as comfrey, stone-seed, (li- thospermum.) Astringents txn^ deobstrnents. 42. Verticillata. Having labiate flowers ; as sage, thyme, catmint, motherwort. /Stomachics and astringents. 43. Dumosa.. Bushy pithy plants with small flowers, petals in four or five divisions ; as sumach, elder, holly. Tonic and cathartic. 44. Sepiarioi. Having mostly tubular divided corols and few stamens, being ornamental shrubs; as lilac, jasmine. Astrengent. 45. UmbellatcB. Flowers in umbels, with five-petal led co- rols, stamens five, styles two, and two naked seeds ; as fennel, dill, carrot, poison hemlock. Stomachic and iinrcotic. 40. Hederacecc. Corols five-cleft, stamens five to ten, fruit berry-like on a compound raceme ; as grape, ginseng, spike- nard. Tonics and refrigerants. 47. Stellatce. Corols four-cleft, stamens four, seeds two, na- ked, leaves mostly whorled ; as bed-straw, dog-wood, venus'- pride. Tonics and deobstrnents. MATERIA MEDICA. 147 48. Aggre^atcB. Having ag-gre^ate flowers; as button-bush, marsh rosemary. Tonics and secernant stimulants. 49. CompositcB. All the compound flowers ; as sun-flower, boneset, tansey, thisde. Tonics and secernant stimvlants. 50. Anientacea. Bearing pendant aments ; as hazle, oak, chesnut, willow. Astringents. 51. ConifercB. Bearing strobiles; as pine, juniper, cedar. Tonics and stomachics. 52. CoadmiatcB. Several berry-like pericarps, which are ad- nate ; tulip-tree, magnolia. Tonics. 53. (^cabridce. Leaves rough, flowers destitute of beauty ; as nettle, hemp, hop, elm. Astringents. 54. Miscellanea;. Plants not arranged by any particular character ; as pond-lily, poke-weed, amaranth. Their qualities are various. 55. Filices. All ferns; as brakes, maidenhair. Secernant stimulants. 56. Musci. All mosses; as polytrichum. Cathartics and secernant stimulants. 57. AlgecB. All hverworts, lichens, and sea-weeds ; as jun- germannia, fucus, usnea. Tonics. 58. Fungi. All funguses; as mushroom, toad-stool, puflf- ball, touch-wood, mould. Tonics and cathartics. VEGETABLE SKELETON. The preparations of leaves, fruits, roots, &c. called ve2:etable skeletons, are made in this manner. Choose for this purpose the leaves of trees or plants, which are somewhat substantial and tough, and have woody fibres, such as the leaves of orange, jesmine, bay, laurel, cherry, apricot, peach, plum, apple, pear, poplar, oak, and the like ; but avoid such leaves as have none of the woody fibres, which are to be separated and preserved by this method ; such are the leaves of tlie vine, lime-tree, and the like. The leaves are to be gathered in the months of June or July, and such to be chosen as are sound and untouched by caterpillars, or other insects. These are to be put into an ear- then or glass vessel, and a large quantity of rain-water to be poured over them ; and after this they are to be left to the open air, and to the heat of the sun, without covering the vessel. When the water evaporates, so as to leave the leaves dry, more must be added in its place : the leaves will by this means pu- trefy, but they require a different time for this ; some will be finished in a month, and others will require two months or lon- ger, according to the hardness of the parenchyma of them. When they have been in a state of putrefaction some time, the two membranes will begin to separate, and the green part of the 148 THE THOMSONIAN leaf to become fluid : then the operation of clearing is to be per- formed. The leaf is then to be put upon a flat white earthen plate, and covered with clear water ; and being gently squeez- ed with the finger, the membranes will begin to open, and the green substance will come out at the edoes ; the membranes must be carefully taken off with a finger, and great caution must be used in separating them near the middle rib. When once there is an opening towards the separation, the whole mem- brane always follows easily : when both membranes are taken ofl", the skeleton is finished, and it is to be washed clean with, water, and then preserved between the leaves of a book. The fruits are divested of their pulp, and made into skeletons in a different manner. Talce, for instance, a fine large pear that is soft, and not strong ; let it be nicely pared without squeez- ing it, and without hurting either the crown or the stalk ; then put it into a pot of rain-water, cover it, set it over the fire, and let it boil gently till it is perfectly srft, then take it out, and lay it in a dish, filled with cold water ; then hold it by the stalk with one hand, and with the other hand rub off" as much of the pulp as you can with the finofer and thumb, beginning at the stalk, and rubbinc{ it regularly towards the crown. The fibres are most tender toward the extremities, and therefore to be treat- ed with great care there. When the pulp is thus cleared pret- ty well off", the point of a fine penknife may be of use to pick away the pulp stickinsf to the core. In order to see how the operation advances, the foul water must be thrown away from time to time, and clean poured on in its place. When the pulp is in this manner perfectly separated, the clean skeleton is to be preserved in spirit of wine. Skeletons of roots which have woody fibres, such as turnips, and the like, must be made by boiling the root, without peeling it, till it be soft, then the pulp may be squeezed away by the fin- gers in the same manner, in a dish of water. Many kinds of roots are thus made into elegant skeletons, and the same meth- od succeeds with the barks of several kinds of trees ; which, when thus treated, afford extremely elegant views of their con- stitute fibres. MATERIA MEDICA. 149 GENERAL RULES FOR AVOIDING POISONS. Plants not Poisonous. 1. Plants with vl glume calyx, never poisonous. As wheat, Indian corn, foxtail grass, sedge grass, oats.^ — Linnaeus. 2. Plants whose stamens .stand on the calyx, never poison- ous. As currant, apple, peach, strav/berry, ihorn.— Smith. 3. Plants with cruciform flowers, rarely if ever poisonous. As mustard, cabbage, water-cress, turnip. — Smith. 4. Plants with iJapilionaceous flowers, rarely if ever poison- ous. As pea, beau, locust-tree, wild indigo, clover. — Smith. 5. Plants with labiate corols, bearing seeds without peri- carps, never poisonous. As catmint, hyssop, mint, mother- wort, niarjoram. — Smith. 6. Plants with compound flowers, rarely poisonous. As sun- flower, dandelion, lettuce, burdock. — Milne. Poisonous Plants. 1. Plants with five stamens and one pistil, with a dull color- ed lurid corol, and of a nauseous sickly smell, always poison- ous. As tobacco, thorn-apple, henbane, nightshade. The de- gree of poison is diminished where the flower is brighter colored and the smell is less nauseous. As potatoe is less poisonous, though of the same genus with nightshade. — Smith. 2. Umbelliferous plants of the aquatic kind, and of a nau- seous scent, are always poisonous. As water-hemlock, cow- parsley. But if the smell be pleasant, and they grow in dry land, they are not poisonous. As fennel, dill, coriander, sweet cicely. — Smith. 3. Plants with labiate corols and seeds in capsules, frequent- ly poisonous. As snap-dragon, foxglove. — Smith. 4. Plants from which issues a milky juice on being broken, are poisonous, unless they bear compound flowers. As milk- weed, dogbane, Milne's contorlcB and lactescentia. 5. Plants having any appendage to the calyx or corol, and twelve or more stamens, generally poisonous. As columbine, crowfoot. — LinncBUs. Most General Rule. Plants with few stamens not frequently poisonous, except the number be five ; but if the number be twelve or more, and the smell nauseous and sickly, the plants are generally poisonous. Milne's multisiliquas and sapor. Note. Many plants possess some degree of the narcotic prin- ciple, which are still by no means hurtful. 150 THE THOMSONIAN VOCABULARY. Abrupt leaf. A pinnate leaf, which has not an odd or terminal leafet. Accessory. Additional. Annexed, and of a different kind when applied to the border, &c. of the receptacle of a lichen. AciNACiFORM leaf. Sabre-form. One edge sharp and convex, the other thick- er and straight or concave. Cutlass-form. AciNE. One of the little globules constituting a compound berry ; as the raspberry. Acuminate. Any kind of leaf terminating more or less suddenly in a point turned towards one edge of the leaf Acute. Terminating in an angle ; that is, not rounded. Adnate. Adhering. Any two or more parts of the plant being attached to each other. Aggregate. Having on the same receptacle several flowers, whose anthers are not united, as teasel, button-bush, kc. Aigrette, Egret. The dying, feathery, or hairy crown of seeds ; as the down of thistles and dandelions. It includes whatever remains on the top of the seed after the corol is removed. stiped (stipulatus) when it is supported on a foot-stem. simple (simplex) when it consists of a bundle of simple hairs, without branches. plumose (plumosus) when each hair has other little hairs arranged along its sides, like the beards on a feather. membranous, thin transparent leaves. Alternate. Branches, leaves, flowers, &c. are alternate, when arranged up- on opposite sides of the stem, or whatever supports them; beginning at dif- ferent distances from its base, and continuing in nearly equal series. Some- times they are in three series. Ament. An assemblage of flower-bearing scales, arranged on a slender thread or receptacle ; each scale generally constituting the lateral calyx of a flower — as in the willow, chesnut, pine, &c. Angular. By means of intervening grooves, the stems, calyxes, capsules, &c. have ridges running lengthwise. Annual. Which springs up, perfects fruit, and dies in the same year. Anodynes. Substances which promote sleep. Anomalous. Whatever forms an exception to the assumed rules or sj'stems. Anther. The knob of the stamen, which contains the pollen. Antiscorbutics. Substances which cure eruptions. Apetalous. a flower without a corol. Apex. The tip or top end. Apophysis. A process from the base of the capsule of a raoss. Appendage — stipule, a leafet or scale at or near the base of a petiole. . -bract, a leaf among or near the flowers, different from the other leaves of the plant. .thorn, a sharp process from the woody part of a plant. . prickle, a sharp process from the bark, as those on raspberry-bushes, &c. sting, hair-like processes, mostly from the leaves, as nettles. gland, a roundish, generally minute, appendage to different parts of plants. tendril, the filiform appendage by which climbing plants support them- selves on other bodies. AquATic. Growing most naturally in or near water. Arachnoideus. Resembling a spider web. Aril, Jnllus. The outer coat of a seed, which, not contracting with it in ri- pening, falls off. Arrow-form. Shaped like an arrow-head, differing from cordate in having the hind lobes more or less acute. Ascending. Rising gradually between a horizontal and vertical position. MATERIA MEDICA. 151 Astringents. Substances which condense the fibres and consolidate relaxed parts. They brace up debilitated intestines, and applied externally restrain bleeding wounds, Sec. , AucTus CALYX. Having an outer row of leafets, as the dandelion. Awl-form. Linear at the base, and becoming more or less curved at the point. AwL-poiNTKD. Acuminate. Awn. A short slender process or stifi" beard, proceeding from the top or back of glumes or chaff. Axil. The arm-pit. Applied to vegetables,' it means the angle formed by the meeting of a leaf or petiole with the stem, or of a branch with the main siem. Axillary. Any thing growing from the axils. Banner. The upper petal in a papilionaceous flower. Bark. The inner strong fibrous part of the covering of vegetables. Basis. Base. The part of a stem, leaf, flower, &.c. nearest to the place through which it derives its nutriment. Beaked, Terminated by a process formed like a bird's bill. Bell-form. Hollowed out within the base, and generally diverging upwards, as Canterbury-bells, gentian, &c. Berry. A pulpy pericarp enclosing seeds without any capsule, as currant, grape, cucumber, melon. Biennial. Springing up one summer, flowering and dying the next, as wheat. Bifurcate. Forked twice. Bipinnate. Twice pinnate. BiPiNNATiFiD. Doubly pinnatifid. When the divisions of a pinnatifid leaf are cut in, or pinnatifid again. Biternate. Trice ternate ; when the petiole is terminate, and each division bears three leafets. Boat-form. Hollow one side, with a compressed longitudinal ridge on the opposite side. Border in Lichens. The edging of their receptacles (apothecium.) It is proper, when of the same substance and color of the receptacle. It is ac- cessory, when of a different substance or color from the disk of the recepta- cle. Bract. See Appendage. Branching. Having the whole root divided into parts as it proceeds down- wards, as the oak, apple-tree, &c. Bristle-form. Resembling a bristle. Bristly. Set witli stiff' hairs. Bulbous-roots. Fleshy and spherical. They are either solid, as the turnip ; coated, as the onion ; or scaly, as the garden lily. Buttons, Tricae. Tliat kind of receptacle of lichens which, when magnified resembles a coiled horse-hair. They are roundish, sessile, unexpanding' compact, black and solid; continued along their whole surface. Upper side they are in concentric, or coiled, plaited, and twisted folds ; covered every where with the same membrane ; containing seeds without cells or cases Smith. Caducous. Any part of a plant is caducous which falls off earlier, compared with other parts of the same plant, than is usual for similar parts in most plants ; as the calyx of the poppy falls off before the corol is hardly expand- ed. CjEspitose. Turfy. Several plants growing together, or from the same root, forming a turf. Calycled. See auctus. Calyptra. The cap or hood of pistillate mosses, resembling in form and po- sition an extinguisher set on a candle. Conspicuous in the common hair- cap moss. Calyx. The outer or lower part of the flower. CAMn. The mucilaginous or gelatinous substance which in the spring of the year abounds between the bark and the wood of trees. Capillary. Hair-form ; longer than bristle-form, in proportion to its thick- 152 THE THOMSONIAN Capitate. Head-form ; growing in heads. Capsule. That kind of pericarp which opens by valves or pores and becomes , dry when ripe ; as the poppy, which opens by pores, and the mullein by valves. Carinate, see keeled. Cartilaginous. Hard and somewhat flexible. It applies to a leaf, when it is bound around with a strong margin, dillerent from the disk of the leaf. Caryophylleous. Having live single petals, each terminating in a long claw, enclosed in a tubular calyx as pink, &,c. Catkin. See anient. Cathartics. Substances v/hich stimulate the intestines so as to hasten and increase evacuations. Cauline. Growing on the main stem. Caustics. Substances which corrode, burn, or dissolve the part with which they come in contact. Cell. The hollow part or cavity of a pericarp or anther. It is more gene- rally applied to the cavities of pericarps; where seeds are lodged. i\ccord- ing 10 the numbers of these, the pericarps are called one celled, tu-o celled, &c. Cellular integument. The parenchymous substance between the cuticle and bark, oftea green. Easily seen in the elder, &c. after removing the cu- ticle. Cellules, cistulce. That kind of receptacle of lichens which is globose, termi- nal, and formed of the substances of the frond. It is lilled willi uncoated seeds, intermixed with fibres ; at length it bursts irregularly. — Sviith. Cespitose. See caespilose. Channelled. Hollowed out longitudinally with a rounded groove of consi- derable depth. Ciliate. Edged with parallel hairs or bristles, resembling eye-lashes. Clasping. Sessile with the base more or less heart-form, so as entirely or in part to surround the stem. Clavate. Clubform. Growing larger towards the end. Claw. The lower narrow part of a petal, by which it is fixed on the calyx or receptacle. It can exist only in polypctalous corols. Cleft. Split down not exceeding halfway to the base; with nearly straight edg-es on both sides of the fissure. The parts into which it is split are numbreed in descriptions ; as once split, making two divisions, is called 2- cleft ; two splits, 3-cleft, &C. Clefts, lirellec. That kind of receptacle of lichens which is open, elongated, sessile, black, very narrow or linear, with a somewhat spongy disk ; the border is parallel on each side, and proper. Sometimes it has an accessory border from the crust besides. The clefts are either simple and solitary, or aggregate, confluent and branched. — Smith. CLiMniNG. Ascending by means of tendrils, as grapes ; by leaf-stalks, as vir- gin's bower ; by cauline radicles, or rootlets, as the creeping American ivy, (rhus radicans.) It differs from Ixviaing, which see. Club-form. See Clavate. Cobwebbed. See arachnoidcus. CocHLEATE. Coilcd Spirally like a snail-shell. Coiled. Twisted lilc* a rope, or rather resembling the form of one thread of a rope after the otiier threads are removed. CoLORcd. In the language of botany, any part of a plant is not colored when it is green; as the calyx of the apple is said not to be colored, because it is green ; and that of the nasturtion is colored, because it is not creen. (Columella. The central column in a capsule, to which the seeds are at- tached. Commissure. The joining sides of pairs, as of fennel seeds. Common. Any part is common which serves to include or sustain several parts, similar among themselves • perianth. Including several florets, as in the thistle. involitcre. Surrounding the base of the peduncles in an umbel, which are subdivided above. MATERIA MEDICA. 153 This term is often used for frequent also. Complete. Ha» ing both calyx and corol. Compound. Having several florets on the same receptacle, with their an- thers united, as siin-flowcr, china-aster, Sec. Conic. With a broad base, and approacliing a point towards the top. Connate. Leaves opposite, with their bases united. Contrary. See partition. Converging. Approaching or bending towards each other. Convex. Swelling out in a roundish form. CoRCLE. The rudiment of the future plant, always proceeding from the co- tyledon. Cordate. Heart-shaped, the hind IoIjcs being rounded, as lilac. Coriaceous. Leathery, or parchmenl-lilr. Soluble in alcohol, ather, and oils. Forms soap with alkalies. Fusible. 18. Volatile oil. Strong smell. Insoluble in water. Solu- ble in alcohol. Liquid. Volatile. Oily. Ry iiUric acid in- flamed, and converted into resinous substances. 19. Camphor. Strong odor. Crystalizes. Very little solu- ble in water. Soluble in alcohol, oils, acids. Insoluble in al- kalies. Burns with a clear flame, and volatilizes before melting. MATERIA MKDICAi 169 20. Birdlime. Viscid. Taste insipid. Insoluble in water. Partially soluble in alcohol. Very soluble in aether. Solution green, 21. Resins. Solid. Melt when heated. Insoluble in wa- ter. Soluble in alcohol, a3ther, and alkalies. Soluble in acetic acid. By nitric acid converted into artificial tannin. 22. Guaiacum. Possesses the characters of resins ; but dis- solves in nitric acid, and yields oxalic acid and no tannin. 23. Balsa?ns. Possesses the characters of resins ; but have a strong' smell ; when heated, benzoic acid sublimes. It sub- limes also when they are dissolved in sulphuric acid. By ni- tric acid conv^erted into artificial tannin. 24. Caoutchouc. Very elastic. Insoluble in water and al- cohol. When steeped in a3ther, reduced to a pulp which ad- heres to every thing. Fusible and remains liquid. Very com- bustible. 25. Gum resins. Form milky solutions with water, trans- parent with alcohol. Soluble in alkalies. With nitric acid converted into tannin. Strong smell. Brittle, opaque, infusi- ble. 26. Cotton. Composed of fibres. Tasteless. Very com- bustible. Insoluble in water, alcohol, and aether. Soluble in aljcalies. Yields oxalic acid to nitric acid. 27. Suher. Burns bright, and swells. Converted by nitric &c\A into suberic acid and wax. Partially soluble in water and alcohol. 28. Wood. Composed of fibres. Tasteless. Insoluble in water and alcohol. Soluble in weak alkaline lixivium. Pre- cipitated by acids. Leaves much charcoal when distilled in a red heat. Soluble in nitric acid, and yields oxalic acid. To the preceding we may add, emetin, fungin, hematin, ni- cotin, pollenin ; the new vegetable alkalies, aconita, atropia, brucia, cicuta, datura, delphia, hyosciama, morphia, picrotoxia, strytchnia, veratria ; and the various vegetable acids. 12 170 THE THOMSONIAN MATTER. " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground^ and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living; soul.''^ Gen. ii, chap. 7. We shall first treat of the four elements, as matter ; second- ly, the elements, or matter organized ; thirdly, the elements or matter animated, or with life; ^nd fourthly ^ ihe. diseases to which the elements or matters become subject in consequence of animation. Man is formed of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire, and which we divide into two classes, viz : passive and active, or matter without and, xoith organization and motion. Earth and water being the passive, and fire and air the active. The union of which produce the peculiar e?is, quini- escence or irritability and excitability, that is called life, and thus a forced state of existance is commenced and is nieiintain- ed for a time, when it is decomposed and returns to earth again to nourish and invigorate other bodies in its turn. In this species of green-house state of existence, we are compelled constantly to be tempering our bodies to the various vicissitudes of atmosphere to which we are subject, by adding to or dimin- ishing the quantity and quality of our clothing, as well as our fuel, food and every other convenience that is desirable to make life tolerable, in so frail a body, during its transitory abode upon earth. The earth and water being the component parts ; ( The Lord God formed man of the duU of the ground.) The fire and air keep him in motion by excitement and irritation ; [and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,* and man became a living soul.) We shall first analyze the passive part, viz : earth and water, and then in due course, the active or excit- ing principle, fire and air. After which, it is our design, to ex- hibit diff"erent portions of the human body in miniature in anatomy and physiology, in order to give the reader a more just conception of the animated mass of creation of which he forms so minute a portion. We shall also examine the different functions of animal or- ganization and motion, together with the five senses, with the powers of speech, to express the different passions and wants to other animated matter, thus constituting the perfect man. 1st. THE PASSIVE: OR, EARTH AND WATER, AND THEIR COMPONENT PARTS. Although there seems to be an almost infinite variety of earthy substances scattered on the surface of this globe, yet when we examine them with a chemical eye, we find, not * Vitality. MATERIA MEDICA. 171 without surprise, that all the earth and stones which we tread under our feet, and which compose the largest rocks, as well as the numerous different specimines which adorn the cabinets of the curious, are composed of a very few simple or elemen- tary earths. " Analysis has shown, that the various stony or pulverulent masses, which form our mountains, valleys, and plains, might be considered as resulting from the combination or intermixture, in various numbers and proportions, of nine primitive earths, to which the following names were given : *1. Barytes. 2. Strontites. 3. Lime. 4. Magnesia. 5. Alumina, or clay. 6. Silica. 7. Glucina. 8. Zirconia. 9. Yttria. Alkalies, acids, metallic ores, and native metals, were sup- posed to be of an entirely dissimilar constitution. 1. BARYTES. ~ *{From Barys, heavy ; so called because it is very preponderous.) Cauk; Calk; Terra ponderosa; Baryta. Ponderous earth ; Heavy earth. United with the sulphuric acid, it forms the mineral called sulphate of barytes, or barosele- nite. When united to carbonic acid, it is called aerated barytes, or carbonate of barytes. See Heavy spar. Barytes, is a compound of barium and oxygen. Oxygen combines with two portions of" barium, forming, 1. Barytes. 2. Deutoxide of barium. 1. Barytes, or protoxide of barium, " is best obtained, by igniting, in a cov- ered crucible, the pure crystalized nitrate of barytes. It is procured in the state of hydrate, by adding caustic potassa or soda to a solution of the muri- ate of nitrate. And barytes, slightly covered with charcoal, may be obtained by strongly igniting the carbonate and charcoal mixed together in fine pow- der. Barytes obtained from the ignited nitrate is of a whitish-gray color ; more caustic than strontites, or perhaps even lime. It renders the syrup of violets green, and the infusion of tumeric red. Its specific gravity by Four- croy is 4. When water in small quantity is poured on the dry earth, it slakes like quicklime, but perhaps with evolution of more heat. When swallowed it acts as a violent poison. It is destitute of smell. When pure barytes is exposed, in a porcelain tube, at a heat verging on ig- nition, to a stream of dry oxygen gas. it absorbs the gas rapidly, and passes to the state of deutoxyde of barium. But when it is calcined in contact with atmospheric air, we obtain at first this deutoxyde and carbonate of barytes ; the former of which passes very slowly into the latter, by absorption of car- bonic acid from the atmosphere. 2. The deutoxyde of barium is of a greenish-gray color, it is caustic, renders tlie syrup of violets green, and is not decomposable by heat or light. The voltaic pile reduces it. Exposed at a moderate heat to carbonic acid, it ab- sorbs it, emitting oxygen, and becoming carbonate of barytes. The deu- toxyde is probably decomposed by sulpluiretted hydrogen at ordinary temper- atures. Aided by heat, almost all combustible bodies, as well as many me- tals, decompose it. The action of hydrogen is accompanied with remarkable phenomena. Water at .50^ F. dissolves one-twentieth of its weight of barytes, and at 212'' about one-half of its weight. It is colorless, acrid, and caustic. It acts pow- erfully on the vegetable purples and yellows. Exposed to the air, it attracts carbonic acid, and the dissolved barytes is converted into carbonate, which falls down in insoluble crusts. Sulphur combines with barytes, when they are mixed together, and heated in a crucible. The same compound is more economically obtained by igniting a mixture of sulphate of barytes and charcoal in fine powder. This sulphu- ret is of a reddish yellow color, and when dry without smell. W^hen this sub- stance is put into hot water, a powerful action is manifested. The water is 172 THE THOMSONIAN The brilliant discovery by Sir. H. Davy, in 1808, of the metallic basis of potassa, soda, barytes, strontites, and Hme, decomposed, and Iwo new products are formed, namely, hydrosulphuret, and hydrocuretted sulphiiret of barytes. The first crystalizes as the liquid cools, the second remains dissolved; The hydrosulphuret is a compound of 9.75 of barytes with 2.125 sulphuretted hydrogen. Its crystals should be quickly se- parated by filtration, and dried by pressure between the folds of porous paper. They arc white scales, have a silky lustre, are soluble in water, and yield a solution having a greenish tinge. Its taste is acrid, sulphureous, and when mixed with the hydroguretted sulphuret, eminently corrosive. It rapidly at- tracts oxygen from the atmosphere, and is converted into the sulphate of ba- * rytcs. The hydroguretted sulphuret is a compound of 9.75 barytes with 4.125 bisulphuretted hydrogen : but contaminated with sulphite and hyposulphite in unknown proportions. The dry sulphuret consists probably of 2 sulphur -f-9.75 barytes. The readiest way of obtaining barj^les water is to boil the solution of the sulphuret with deutoxyde of copper, which seizes the sulphur, while the hydrogen fljes off, and the barytes remains dissolved, Phosphuret of barytes may be easily formed by exposing the constituents to- gether to heat in a glass tube. Their reciprocal action is so intense as to cause ignition. Like phosphuret of lime, it decomposes water, and causes the disengagement of phosphuretted hydrogen gas, which spontaneously in- flames with contact of air. When sulphur is made to act on the deutoxyde of barytes, sulphuric acid is formed, which unites to a portion of the earth into a sulphate. The salts of barytes are white, and more or less transparent. AU the solu- ble sulphates cause in the soluble salts of barytes a precipitate insoluble in ni- tric acid. They are all poisonous except the sulphate ; and hence the proper eounter-poison is dilute sulphuric acid for the carbonate, and sulphate of so- da for the soluble salts of barytes." Pure barytes has a much stronger affinity than any other body for sulphti- ric acid ; it turns blue tincture of cabbage green. It is entirely fusible by heat alone, but melts when mixed with various earths. Its specific gravity is 4.000. It changes quickly in the air, swells, becomes soft, and falls into a white powder, with the acquisition of about one-fifth of its weight. This slak- ing is much more active and speedy than that of lime. It combines with phos- phorus, v.fhich compound decomposes water rapidly. It unites to sulphur by the dry and humid way. It has a powerful attraction for water, which it ab- sorbs with a hissing noise, and consolidates it strongly. It is soluble in twen- times its weight of cold, and twice its weight of boiling v.ater. Its crystals are long four-sided prisms of a satin like appearance. It is a deadly poison to animals. 2. STRONTIA. (So called because it was first found in a lead mine at Strontian, in Scot- land.) A grayish white-colored earth, found in combination with carbonic acid, in the mineral called Strontianite. Pure Strontia is of a grayish-white color ; a pungent, acrid taste ; and when powdered in a mortar, the dust that rises irritates the lunts and nostrils. Its specific gravity approaches that of barytes. It requires rather more than 160 parts of water at 60 deg. to dissolve it; but of boiling water much less. On cooling, it crystalizes in thin, transparent, quadrangular plates, generally parallelograms, seldom exceeding a quarter of an inch in length, and fre- quently adhering together. The edges are rnost frequently bevelled from each side. Sometimes they assume a cubic form. These crystals contain about .68 of water ; are soluble in 51.4 times their weight of water at 60 deg., and in little more than twice their weight of boiling water. They give a blood-red color to the flame of burning alcohol. The solution of strontia changes vegetable blues to a green. Strontia combines with sulphur either in the wet or dry way, and its sulphuret is soluble in water. In its properties, strontia has a considerable affinity to barytes. It differs from it chiefly in being infusible, much less soluble, of a different form, weak- MATERIA MEDICA. 173 subverted the ancient ideas regarding the earth, and taught us to regard them as all belonging, by most probable anologies, to the metallic class. er in its affinities, and not poisonous. Its saline compounds aflord diHerences more mai-ked. The basis of strontia is strontium, a metal first procured by Sir H. Davy, in 1808, precisely in the same raannner as barium, to which it is very analogous, but has less lustre. It appeared fixed, diliicultly fusible, and not volatile. It became converted into strontia by exposure to air, and when thrown into wa- ter, decomposed it with great violence, producing hydrogen gas, and making the water a solution of strontia. By igniting the mineral sti'ontianite intense- ly with charcoal powder, strontia is cheaply procured. 3. LIME. Calx. 1. The oxide of calcium, one of the primitive earths. It is found in great abundance in nature, though never pure, or in an uncombined state. It is always united to an acid, and very frequently to the carbonic acid, as in chalk, common lime-stone, marble, calcareous spar, &c. It is contained in the waters of the ocean ; it is lound in vegetables ; and is the basis of the bones, shells, and other hard parts of animals. Its combination with sulphuric acid is known by the name of sulphate of lime (o^ypsuvi, or plaster of Paris). Combined with flouric acid it constitutes fluate of lime, or Derbyshire spar. Properties. — Lime is in solid masses, of a white color, moderatelj' hard, but easily reducible to powder. Its taste is bitter, urinous and burning. It chang- es blue cabbage juice to a green. It is unalterable by the heat of our furna- ces. It splits and falls into powder in the air, and loses its strona; taste. It is augmented in weight and in size by slowly absorbing water and carbonic acid trom the atmosphere. Its specific gravity is 2.3. It combines with phos- phorus by heat. It unites to sulphur both in the dry and humid way. It ab- sorbs sulphuretted hydrogen gas. It unites with some of the metallic oxides. Its slaking by water is attended with heat, hissing, splitting and swelling up, while the water is partly consolidated and partly converted into vapor ; and the lime is reduced into a very voluminous dry powder, when it has been sprinkled with only a small quantity of water. It is soluble when well pre- pared in about 450 parts of water. It unites two acids. It renders silex and alumine fusible, and more particularly these two earths logether. Method of obtaining Lime. — Since the carbonic acid may be separated from the native carbonate of lime, this becomes a means of exhibiting the lime in a state of tolerable purity. For this purpose, introduce into a porcelain, or earthern retort, or rather into a tubeof green glass, well coated over with lute, and placed across a furnace, some powdered Carara marble, or oyster-shell powder. Adapt to its lower extremity a bent tube of glass, conveyed under a bell. If we then heat the tube, we obtain carbonic acid gas : and lime will be found remaining in the tube or retort. The burning of lime in the large waj', depends on the disengagement of the carbonic acid by heat; and, as lime is infusible in our furnaces, there would be no danger from too violent a heat, if the native carbonate of lime were per- fectly pure ; but as this is seldom the case, an extreme degree of heat produ- ces a commencement of vitrification in the mixed stone, and enables it to pre- serve its solidity, and it no longer retains the qualities of lime, for it is cover- ed with a sort of crust, which prevents the absorption of the water when it is attempted to be slaked. This is called over-burnt lime. In order to obtain lime in a state of very great purity, the following method may be had recourse to. Take Carara marble, or oyster shells ; reduce them to powder, and dis- solve the powder in pure acetic acid ; precipitate the solution by carbonate of ammonia. Let the precipitate subside, wash it repeatedly in distilled water, let it dry, and then expose it to a white heat for some hours. The acetic acid, in this operation, unites to the lime, and forms acetate of lime, disengaging at the same time the carbonic acid, which flies ofi in the 174 THE THOMSONIAN To the above nine earthy substances, BerzeHus has lately added a tenth, whic he calls thorina. Whatever may be the gaseous state : on adding to the acetate of lime carbonate of ammonia, ace- tate of ammonia, and an artificial carbonate of lime are formed ; from the lat- ter the carbonic acid is again expelled, by exposure to heat, and the lime is left behind in a state of perfect purity. 4. MAGNESIA. 1. The ancient chemists gave this name to such substances as they con- ceived to have the power of attracting any principle from the air. Thus an earth which, on being exposed to the air, increased in weight, and yielded vit- riol, they called magnesia vitriolata: and later chemists, observing in their process for obtaining magnesia, that nitrous acid was separated, and an earth left behind, supposing it had attracted the acid, called it magnesia nitri, which, from its color, soon obtained the name oi magnesia alba. 2. The name of one of the primitive earths, having a metallic basis, called magnesium. It has been found native in the state of hydrate. Magnesia may be obtained by pouring into a solution of its sulphate a solu- tion of subcarbonate of soda, washing the precipitate, drying it, and exposing it to a red heat. It is usually procured in commerce, by acting on magnesian limestone with the impure muriate of magnesia, or bittern of the sea-salt man- ufactories. The muriatic acid goes to the lime, forming a soluble salt, and leaves behind the magnesia of both the bittern and limestone. Or the bittern is decomposed by a crude subcarbonate of ammonia, obtained from the distil- lation of bones in iron cylinders. Muriate of ammonia and subcarbonate of magnesia result. The former is evaporated to dryness, mixed with chalk, and sublimed. Subcarbonate of ammonia is thus recovered, with which a new quantity of bittern may be decomposed ; and thus, in ceaseless repetition, formiag an elegant and economical process. 100 parts of crystalized Epsom salt, require for complete decomposition 56 of subcarbonate of potassa, or 44 dry subcarbonate of soda, and yield 16 of pure magnesia after calcination. Magnesia is a white, soft powder. Its sp. gr. is 2.3 by Kirwan. It renders the syrup of violets, and infusion of red cabbage, green, and reddens turmeric. It is infusible, except by the hydroxygen blow-pipe. It has scarcely any taste, and no smell. It is nearly insoluble in water; but it absorbs a quanti- ty of that liquid with the production of heat. And when it is thrown down from the sulphate by a caustic alkali, it is combined with water constituting a hydrate, which, however, separates at a red heat. It contains about one-fourth its weight of water. When magnesia is exposed to the air, it very slowly attracts carbonic acid. It combines with sulphur, forming a sulphuret. The metallic basis, or magnesium, may be obtained in the state of amal- gam with mercury by electrization. When magnesia is strongly heated in contact with 2 volumes of chlorine, this gas is absorbed, and one volume of oxygen is disengaged. Hence it is evident that there exists a combination of magnesium and chlorine, or a true chloride. The salt called muriate of magnesia is a compound of the chloride and water. When it is acted on by a strong heat, by far the greatest part of the chlorine unites to the hydrogen of the water, and rises in the form of mu- riatic acid gas ; while the oxygen of the decomposed water combines with the magnesium to form magnesia. Magnesia is often associated with lime in minerals, and their perfect separ- ation becomes an interesting problem in analysis. Properties. — Pure magnesia does not form with water an adhesive ductile mass. It is in the form of a very white spongy powder, soft to the touch, and perfectly tasteless. It is very slightly soluble in water. It absorbs carbonic acid gradually from the atmosphere. It changes very delicate blue vegetable colors to green. Its attraction to the acids is weaker than those of the alka- lies. Its salts are partially decomposed by ammonia, one part of the magne- sia being precipitated, and the other forming a iriple compound. Its specific gravity is about 2.3. It is infusible even by the most intense heat j but when MATERIA MEDICA. 175 revolutions of chemical nomenclature, mankind will never cease to consider as earths, those solid bodies composing the mixed with some of the other eai'ths it becomes fusible. It combines with sulphur. It does not unite to phosphorus or carbon. It is not dissolved by alkalies in the humid way. When heated strongly, it becomes phosphores- cent. With the dense acids it becomes ignited. With all the acids it forms salts of a bitter taste, mostly very soluble. 5. ALUMINA. Alumine. Terra Alumina. Earth of alum. Pure clay. One of the pri- mitive earths, which, as constituting the plastic principle of all clays, loams, and boles, was called argil, or the argillaceous earth, but now, as being ob- tained in greatest purity from alum, is styled alumina. It was deemed ele- mentary matter till Sir H. Davy's celebrated electro-chemical researches led to the belief of its being, like barytes and lime, a metallic oxyde. The purest native alumina is found in the oriental gems, the sapphire and ruby. They consist of nothing but this earth and a small portion of coloring matter. The native porcelain clays or kaolins, hoAvever white and soft, can never be regarded as pure alumina. They usually contain fully half their weight of silica, and frequently other earths. To obtain pure alumina we dissolve alum in 20 times its weight of water, and add to it a little of the solu- tion of carbonate of soda, to throw down any iron which may be present. We then drop the supernatant liquid into a quantity of the water of ammonia, tak- ing care not to add so much of the alummous solution as will saturate the am- monia. The volatile alkali unites with the sulphuric acid of the alum, and the earthy basis of the latter is separated in a white spongy precipitate. This must be thrown on a filter, washed, or edulcorated, as the old chemists expressed it, by repeated affusions of water, and then dried. Gr if an alum made with ammonia instead of potassa, as is the case with some French al- ums, can be got, simple ignition dissipates its acid and alkaline constituents, leaving pure alumina. Alumina prepared by the first process is white, pulverulent, soft to the touch, adheres to the tongue, forms a smooth paste without grittiness in the mouth, insipid, inodorous, produces no change in vegetable colors, insoluble in water, but mixes with it readily in every proportion, and retains a small quantity with considerable force ; is infusible in the strongest heat of a fur- nace, experiencing merely a condensation of volume and consequent hardness but is in small quantities melted by the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. Its specific gravity is 2.000 in the state of powder, but hj ignition it is augmented. Every analogy leads to the belief that alumina contains a peculiar metal which may be called aluminum. The first evidences obtained of this position are presented in Sir H. Davy's researches. Iron negatively electrified by a very high power being fused in contact with pure alumina, formed a globule Tfhiter than pure iron which effervesced slowly in water, becoming covered with a white powder. The solution of this in muriatic acid,'decomposed by an alkali, afforded alumina and oxyde of iron. By passing potassium in vapor through alumina heated to whiteness, the greatest part of the potassium be- came converted into potassa, which formed a coherent mass with that part of the alumina not decompounded ; and in this mass there were numerous gray particles, having the metallic lustre, and which became white when heated in the air, and which slowly effervesced in water. In a similar experiment made by the same illustrious chemist, a strong red heat only being applied to the alumina, a mass was obtained, which took fire spontaneously by exposure to air, and which effervesced violently in water. This mass was probably an alloy of aluminum and potassium. The conversion of potassium into its den- toxyde, dry potassa, by alumina, proves the presence of oxygen in the latter. When regarded as an oxyde. Sir H. Davy estimates its oxygen and basis to be to one another as 15 to 33 ; or as 10 to 22. The prime equivalent of alumina would thus appear to be 1.0-f2.2=3.2 But Berzelius's analysis of sulphate of alumina seems to mdicate 2.136 as the quantity of the earth which com- bines with five of the acid. Hence aluminum will come to be represented bv 2.136+1=1.136. ^ ' 176 THE THOMSONIAN mineral strata, which are incombustible, colorless, not convert- ible into metals by all the ordinary methods of reduction, or Alumina which has lost its plasticity by ignition, recovers it by being dis- solved in an acid or alkaline menstruum, and then precipitated. In this state it is called a hydrate, for when dried in a steam heat it retains much Avater j and therefore resembles in composition wavellite, a beautiful mineral, con- sisting almost entirely of alumina, with about 28 per cent, of water. Alumina is widely diffused in nature. It is a constituent of every soil, and of almost every rock. It is the basis of porcelain, pottery, bricks, and cruci- bles. Its affinity for vegetable coloring matter, is made use of in tlie prepara- tion of lakes, and in the arts of dyeing and calico printing. Native combina- tions of alumina, constitute the fullers' earth, ochres, boles, pipe-clays, &.C. The salts of alumina have the following general characters : 1. Most of them are very soluble in water, and their solutions have a sweet- ish acerb taste. 2. Ammonia throws down their earthy base, even though they have beCQ previously acidulated with muriatic acid. 3. At a strong red heat they give out a portion of their acid. 4. Phosphate of ammonia gives a white precipitate. 5. Hydriodate of potassa produces a flocculent precipitate of a white color, passing into a permanent yellow. 6. They are not affected by oxalate of ammonia, tartaric acid, ferroprussir- ate of potassa, or tincture of galls: by the first two tests they are distinguish- able from jrttria ; and by the last two, from that earth and glucina. 7. If bisulphate of potassa be added to a solution of an aluminous salt mod- erately concentrated, octahedral crystals of alum ydll form. 6. SILICA. (Selag, Hebrew.) Silcx. One of the primitive earths is the principal con- stituent part of a very great number of tlie compound earths and stones fcrmi- ing the immense mass of the solid nucleus of the globe. It is the basis of al- most all the scintillating stones, sucli as Jlint, rock, crystal, quartz, agate, cal~ cedony, jasper, 8,-c. The sand of rivers, and of the sea-shore, chiefly consist of it. It is deposited in vegetable substances forming petrified wood, &c. IS is likewise precipitated from certain springs in a stalactical form. It has been discovered in several waters in a state of solution, and is found in many plants, particularly grasses and equisetums. Professor Davy has proved that it forms a part of the epidermis of these vegetables. It is never met with absolutely pure in nature. Properties. — Silica, when perfectly pure, exists in the form of a white pow- der. It is insipid and inodorous. It is rough to the touch, cuts glass, and scratches or wears away metals. Its specific gravity is about 2.C6. It is unalterable by the simple combustible bodies. When mixed witli water it does not form a cohesive mass. Its moleculse, when diffused in Mater, are precipitaied with the utmost facility. It is not acted on by any acid, except the fluoric. When in a state of extreme division it is soluble in alkalies ; fu- sed with them it forms glass. It mells with the phosphoric and boracic acids. It is unchangeable in the air, and unalterable by oxysen and other gaseous flu- ids. It has been considered as insoluble in water, but it appears when in a state of extreme division to be soluble in a minute quantity. Method of obtaining Silcx. — Silex may be obtained, tolerably pure, from flints, by the following process : Procure some common gun-flints ; expose them in a crucible to a red heat, and then plunge them into cold water: by this treatment they will become brittle, and easily reducible to poM'dcr. Mil them, when pulverized, with three or four times their weight of carbonate of potassa, and let the mixture be fused, in a dull red heat, in a silver crucible. We shall thus obtain a compound of alkali and silex, called silicious potassa. Dissolve this compound in water, filter the solution, and add to it dilute sul- phuric or muriatic acid. An immediete precipitation now ensues, and as long as this continues, add fresh portions of acid. Let tlie precipitate subside ; MATERIA MEDICA. 177 when reduced by scientific refinements, possessing but an evanescent metallic existence, and which either alone, or at pour off the fluid that floats above it ; and wash the precipitate with hot wa- ter till it comes off tasteless. This powder when dry is siiica. In this process the acid added to the solution of tlint unites to the potasss', and forms sulphate or muriate of potassa ; the silicious earth is therefore pre- cipitated. It is necessary to add an excess of acid, in order that all the foreign earths which are present may be separated. If the solution of iliuts be diluted with a great quantity of water, as for in- stance, in the proportion of 24 parts to one, and in this state an acid be poured upon it, no perceptible precipitation will ensue ; the silex continues suspended in the fluid, and is invisible on account of its transparency ; but it may be made to appear by evaporating part of the water. The solution of flint, on account of its aifinity with the carbonic acid, is also in course of time decomposed by mere contact with air. Another method of obtaining silica exceedingly pure is to separate it from fluoric acid. In consequence of Sir 11. Davy's researches on the metallic ba- ses of the alkalies and earths, this earth has been recently regarded as a com- pound of a peculiar combustible principle with oxygen. If we ignite powder- ed quartz with three parts of pure potassa in a silver crucible, dissolve the fuSed compound in water, add to the solution a quantity of acid, equivalent to saturate the alkali, and evaporate to dryness, we shall obtain a fine gritty powder, w^hich being well washed with hot water, and ignited, will leave pure silica. By passing the vapor of potassium over silica in an ignited tube. Sir H. Davy obtained a dark-colored powder, which apparently contained silicon, or silicium, the basis of the earth. Like boron and carbon, it is capable of sustaining a high temperature without suffering any change. 7. GLUCINA. (From Ghicus, which signifies sweet, because it gives that taste to the salts in forms.) The name of an earth, for the discovery of which we are indebted to Vauquelin, who found it, in 1795, in the Aigue-marine or beryl, a transpa rent stone, of a green color, and in the emerald of Peru. It exists combined with silex, alumine, lime, and oxide of iron, in the one ; and with the same earths, and oxide of^ciirome, in the other. It has lately been discovered in the gadolinite by Mr. Ekeberg. Glucina is while, light, and soft to the touch. It is insipid, and adheres to the tongue ; and is infusible by itself in the lire. Its specific gravity is 2.967. It is soluble in alkalies and their carbonates, and in al' the acids except the carbonic and phosphoric, and forms with them saccharine and slightly astrin- gent salts. It is exceedingly soluble in sulphuric acid used to excess. It is fusible with borax, and forms with it a transparent glass. It absorbs one- fourth of its weight of carbonic acid. It decomposes sulphate of alumine. It is not ])recipit;iied by the hydro-sulphurets nor by prussiate of polasssj but by all the succinates. Its aliinily for the acids is intermediate between magnesia and alumine. To obtain this earth; reduce some beryl to an impalpable powder, fuse it with three times its weight of potassa, and dissolve the mass in muriatic acid. Separate the silex by evaporation and filtration, and decompose the remaining fluid by adding carbonate of potassa ; redissolve the deposite when washed in sulphuric acid, and by mingling this solution with sulphate of potassa, aJ- um will be ohtaincd, which crystalizes. Then mix the fluid with a solution of carbonate of ammonia, which must be used in excess ; filter and boil it, and a white powder will gradually fall down, which is glucine. 8. ZIRCONIA. Zircon. An earth discovered in the year 1793, by Klaproth of Berlin, in the Zircon or Jargon, a gem first brought from the island of Ceylon, but also found in France, Spain, and other parts of Europe. Its color is either, gray, greea- 178 THE THOMSONIAN. least when combined with carbonic acid, are insipid and inso- luble in water. ish, yellowish, reddish-brown, oi purple. It has little lustre, and is nearly opaque. Zircon is likewise found in another gem called the hyacinth. This stone is of a yellowish-red color, mixed with brown. It possesses lustre and transparency. To obtain it, the stone should be calcined and thrown into cold water, to render it friable, and then powdered in an agate mortar. Mix the powder with nine parts of purs potassa, and project the mixture by spoonfulls into a red-hot crucible, taking care that each portion is fused before another is added. Keep the whole in fusion, with an increased heat, for an hour and a half. When cold, break the crucible, separate its contents, powder and boil In water, to dissolve the alkali. Wash the insoluble part ; dissolve in muria.' tie acid ; heat the solution; that the silex may fall down; and precipitate the zircon by caustic fixed alkali. Or the zircon may be precipitated by carbon^ ate of soda, and the carbonic acid expelled by heat. Neil) process for preparing pure Zirconia. — Powder the zircons very fine, mix them with two parts of pure potassa, and heat them red hot in a silver crucible, for an hour. Treat the substance obtained with distilled water, pour it on a filter, and wash the insoluble part well ; it will be a compound of zir- conia, silex, potassa, and oxide of iron. Dissolve it in muriatic acid, and eva- porate to dryness, to separate the silex. Redissolve the muriates of zirconia and iron in water; and to separate the zirconia which adheres to the silex, •wash it with weak muriatic acid, and add this to the solution. Filter the flu- id, and precipitate the zirconia and iron by pure ammonia ; wash the preeipi- tates well, and then treat the hydrates with oxalic acid, boiling them well to- gether, that the acid may act on the iron, retaining it in solution, while an in, Boluble oxalate of zirconia is formed. It is then to be filtered, and the oxalate washed, until no iron can be detected in the water that passes. The earthy oxalate is, when dry, of an opaline color. After being well washed, it is to ba decomposed by heat in a platinum crucible. Thus obtained, the zirconia is perfectly pure, but is not affected by acida. It must be reacted on by potassa as before, and then washed until the alkali is removed. Afterwards dissolve it in muriatic acid, and precipitate by am^ monia. The hydrate thrown down, when well washed, is perfectly pure, and easily soluble in acids. Zircon is a fine white powder, without taste or smell, but somewhat harsh to the touch. It is insoluble in water ; yet if slowly dried, it coalesces into a semitransparent yellowish mass, like gum-arabic, which retains one-third its weight of water. It unites with all the acids. It is insoluble in pure alka- lies ; but the alkaline carbonates dissolve it. Heated with the blowpipe, il does not melt, but emits a yellowish phosphoric light. Heated in a crucible of charcoal, bedded in charcoal powder, placed in a stone crucible, and exposed to a good forge fire for some hours, it undergoes a pasty fusion, which unites its particles into a gray opaque mass, not truly vitreous, but more resembling porcelain. In this state it is sufficiently hard to strike fire with steel, and scratch glass; and is of the specific gravity of 4.3. There is the same evidence for believing that zirconia is a compound of a metal and oxygen, as that aflorded by the action of potassium on the other earths. The alkaline metal, when brought into contact with zirconia ignited to whiteness, is, for the most part, converted into potassa, and dark particles, which, when examined by a magnifying glass, appear metallic in some parts, otja chocolate-brown in others, are found diffused through the potassa and the decompounded earth. According to Sir H. Davy, 4.66 is the prime equivalent of zirconium on the oxygen scale, and 5.66 that of zirconia. 9. YTTRIA. This is a new earth discovered in 1794, by Professor Gadolin, in a stono from Ytterby, in Sweden. It may be obtained most readily by fusing the gadolinate with two parts of eaustic potassa, washing the mass with boiling water, and filtering the liquor, MATERIA MEDICA. 179 Vf ATER.— {Aqua.) This fluid is so well known, as scarcely to require any defi- nition. It is transparent, without color, smell, or taste ; in a very slight degree compressible ; when pure, not liable to spontane- ous change ; liquid in the common temperature of our atmos- phere, assuming the solid form at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and the gaseous at 212 degrees, but returning unaltered to its liquid state on resuming any degree of heat between those points ; ca- pable of dissolvmg a greater number of natural bodies than any other fluid whatever, and especially those known by the name of the saline ; performing the most important functions in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and entering largely into their composition as a constituent part. Native water is seldom, if ever, found perfectly pure. The waters that flow within or upon the surface of the earth, con- which is of a fine green. This liquor is to be evaporated, till no more oxide of manganese falls down from it in a black powder; after which the liquid is to be saturated with nitric acid. At the same time digest the sediment that was not dissolved, in very dilute nitric acid, which will dissolve the earth with much heat, leaving the silex, and the highly oxided iron, undissolved. Mix the two liquors, evaporate them to dryness, redissolve and filter, which will separate any silex or oxide of iron that may have been left. A few drops of a solution of carbonate of potassa will separate any lime that may be present, and a cautious additionofhydi-o-sulphuret of potassa will throw down the ox- ide of manganese that may have been left ; but if,too much be employed, it will throw down the yttria likewise. Lastly, the yttria is to be precipitated by pure ammonia, well washed and dried. Yttria is perfectly white, when not contaminated with oxide of manganese, from which it is not easily freed. Its specific gravity is 4.842. It has neither taste nor smell. It is infusible alone ; but with borax melts into a transparent glass, or opaque white, if the borax were in excess. It is insoluble in water, and in caustic fixed alkalies ; but it dissolves in carbonate of ammonia, though it requires five or six times as much as glucine. It is soluble in most of the acids. The oxalic acid, or oxalate of ammonia, forms precipitates in its so- lutions perfectly resembling the muriate of silver. Prussiate of potassa, crys- talized and redissolved in water, throws it down in white grains ; phosphate of soda, in white gelatinous flakes ; infusion of galls, in brown flocks. Some chemists are inclined to consider yttria rather as a metallic than as an earthy substance : their reasons are, its specific gravity, its forming colored salts, and iis property of oxygenizing muriatic acid after it has under- gone a long calcination. When yttria is treated with potassium in the same manner as the other earths, similar results are obtained ; the potassium becomes potassa, and the earth gains appearances of metallization ; so that it is scarcely to be doubted, says Sir H. Davy, that yttria consists of inflammable matter, metallic in its na- ture, combined with oxygen. The salts of yttria have the following general characters : — 1. Many of them are insoluble in water. 2. Precipitates are occasioned in those which dissolve, by phosphate of so- da, carbonate of soda, oxalate of ammonia, tartrate of potassa, and ferropnis- siate of potassa. 3. If we except the sweet-tasted soluble sulphate of yttria, the other salts of this earth resemble those witU the base of lime in their solubility. 180 THE THOMSONIAN tain various earthy, saline, metallic, vegetable, or animal parti- cles, according to the substances over or through which they pass. Rain and snow waters are much purer than these, al- though they also contain wliatever floats in the air, or has been exhaled along with the watery vapors. The purity of water may be known by the following marks or properties of pure water : 1. Pure water is lighter than water that is not pure. 2. Pure water is more fluid than water that is not pure. 3. It has no color, smell, or taste. 4. It wets more easily than the waters containing metalic and earthy salts, called hard waters, and feels softer when touched. 5. Soap, or a solution of soap in alcohol, mixes easily and perfectly with it. 6. It is not rendered turbid by adding to it a solution of gold in aqua regia, or a solution of silver, or of lead, or of mercury, in nitric acid, or a solution of acetate of lead in water. Water was, till modern times, considered as an elementary or simple substance. Previous to the month of October, 1776, the celebrated Mac- quer, assisted by Sigaud de la Fond, made an experiment by burning hydrogen gass in a bottle without explosion, and hold- ing a white china saucer over the flame. His intention appears to have been that of ascertaining whether any fuliginous smoke was produced, and he observes, that the saucer remained per- fectly clean and wli^te, but was moistened with perceptible drops of a clear fluid, resembling water ; and which, in fact, appeared to him and his assistant to be nothing but pure water. He does not say whether any test was applied to ascertain this purity, neither does he make any remark on the fact. In the month of September, 1777, Bucquet and Lavoisier, not being acquainted with the fact which is incidentally and concisely mentioned by Macquer, made an experiment to dis- cover what is produced by the combustion of hydrogen. They fired five or six pints of hydrogen in an open and wide-mouthed bottle, and instantly poured two ounces of lime water through the flame, agitating the bottle during the time the combustion lasted. The result of this experiment showed, that carbonic acid was not produced. Before the month of April, 1781, Mr. John Warltire, encou- raged by Dr. Priestley, fired a mixture of common air and hy- drogen ly propagated in fluids, in consequence of the internal motion of their particles, which transport the heat ; the more rapid these motions are, the more rapid is the communication of heat. The cause of these motions is the change in the specific gravity of the fluid, occasioned by the change of temperature, and the rapidity is in proportion to the change of the specihc gravity of tlie liquid by any given change of temperature. The following experiment may serve to illustrate this theory : Take a thin glass tube, eight or ten inches long, and about an inch in dia» meter. Pour into the bottom part, for about the depth of one inch, a littl'3 water colored with Brazil-wood, or litmus, and then fill up the tube with coni- mon water, extremely gently, so as to keep the two strata quite distinct from each other. Having done this, heat the bottom part of the tube over a lamp ; the colored infusion will then ascend, and gradually tinge the whole fluid ; on the contrary, if the heat be applied above, the water in the upper part of the tube may be made to boil, but the coloring matter will remain at the bottom ondisturbed. The heat cannot act downwards to make it ascend. By thus being able to make the upper part of a fluid boil witliout heating the bottom part, water may be kept boiling for a considerable time in a glass tube over ice, without melting it. Other experiments, illustrating the same principle, may be found in CounI Rumford's excellent essays, especially in essay the 7th ; 1797, To this indefatigable philosopher we are wholly indebted for the above facts : he was the first who taught us that air and water were nearly non-con^ ductors. The results of his experiments, which are contained in the above essay, are highly interesting; they also show that the conducting power of fluids is impaired by the admixture of fibrous and glutinous matter. Count Rumford proved that ice melted more than 80 times slower, when boiling hot water stood on its surface, than when the ice was placed to swim on the surface of the hot water. Other experiments showed that water, only eight degrees of Fahrenheit above the freezing point, or at the temperature of forty degrees, melts as much ice, in any given time, as an equal volume of that fluid at any higher temperature, provided the water stands on the surface MATERIA MEDICA. 195 of the ice. Water, at the temperature of 41 deg., is found to melt more ice, when standing on its surface, than boiling water. It appears, however, that liquids are not, as he supposes, complete non-conductors of caloric: because, if heat be applied at top, it is capable of making its way downwards, ihrough water, for example, though very imperfectly and slowly. It becomes farther evident, from the Count's ingenious experiments, that of the different substances used in clothing, hares' fur and eider-down, are the warmest; next to these, beavers' fur, rawsilk, sheep's wool, cotton wool, and lastly, lint, or the scrapings of fine linen. In fur, the air interposed among its particles is so engaged as not to be driven away by the heat communicated thereto by the animal body ; not being easily displaced, it becomes a barrier to defend the animal body from the external cold. Hence it is obvious that those skins are warmest which have the finest, longest, and thickest fur; and that the furs of the beaver, otter, and other like quadrupeds, which live much in the water, and the feathers of water-fowl, are capable of confining the heat of those animals in winter, notwithstanding the coldness of the water which they frequent. Bears, and various other animals, inhabitants of cold climates, which do not often take the water, have their fur much thicker on their backs than on their bellies. The snow which covers the surface of the earth in winter, in high latitudes, is doubtless designed as a garment to defend it against the piercing winds from the polar regions, which prevail during the cold season. Without dwelling farther upon the philosophy of this truth, we must briefly remark that the happy application of this law, satisfactorily elucidates some of the most interesting facts of the economy of nature. Theory of Caloric of Fluidity, or Latent Heat. There are some bodies which, when submitted to the action of caloric, di- late to such a degree, and the power of aggregation subsisting among their particles is so much destroyed and removed to such a distance by the interpo- sition of caloric, that they slide over each other in every direction, and there- fore appear in a fluid state. This phenomena is cn]led fusion. Bodies thus rendered fluid by means of caloric, are said to hefiisedf or melted; and those that are subject to it are cn.]led fusible. The greater number of solid bodies may, by the application of heat, be con- verted into fluids. Thus metals may be fused ; sulphur, resin, phosphorus, may be melted ; ice may be converted into water, &.c. Those bodies which cannot be rendered fluid by any degree of heat hitherto known, are called infusible. If the effects of heat, under certain circumstances, be carried still farther than is necessary to render bodies fluid, vaporization begins ; the bodies then become converted into the vaporous or gaseous state. Vaporization, iiowever, does not always require a previous fusion. Some bodies are capable of being converted into the vaporous state, without previously becoming fluid, and oth- ers cannot be volatilized at any temperature hitherto known : the latter arc termed fixed. Fluidity is, therefore, by no means essential to any species of matter, but always depends on the presence of a quantity of caloric. Solidity is the natu- ral state of all bodies, and there can be no doubt that every fluid is capable cf being rendered solid by a due reduction of temperature ; and every solid may be fused by the agency of caloric, if the latter does not decompose them at a temperature inferior to that which would be necessary for their fusion. Caloric of Fluidity. Dr. Black was the first who proved that, whenever caloric combines with a solid body, the body becomes heated only, until it is rendered fluid : and that, while it is acquring the fluid state, its temperature remains stationary, though caloric is continued to be added to it. The same is the case Avhen flu- ids are converted into the aeriform or vaporous state. From these facts, the laws of latent heat have been inferred. The theory may be illustrated by means of the following experiments : If a lump of ice, at a low temperature, suppose at 22 deg., be brought into a 196 THE THOMSONIAN ■warm room, it will become gradually less cold, as may be discovered by means of the thermometer. After a very short time, it will reach the temperature of32deg. (the freezing point); but there it stops. The ice then begins to melt J but the process goes on very slowly. During the whole of that time its temperatere continues at 32 deg.; and as it is constantly surrounded by warm air, we have reason to believe that caloric is constantly entering into it ; yet it does not become hotter till it is changed into water. Ice, therefore, is converted into water, by a quantity of caloric uniting with it. It has been found by calculation, that ice in melting absorbs 140 deg. of caloric, the temperature of the water produced still remaining at 32 deg. This fact may be proved in a direct manner. Take one pound of ice, at 32 deg., reduced to a coarse powder; put it into a wooden bowl, and pour over it one pound of water, heated to 172 deg.; aU the ice will become melted, and the temperature of the whole fluid, if exam- ined by a thermometer, will be 32 deg.; 140 deg. of caloric are therefore lost, and it is this quantity v/hich was requisite to convert the ice into water. This experiment succeeds better, if, instead of ice, fresh-fallen snow be employed. This caloric has been called latent caloric, because its presence is not meas- urable by the thermometer : also more properly caloric of fluidity. Dr. Black has also ascertained by experiment, that the fluidity of melted wax, tallow, spermaceti, metals, &c. is owing to the same cause ; and Land- riani proved, that this is the case with sulphur, alum, nitrate of potassa, &,c. We consider it therefore as a general law, that whenever a solid is convert- ed into a fluid, it combines with caloric, and that is the cause of fluidity. Conversion of Solids and Fluids into the Aeriform or Gaseous State. We have seen before, that, in order to render solids fluid, a certain quanti- ty of caloric is necessary, which combines with the body, and therefore can- not be measured by the thermometer ; we shall now endeavor to prove that the same holds good in respect to the conversion of solids or fluids into the va- porous or gaseous state. Take a small quantity of carbonate of ammonia, introduce it into a retort, the neck of which is directed under a cylinder filled with mercury, and inverted in a basin of the same fluid. On applying heat to the body of the retort, the car- bonate cf ammonia will be volatilized, it will expel the mercury out of the cyl- inder, antl become an invisible gas, and would remain so, if its temperature was not lowered. The same is the case with benzoic acid, camphire, and various other sub- stances. All fluids may, by the application of heat, be converted into an aeriform elastic state. When we consider water in a boiling state, we find that this fluid, when ex- amined by the thermometer, is not hotter after boiling several hours, than "when it began to boil, thougli to maintain it boiling a brisk fire must necessa- rily be kept up. What then, we may ask, becomes of the wasted caloric ? It is not perceptible in the water, nor is it manifested by the steam; for the steam, il"not compressed, upon examination, is found not to be hotter than boiling water. The caloric is therefore absorbed by the steam, and although what is so absorbed, is absolutely necessary for the conversion of water into the form of steam; it does not increase its temperature, and is therefore not apprecia- ble by llie thermometer. The conclusion is farther strengthened by the heat given out by steam on its being condensed by cold. This is particularly manifested in the condensation of this fluid in the process of distilling, where, upon examining the refrigera- tory, it will be found that a much greater quantity of caloric is communicated to it, than could possibly have been transmitted by the caloric which was sen- sibly acting before the condensation. This may easily be ascertained by ob- serving the quantity of caloric communicated to the water in the refrigeratory of a still, by any given quantity of liquid that passes over. 1. The boiling point, or the temperature at which the conversion of fluids into gases takes place, is different in dilferent fluids, but constant in each, pro- vided the pressure of the atmosphere be the same. MATERIA MEDICA. 197 Put any quanty of sulphuric oetlier into a Florence flask, suspend a thermo- meter in it, and hold the flask over an Argand's lamp, the aether will immedi- ately begin to boil, and the thermometer will indicate 98deg., il'the aether has been highly rectified. If highly rectified ardent spirit is heated in a similar manner, the thermome- ter will rise to 176 deg., and there remain stationary. If water is substituted it will rise to 212 deg. If strong nitrous acid of commerce be made use of, it will be found to boil at 248 deg.; sulphuric acid and linseed-oil at 600 deg.; mercury at 656 deg.,&c. 2. The boiling point of fluids is raised by pressure. Mr. Watt heated water under a strong pressure to 400 deg. Yet still, when the pressure was removed, only part of the water was converted into vapor, and the temperature of this vapor, as well as that of the remaining fluid; was no more than 212 deg. There was, therefore, 18S deg. of caloric suddenly lost. This caloric was carried ofl' by the steam. Now as only about one-fifth of the water was converted into steam, that steam must contain not only its own 18S deg., but also the 1S8 deg. lost by each of the other four parts ; that is to say, it'must contain 188 X 5 deg., or about 940 deg. Steam, therefore, is water combined with at least 940 deg. of caloric, the presence of which is not indicated by the thermometer. 3. When pressure is removed from the surface of bodies, their conversion into the gaseous state is greatly facilitated, or their boiling point is lowered. In proof of this the following experiments may serve : Let a small bottle be filled w-ith highly rectified sulphuric aether, and a piece of wetted bladder be tied over its orifice around its neck. Transfer it under the receiver of an air-pum.p, and take away the superincumbent pressure of the air in the receiver. When the exhaustion is complete, pierce the bladder by means of a pointed sliding wire, passing through a collar of leather which covers the upper opening of the receiver. Having done this, the aether will instantly begin to boil, and become converted into an invisible gaseous fluid. Take a small retort or Florence flask, fill it one half or less with water, and make it boil over a lamp ; v/hen kept briskly boiling for about Ave minutes, cork the mouth of the retort as expeditiously as possible, and remove it from the lamp. The water, on being removed from the source of heat, will keep boiling for a few minutes, and when the ebullition begins to slacken, it may be renewed by dipping the retort into cold water, or pouring cold water upon it. The water during boiling becomes converted into vapor ; this vapor expels the air of the vessel, and occupies its place ; on diminishing the heat it con- denses ; when the retort is stopped, a partial vacuum is formed ; the pressure becomes diminished, and a less degree of heat is sufficient to cause an ebulli- tion. For the same reason, water may be made to boil under the exhausted re- ceiver at 94 deg.Fah., or even at a lower degree ; alcohol at .56 deg., and ether at— 20 deg. On the conversion of fluids into gases, is founded the following experiment, by which water is frozen by means of sulphuric aether. Take a thin glass tube, four or five inches long, and about two or three eighths of an inch in diameter, and a two ounce bottle furnished v.'ith a capil- lary tube fitted to its neck. In order to n\ake ice, pour a little water into the tube, taking care not to wet the outside, nor to leave it moist. Having done this, let a stream of sulphuric cether fall through the capillary tube upon that part of it containing the water, which by this means will be converted into ice in a few minutes, and this it will do, even near a fire, or in the midst of sum- mer. If the glass tube containing the water be exposed to the brisk thorough air, or free draught of an open window, a large quantity of water may be frozen in a shorter time; and if a thin spire of wire be introduced previous to the congelation of the water, the ice will adhere to it, and may thus be drawn out conveniently. A person might be easily frozen to death during very warm weather, by merely pouring upon his body for some time sulphuric aether, and keeping hira exposed to a thorough draught of air. 198 THE THOMSONIAN Artificial Refrigeration. The cooling or refrigeration of rooms in the snramer season by sprinkling them with water, is on the principle of evaporation. The method of making ice artificially in the East Indies, depends on the same principle. The ice makers at Benares dig pits in large open plains, the bottom of which they strew with sugar canes, or dried stems of maize, or In- dian corn. Upon this bed they place a number of unglazed pans, made of so porous an earth that the water penetrates through their whole substance. These pans are filled toward evening in the winter season with water that has boiled, and left in that situation till morning, when more or less ice is found in them, according to the temperature and other qualities of the air ; there being more formed in dry and warm weather than in that which is cloudy, though it may be colder to the human body. Every thing in this process is calculated to produce cold by evaporation : the beds on which the pans are placed suffer the air to have a free passage to their bottoms ; and the pans constantly oozing out water to their external sur- face, are cooled by the evaporation of it. In Spain they use a kind of earthen jars, called buxaros, which are only half baked, the earth of which is so porous that the outside is kept inoist by the ■water which filters through it ; and though placed in the sun, the water in the jar becomes as cold as ice. It is a common practice in China to cool wine or other liquors by \iTapping the bottle in a wet cloth and hanging it up in the sun. The water in the cloth becomes converted into vapor, and thus cold is produced. The blacks in Senegambia have a similar method of cooling water, by fill- ing tanned leather bags with it, which they hang up in the sun ; the water oozes more or less through the leather, so as to keep the outer surface wet, which by its quick and continued evaporation cools the water remarkably. The winds on the borders of the Persian gulf are often so scorching, that travellers are suddenly suflocated, unless they cover their heads with a wet cloth. If this be too wet, they immediately feel an intolerable cold, whidi would prove fatal if the moisture was not speedily dissipated by the heat. Condensation of Vapor. If a cold vessel is brought into a warm room, particularly where many peo- ple are assembled, the outside of it will soon become covered with a sort of dew. Before some changes of weather, the stone pavements, the walls of a house, the balustrades of stair-cases and other solid objects, feel clammy and damp. In frosty nights, when the air abroad is colder than the air within, the dampness of this air, for the same reason, settles on the glass panes of the windows, and is there frozen into curious and beautiful figures. Thus fogs and ileivs take place, and in the higher regions clouds are formed from the condensed vapor. The still greater condensation produces 7nists and rain. Capacity of Bodies for containing Heat. The property which different bodies possess, of containing at the same tem- perature, and in equal quantities, either of mass or bulk, nnef|ual quantities of heat, is called their capacity for heat. The capacities of bodies for heat are therefore considered as great or small in proportion as their temperatures are cither raised by the addition, or diminished by the deprivation of equal quan- tities of heat, in a less or greater degree. In homogeneous bodies, the quantities of caloric which they contain are in the ratio of their temperature and mass ; when, therefore, equal quantities of water, of oil, or of mercurj'^, of unequal temperatures, are mingled together, the temperature of the whole will be the arithmetical mean bcween the tem- perature of the two quantities that had been mixed together. It is a self-evi- dent truth that this should be the case, for the particles of diflerent portions of the same substance being alike, their effects must be equal. MATERIA MEDICA. 199 For instance, Mix a pound of water at 172 deg. with a pound at 32 deg., half the excess of heat in the hot water will quit it to go over into the colder portion ; thus the hot water will be cooled 70 deg., and the cold Avill receive 70 deg. of tem- perature j therefore, 172 — 70, or 32-f-70 ='102, will give the heat of the mix- ture. To attain the arithmetical mean very exactly, several precautions, how- fiver, are necessary. When heterogeneous bodies of different temperature are mixed together, the temperature produced is never the arithmetical mean of the two original temperatures. lu order to ascertain the comparative quaniities of heat of different bodies, equal weights of them are mingled together, the experiments for this purpose being in general more easily executed than those by which they are compared from equal bulks. Thus, if one pound of meixury heated to 410 deg. Fahren. be added to one pound of water of 44 deg., the temperature of the blended fluids will not be changed to 77 deg., as it would be if the surplus of heat were divided among those fluids in the proportion of their quantities. It will be found, on exami- nation, to be only 47 deg. On the contrary, if the pound of mercury be heated to 44 deg. and the water to 110 deg., then, on stirring them together, the common temperature will be 107 deg. Hence, if the quicksilver loses by this distribution 63 deg. of caloric, an equal weight of water gains only 3 deg. from this loss of 63 deg. of heat. And, On the contrary, if the water loses 3 deg. the mercury gains 63 deg. When, instead of comparing the quantities of caloric which equal tceighis of different bodies contain, we compare the quantities contained in equal vol- umes, we still iind that an obvious difference takes place. Thus it is found by experiment, that the quantity of caloric necessary to raise the temperature of a given volume of water any number of degrees, is, to that necessary to raise an equal volume of mercury the same number of degrees, as 2 to 1. This is, therefore, the proportion between the comparative quantities of caloric which these two bodies contain, estimated by their volumes ; and similar differences exist with respect to every other kind of matter. From the nature of the experiments by which the quantities of caloric whicli bodies contain are ascertained, it is evident that we discover merely the com- parative, not the absolule quantities. Hence water has been chosen as a stand- ard, to which otlier bodies may be referred; its capacity is stated as the arbi- trary term of 1000, and with this the capacities of other bodies are compared. It need not be told, that pains have been taken to estimate on these experi- ments that portion of heat Vv'hich diffuses itself into the air, or into the vessels where the mercury and water are blended together. As, however, such valu- ations cannot be made with complete accuracy, the numbers stated above are Only an approximation to truth. Radiation of Caloric. Caloric is thrown off or radiates from heated bodies in right lines, and moves through space with inconceivable velocity. It is retarded in its pass- age by atmospheric air, by colorless fluids, glass, and other transparent bo- dies. If a glass mirror be placed before a fire, the mirror transmits the rays of light, but not the rays of heat. If a plate of glass, talc, or a glass vessel filled with water, be suddenly in- terposed between the fire and the eye, the rays of light pass through it, but the rays of caloric are considerably retarded in its passage ; for no heat is perceived until the interposed substance is saturated with heat, or has reach- ed it? maximum. It then ceases to intercept the rays of caloric, and allows them to pass as freely as the rays of light. It lias been lately shown by Dr. Herschel, that the rays of caloric are re- frangible, but less so than the rays of light; and the same philosopher has al- so proved by experiment, that it is not only the rays of caloric emitted by the 200 THE THOMSONIAN 8un which are refrangible, but likewise the rays emitted by common fires, by candles, by heated iron, and even by hot water. Whether the rays of caloric are did'erentiy refracted, in difl'erent mediums, lias not yet been ascertained. We are certain, however, that they are refract- ed by all transparent bodies which have been employed as burning glasses. The rays of caloric are also reflected by polished surfaces in the same man- ner as the rays of light. This was long ago noticed by Lambert, Saussure, Scheele, Pictet, and lately by Dr. Herschel. Professor Pictet placed two concave metallic mirrors opposite to each other at the distance of about twelve feet. When a hot body, an iron bullet for in- stance, was placed in the focus of one, and a mercurial thermometer in that of tire other, a substance radiated from the bullet ; it passed with incalculable velocity through the air, it was rellected from the mirrors, it became concen- trated, and influenced the therraomeier placed in the focus, according to the degree of its concentration. An iron ball tAVo inches in diameter, heated so that it was not luminous in the dark, raised the thermometer not less than ten and a half degrees of Rau- mer's scale, in six minutes. A lighted candle occasioned a rise in the thermometer nearly the same. A Florence flask containing two ounces and three drachms of boiling water raised Fahrenheit's thermometer three degrees. He blackened the bulb of his thermometer, and found that it was more speedily influenced by the radiation tlian before, and that it rose to a greater height. M. Pictet discovered another very singular fact ; namely, the apparent radia- tion of cold. When instead of a heated body, a Florence flask full of ice or snow is placed in the focus of one of the mirrors, the thermometer placed in the fo- cus of the other immediately descends, and ascends again whenever the cold body is removed. This phenomenon maybe explained on the supposition, that from everybo- dy at every temperature caloric radiates, but in the less quantity as the tem- perature is low ; so that in the above experiment, the thermometer gives out more caloric by radiation than it receives from the body in the opposite focus, and therefore its temperature is lowered. Or, as Pictit has supposed, when several bodies near each other have the same temperature, there is no radiation of caloric, because in all of them it exists in a state of equal tension ; but as 60on as a body at an inferior temperature is introduced the balance of tension is broken, and caloric begins to radiate from all of them, till the temperature of that body is raised to an equality with theirs. In the above experiment, therefore, the placing the snow or ice in the focus of the mirror causes the ra- diation of caloric /ro?/i the thermometer, and hence the diminution of tempe- rature which it suffers. These experiments have been since repeated by Dr. Young and Professor Davy, at the theatre of the Royal Institution. These gentlemen inflamed phosphorus by reflected caloric, and proved that the heat thus excited was ve- ry sensible to the organs of feeling. It is therefore evident, that caloric is thrown off from bodies in rays, which are invisible, or incapable of exciting vision, but which are capable of exciting heat. These invisible rays of caloric are propagated by right lines, with extreme velocity; and are capable of the laws of reflection and refraction. The heating agency however is difl'erent in the different colored rays of the prismatic spectrum. According to Dr. Herschel's experiments, it follows in- versely the order of the refrangibility of the rays of light. The least refran- gible, possessing it in the greatest degree. Sir Henry Englefield has lately made a series of experiments on the same subject, from which we learn, that a thermometer having its ball blackened, rose when placed in the blue ray of the prismatic spectrum in 3 min. from 55 des. to 56 deg.; in the green, in 3 rain, from 54 deg. to 58 deg.; in the rjclloic, in 3 min. from 56 deg. to 62 deg.; in ihc full red, in 2 1-2 min. from 56 deg. to 72 deg.; in the confines of the red, in 2 1-2 min. from 58 deg. to 73 1-2 deg.; and quite out of the visible light, in 2 1-2 min. from 61 deg. to 79 deg. MATERIA MEDICA. 201 Between each of the observations, the thermometer was placed in the shade so lonij as to sink it below the heat to which it had risen in the preceding ob- servation ; of course its rise above that point could only be the eil'ect of the ray to which it was exposed. It was continued in the focus long after it had ceased to rise; therefore the heats given are the greatest efl'ects of the sever- al rays on the thermometer in each observation. A thermometer placed con- stantly in the shade near the apparatus, was found scarcely to vary during the ^periments. Sir Henry made other experiments with thermometers with naked balls, and with olliers whose bails were painted white, for which we refer the reader to Uie interesting paper of the Baronet, from which the above experiments are transcribed. Production of Artificial Cold, bij means of Frigorific Mixtures. A number of experiments have been lately made by different philosophers, especially by Pepys, Walker, and Lowitz, in order to produce artificial cold. And as these methods are often employed in chemistry, with a view to expose bodies to the inliuence of very low temperatures, we shall enumerate in a ta- bular form the different substances Avhich may be made use offer that pur- pose, and the degrees of cold which thcj' are capable of producing. To produce the efiects stated in the table, the salts must be reduced to pow- der, and contain their full quantity of water of crystalization. The vessel in wiiich the freezing mixture is made, should be very thin, and just large enough ta hold it, and the materials should be mixed together as expeditiously as pos- sible, taking care to stir the mixture at the s."me time with a rod of glass or wood. In order to obtain the full effect, the materials ought to be first cooled to the temperature marked in the table, by introducing them into some of the other frigorific mixtures, and then mingling them together in a similar mixture. If, for instance, we wish to produce — 46 deg., the snow and diluted nitric acid ought to be cooled down to deg., by putting the vessel which contains each of them into t!ie fifth freezing mixture in the following table, before they are mingled together. If a more intense cold be required, the materials to pro- duce it are to l)e brought to the proper temperature by being previously placed in the second freezing mixture. This process is to be continued till the required degree of cold has been pro- cured. A TABLE OF FREEZING MIXTURES. Mixtures. Thermometer sinks. Muriate cf ammonia 5 parts ) Nitrate of Potassa 5 > From 50 desr. to 10 deg. Water 16 ) Muriate of ammonia 5 parts "I Nitrate of Potassa 5 1 -r, k,^ i * i i Sulphate of soda 8 ^^^"^ 50 deg. to 4 deg. Water 16 J Sulphate of soda 3 parts? t^ ca i * n i Diluted nitric acid 2 <, From 50 deg. to-3 deg. Sire liT.".!-.:.;-.-.:;-. I "'""^ \ ■'™° ^^o deg, ,o o de^. £l;,e-;r-.oia::::;;::.: l'"'| F™.t3o,eg.,„odeg. Snow, or pounded ice •. 2 parts > -r, ^ , ^ ^ , Muriate of soda 1 part \ ^"^^"^ ^ ^^^- ^^-^ ^eg. Snow, or pounded ice 12 parts ") Muriate of soda 5 I ' t- c j . ,n j Muriate of ammonia and f From —5 deg. to— IS deg. nitrate of potassa 5 J 14 202 THE THOMSONIAN Snow, or pounded ice 12 parts ^ Muriate of soda 5 > Nitrate of ammonia 5 ) Snow 3 parts } Diluted nitric acid 2 > Muriate ol^ lime 3 parts > Snow 2 ) Potassa 4 parts > Snow 3 y Snow 8 parts ^ Diluted sulphuric acid. . .. 3 > Diluted nitric acid 3 ) Snow 1 part > Diluted sulphuric acid. .. . 1' $ Muriate of lime 2 parts ) Snow 1 part ^ Muriate of lime 3 parts ? Snow 1 part ) Diluted sulphuric acid. ... 10 parts > Snow 8 y Nitrate of ammonia 1 part > Water 1 ^ Nitrate of ammonia 1 part i Carbonate of soda 1 > Water. 1 ; Sulphate of soda ..... 6 parts ") Muriate of ammonia 4 1 Nitrate of potassa 2 f Diluted nitric acid 4 ) Sulphate of soda 6 parts i Nitrate of ammonia 5 > Diluted nitric acid 4 ) Phosphate of soda 9 parts ) Diluted nitric acid 4 ^ Phosphate of soda 9 parts i Nitrate of ammonia 6 > Diluted nitric acid 4 ) Sulphate of soda 5 parts > Diluted sulphuric acid.... 4 ) From —18 deg. to —25 deg. From deg. to — 46 deg. From 32 deg. to —50 deg. From 32 deg. to —51 deg. From — 10 deg. to —56 deg. From 20 deg. to —60 deg. From deg. to — 66 deg. From —40 deg. to —73 deg. From— 68 deg. to— 91 deg. From 50 deg. to 4 deg. From 50 deg. to — 7 d6g. From 50 deg. to — 10 deg. From 50 deg. to — 14 deg. From 50 deg. to — 12( deg. From 50 deg. to 21 deg. From 50 deg. to 3 de^. LIGHT.— Zmx. The nature of light has occupied much of the attention of philosophers, and numerous opinions have been entertained concerning it. It has been some- times considered as a distinct substance, at other times as a quality ; some- times as a cause, frequently as an eifect; by some it lias been considered as a compound, by others as a simple substance. Philosophers of the present day £tre mostly agreed as to the independent existence of light, or the cause by which we see. Nature of Light . Light is that which proceeds from any body producing the sensation of vi- sion, or perception of other bodies, by depicting an image of external objects on the retina of the eye. Hence it announces fo animals the presence of the bodies which surround them, and enables them to distinguish these bodies in- to transparent, opaque, and colored. These properties are so essentially eon- MATERIA MEDICA. 203 nected with llie presence of light, that bodies lose them in the dark, and be- come undistinguishable. Light is regarded by philosophers as a substance consisting of a vast niuu> ber of exceedingly small particles, which are actually projected from luminous bodies, and which probably never return again to the body from which they were emitted. It is universally expanded through space. It exerts peculiar actions, and is obedient to the laws of attraction, and other properties of matter. Explanation of certain terms of light. In order to facilitate the doctrine of light, Ave shall shortly explain a few terras made use of by philosophers when treating of it; namely, A ray of light is an exceedingly small portion of light as it comes from a luminous body. A medium is a body which affords a passage for the rays of light. A beam of light is a body of parallel rays. A pencil of rays is a body of diverging or converging rays. Converging rays are rays which tend to a common point. Diverging rays are those which come from a point, and continually separate as they proceed. The rays of light are parallel, when the lines which they describe are so. The radiant point is the point from which diverging rays proceed. The focus is the point to which the converging rays are directed. Sources of Light. Light is emitted from the sun and fixed stars, and other luminous bodies. It is produce! by percussion, during electrization, combustion, and in various other chemical processes. Why the sun and stars are constantly emitting light, is a question which probably will forever baffle human understanding. The light emitted during combustion, exists previously, either combined with the combustible body, or with the substance which supports the combus- tion. The light liberated during chemical action, formed a constituent part of the bodies which act on each other. Chemical Properties of Light. The chemical effects of light have much engaged the nttentioft of philoso- phers. Its influence upon animal, vegetable, and other substances, is as fol- lows : 1. On Vegetables. Every body knows, that most of the discous flowers follow the sun in his course ; that they attend him to his evening retreat, and meet his rising lustre in the morning with the same unerring law. It is also well known, that the change of position in the leaves of plants at different periods of the day, is en- tirely owins to the agency of light, and that plants which grow in windows in the inside of houses, are as it were solicitous to turn their leaves towards the light. Natural philosophers have long been aware of the influence of light on vegetation. It was first observed, that plants srowing in the shade, or dark- ness, are pale and without color. The term etiolation has been given to this phenomenon, and the plants in which it takes place are said to be etiolated or blanched. Gardeners avail themselves of the knowledge of this fact to furnish our tables with white and tender vegetables. When the plants have attained a certain height, they compress the leaves, by tying them together, and by these means, (or by laying earth over them,) deprive them of the contact of light: and thus it is,, that our white celery, lettuce, cabbage, endive, &c. are . obtained. For the same reason, wood is white under the green bark ; and roots are less colored than plants ; some of them alter their taste, 8cc. ; they even acriuire a deleterious quality when suffered to grow exposed to light. Potatoes are of this kind. Herbs that grow beneath stones, or in places ut- terly dark, are white, soft, aqueous, and of a mild and insipid taste. The more plants are exposed to the light, the more color they acquire. Though plants. 204 THE THOMSON IAN are capable of being nourished exceedingly well in ihe dark, and in that state grow much more rapidly than in the sun, (proA'ided the air that surrounds them is fit for vegetation,) they are colorless and unfit for use. Professor Davy found by e.xperiment, that red rose trees, carefully excluded from tlie light, produce roses almost white. He likewise ascertained that this flower owes its color to light entering into its composition ; that pink, orange, and yellow fiowers, imbibe a smaller portion of light than red ones, and that white fiowers contain no light. But vegetables are not only indebted to the light for their color ; taste and odor are likewise derived Irom the same source. Light contributes greatly to the maturity of fruits and seeds. This seems to be the cause why, under the burning sun of Africa, vegetables are in gene- ral mo;'e odoriferous, of a stronger taste, and more abounding with resin. From the same cause it happens, that hot climates seem to be the native coun- tries of perfumes, odoriferous fruits, and aromatic resins. The action of light is so powerful on the organs of vegetables, as to cause them to pour forth torrents of pure air from the surface of their leaves into the atmosphere, while exposed to the sun ; whereas on the contrary, when in the shade they emit an air of a noxious quality. Take a few handfuls of fresh gathered leaves of mint, cabbage, or any other plant ; place them in a bell- glass, filled with fresh water, and invert it into a basin with the same fluid. If the whole be then exposed to the direct I'ays of the sun, small air bubbles will appear upon the surface of the leaves, which will gradually grow larger, and at last detatch themselves, and become collected at the surface of the wa- ter. This is oxygen gas, or vital air. All plants do not emit this air v.'itli the same facility; there are seme which j-^ield it the moment the sun acts upon them ; as the jaccbcea or ragwort, la- vender, peppermint, and some other aromatic plants. The leaves aflbrd more air when attached to the plant than when gathered ; the quantity is also great- er, the fresher and sounder they arc, and if full grown and collected during dry weather. Green plants afiord more air than those Avhich are of a yellow- ish or white color. Green fruits aflbrd likewise oxygen gas; but it is not so plentifully furnished by those which are ripe. Flowers in general render the air noxious. The nasturtion indicum, in the course of a fcvf hours, gives out more air than is equal to the bulk of all its leaves. On the contrary ,"if a like bell-glass, prepared in the same manner, be kept in the dark, another kind of air will be disengaged, of an opposite quality. There is not a substance which, in well closed glass vessels, and exposed to the sun's light, does not experience some alteration. Camphor, kept in glass bottles, exposed to light, crystallizes into the most beautiful symmetrical figures, on that side of the glass which is exposed to the light. Yellow wax exposed to the light loses its color and becomes bleached. Gum guaiacum, reduced to powder, becomes green on exposure to light. Vegeta- ble colors, such as those of saliron, log- wood, &c. become pale, or white, &c. 2. 0?i Jlnimals. The human being is equally dependent on the influence of light. Animals in general droop wlien deprived of light; they become unhealthy, and even sometimes die. When a man has been long confined in a dark dungeon, (though well aired) his whole complexion becomes sallow ; pustules, filled with aqueous humors, break out on his skin; and the person who has been thus deprived of light becomes languid, and frequently dropsical. Worms, grubs, and caterpillars, which live in the earth, or in wood, are of a whitish color ; moths, and other insects of the night, are likewise distinguishable from those •which fly by day. by the Avant of brilliancy in their color. The diflerence be- tween those insects, in northern and southern parts, is still more obvious. The parts offish which are exposed to light, as the back, fins, &c. are uni- formly colored, but the belly, which is deprived of light, is Avhite in all of them. Birds which inhabit the tropical conutries have much brighter plumage than MATERIA MEDICA. 205 those of the north. Those parts of the birds which are not exposed to the light are iinit'oimly pale. The feathers on the belly of a bird are generally pale or white; the back, which is exposed to the light, is almost always co- lored; the bi-east, which is particularly exposed to light in most birds, is brighter than the belly. Butterflies, and various other animals of equatorial countries, are brighter colored than those of the polar regions. Some of the northern animals are even darker in summer and paler in winter. 3. On other substances. Certain metallic oxydes become combustible when exposed to light ; and acids, as the nitric, 8cc. are decomposed by its contact, and various other sub- stances change their nature. AIR. This term was, till lately, used as the generic name for such invisible and exceeeding-ly rare fluids as possess a very high degree of elasticity, and are not condensible into the liquid state by any degree of cold hitherto produced ; but as this term is commonly employed to signify that compound of aeriform liuids which constitutes our atmosphere, it has been deemed advisable to restrict it to this signification, and to employ as the generic term the word Gas, for the different kinds of air, ex- cept what relates to our atmospheric compound. Air, atmospheric. "The immense mass of permanently elastic fluid which sur- rounds the globe we inhabit," says Dr. Ure, " must consist of a general assemblage of every kind of air which can be formed by the various bodies that compose its surface. Most of these, however, are absorbed by water : a number of them are decom- posed by combination with each other; and some of them are seldom disengaged in considerable quantities by the processes of nature. Hence it is that the lower atmosphere consists chiefly of oxygen and nitrogen, together with moisture and the occasional vapors or exhalations of bodies. The upper atmos- phere seems to be composed of a large proportion of hydrogen, a fluid of so much less specilic gravity than any other, that it must naturally ascend to the highest place, where, being occa- sionally set on fire by electricity, it appears to be the cause of the aurora borealis and fire-balls. It may easily be understood, that this will only happen on the confines of the respective masses of connnon atmospherical air, and of the inflammable air ; that the combustion will extend progressively, though ra- pidly, in flashings from the place where it commences ; and that when by any means a stream of inflainmableair, in its pro- gress toward the upper atmosphere, is set on fire at one end, its ignition may be much more rapid than what happens higher up, where oxygen is wanting, and at the same time more defi- 206 THE THOMSONIAN Dite in its figure and progression, so as to form the appearance of a fire-ball. That the air of the atmosphere is so transparent as to be in- visible except by the blue color it reflects when in large mass- es, as is seen in the sky or region above us, or in viewing ex- tensive landscapes ; that it is without smell, except tliat of elec- tricity, which it sometimes very manifestly exhibits ; altogeth- er without taste and impalpable : not condensible by any de- gree of cold into the dense fluid state, though easily changing its dimensions with its temperature ; that it gravitates and is highly elastic ; are among the numerous observations and dis- coveries which do honor to the sagacity of the philosophers of the seventeenth century. They likewise knew that this fluid is indispensably necessary to combustion, but no one, except the great, though neglected, John Mayow, appears to have formed any proper notion of its manner of acting in that pro- cess. The air of the atmosphere, like other fluids, appears to be capable of holding bodies in solution. It takes up water in con- siderable quantities, with a diminution of its own specific gra- vity : from which circumstance, as well as from the considera- tion that water rises very plentifully in the vaporous state in vacuo, it seems probable that the air suspends vapor, not so much by a real solution, as by keeping its particles asunder, and preventing their condensation. Water likewise dissolves or absorbs air. Mere heating or cooling does not aflect the chemical proper- ties of atmospherical air ; but actual combustion, or any pro- cess of the same nature, combines its oxygen and leaves its ni- trogen separate. Whenever a process of this kind is carried on in a vessel containing atmospherical air, which is enclosed ei- ther by inverting the vessel over mercury, or by stopping its aperture in a proper manner, it is found that the process ceases after a certain time ; and that the remaining air (if a combusti- ble body capable of solidifying the oxygen, such as phosphorus, have been employed,) has lost about a fifth part of its volume, and is of such a nature as to be incapable of maintaining any combustion for a second time, or of supporting the life of ani- mals. From these experiments it is clear, that one of the fol- lowing deductions must be true: — 1. The combustible body has emitted some principle, which, by combining with the air, has rendered it unfit for the purpose of further combustion ; or, 2. It has absorbed part of the air which was fit for that pur- pose, and has left a residue of a different nature ; or, 3. Both events have happened ; namely, that the pure part of the air has been absorbed, and a principal has been emitted, which has changed the original properties of the remainder. MATERIA MEDICA. 207 The facts must clear up these theories. The first inductioa caunot be true, because the residual air is not only of less bulk, but of less specific gravity, than before. The air cannot there- fore have received so much as it has lost. The second is the doctrine of the philosophers who deny the existence of phlogis- ton, or a principle of inflammability ; and the third must be adopted by those who maintain that such a principle escapes from bodies during combustion. This residue was called phlo- gisticated air, in consequence of such an opinion. In the opinion that inflammable air is the phlogiston, it is not necessary to reject the second inference that the air has been no otherwise changed than by the mere subtraction of one of its principles ; for the pure or vital part of the air may unite with inflammable air supposed to exist in a fixed state in the combustible body ; and if the product of this union still conti- nues fixed, it is evident, that the residue of the air, after com- bustion, will be the same as it would have been if the vital part had been absorbed by any other fixed body. Or, if the vital air be absorbed while inflamnjable air or phlogiston is disenga- ged, and unites with the aeriform residue, his residue will not be heavier than before, unless tiie inflanmiable air it has gained exceeds in weight the vital air it has lost ; and if the inflamma- ble air fafls short of that weight the residue will be licrhter. These theories it was necessary to mention ; but it has been sufficiently proved by various experiments, that combustible bodies take oxygen from the atmosphere, and leave nitrogen,; and that when these two fluids are again mixed in due propor- tions, they compose a mixture not diflering from atmospherical air. The respiration of animals produces the same effect on at- mospherical air as combustion does, and their constant heat ap- pears to be an effect of the same nature. When an animal is included in a limited quantity of atmospherical an*, it'dies as soon as the oxygen is consumed ; and no other air will main- tain animal life but oxygen, or a mixture which contains it. Pure oxygen maintains the life of animals much longer than at- mospherical air, bulk for bulk. It is to be particularly observed, however, that, in many ca- ses of combustion, the oxygen of the air, in combining with the combustible body, produces a compound, not solid, or liquid, but aeriform. The residual air will therefore be a mixture of the nitrogen of the atmosphere with the consumed oxygen, con- verted into another gas. Thus, in burning charcoal, the car- bonic acid gas generated, mixes with the residual nitrogen, and makes up exactly, when the effect of heat ceases, thebulk of the original air. The breathing of animals, in like manner, 208 THE THOMSONIAN. changes the oxygen into carbonic acid gas, without altering the atmospherical volume. There are many provisions in nature by which the propor- tion of oxygen iu the atmosphere, which is continually consu- med in respiration and combustion, is again restored to that flu- id. In fact there appears, as far as an estimate can be formed of the great and general operations of nature, to be at least as great an emission of oxygen as is sufficient to keep the general mass of the atmosphere at the same degree of purity. Thus, in volcanic eruptions, there seems to be at least as much oxy- gen emitted or extricated by fire from various minerals, as is saflicient to maintain the combustion, and perhaps even to me- liorate the atmosphere. And in the bodies of plants and ani- mals, which appear in a great measure to derive their susten- ance and augmentation from the atmosphere and its contents, it is found tliat a large proportion of nitrogen exists. Most plants emit oxygen in the sunshine, from which it is highly probable that they imbibe and decompose the air of the atmos- phere, retainincr carbon, and emitting the vital part. Lastly, if to this we add the decomposition of water, there will be numer- ous occasions in which this fluid will supply us with disenga- ged oxygen ; while, by a very rational supposition, its hydro- gen may be consideied as having entered into the bodies of plants for the formation of oils, sugars, mucilages, &c., from which it may be again extricated. To determine the respirability or purity of air, it is evident that recourse must be had to its comparative eflicacy in main- taining combustion, or some other equivalent process. From the latest and most accurate experiments, the propor- tion of oxygen in atmospheric air is by measure about 21 per cent, ; and it appears to be very nearly the same, wiiether it be in this country or on the coast of Guinea, on lov; plains or lofty mountains, or even at the height of 7250 yards above the level of the sea, as ascertained by Gay Lussac, in his aerial voyage in September, 1805. The remainder of the air is nitrogen, v.'ith a small portion of aqueous vapor, amounting to about one per cent, in the driest weather, and a still less portion of carbonic acid, not exceeding a thousandth part of the wliole. As oxygen and nitrogen differ in specific gravity in the pro- portion of 135 to 121, according to Kirwan, and of 139 to 120, according to Davy, it has been presumed, that the oxygen would be more abundant in the lower regions,. and the nitrogeu in the higher, if they constituted a mere mechanical mixture, which appears contrary to the fact. On the other hard, it has been urged, that they cannot be in the state of chemical combi- nation, because they both retain their distinct properties unal- tered, and no change of temperature or density takes place on MATERIA MEDICA, 209 their union. But perhaps it mnv be said, that, as they have no repugnance to mix witli each otlier, as oil and water have, the continual agitation to which the atmosphere is exposed, maybe suflicient to prevent two fluids, diflering not more than oxygen and nitrogen in i^^ravity, iVom separating by subsidence, though simply mixed. On the contrary, it may be argued, that to say chemical combination cannot take place without producing new properties, which did not exist belbre in the component parts, IS merely begging the question ; for though this generally ap- pears to be the case, and often in a very striking manner, yet corn^ bination does not always produce a change of properties, as ap- pears in M. Biot's experiments with various substances ; of which we may instance water, the refraction of which is pre- cisely the mean of that of the oxygen and hydrogen, which are indisputably combined in it. To get rid of the difliculty, Mr. Dalton of Manchester framed an ingenious hypothesis, tliat the particles of different gases neither attract nor repel each other ; so that one gas expands by the repulsion of its own particles, without any more inter- ruption from the presence of another gas, than if it were in a vacuum. This would account for the stale of atmospheric air, it is true, but it does not agree with certain facts. In the case of the carbonic acid gas in the Grotto del Cano, and over the surface of brewers' vats, why does not this gas expand itself freely upward, if the superincimibent gases do not press upon it? Mr. Dalton himself, too, instances as an argument for his hypothesis, that oxygen and h^^drogen gases, when mixed by agitation, do not separate on standing. But why should either oxygen or hydrogen require agitation, to difluse it through a vacuum, in which, according to Mr. Dalton, it is placed? The theory of Berthollet appears consistent with all the facts, and sufficient to account for the phenomenon. If two bodies be capable of chemical combination, their particles must havQ a mutual attraction for each other. This attraction, however, may be so opposed by concomitant circumstances, that it may be diminished in any decree. Thus we know, that the affinr- ty of asfgregation may occasion a body to combine slowly with a substance for which it has a powerful affinity, or even entire- ly prevent its combining with it ; the presence of a third sub>- gtance may equally prevent the combination ; and so may the absence of a certain quantity of caloric. But in all these cases the attraction of the particles must subsist, though diminished or counteracted by opposing- circuiustances. Now we know that oxygen and nitrogen are capable of combination ; ti.eil' particles, therefore, must attract each other ; but in the circunf> stances in which they are placed in our atmosphere, that atirao tion is prevented from exerting itself, to such a degree as to 210 THE THOMSONIAN form them into a chemical compound, though it operates with sufficient force to prevent their separating by their difference of specific gravity. Tluis the state of the atmosphere is ac- counted for, and every difficulty obviated, without any new hy- pothesis. The exact specific gravity of atmospherical air, compared to that of water, is a very nice and important problem. By redu- cing to 60 deg. of Fahr. and to 30 inches of the barometer, the results obtained with great care by Biot and Arago, the specific gravity of atmospherical air, appears to be 0.001220, water be- ing represented by 1.000000. This relation expressed fraction- ally is 1-S20, or water is 820 times denser than atmospherical air. Mr. Rice, in the 77th and 78th numbers of the Annals of Philosophy, deduces from Sir George Shuckburgh's experi- ments 0.00120855 for the specific gravity of air. This number gives water to air as 827.437 to 1, If with Mr. Rice we take the cubic inch of water=2.52.525 gr., then 100 cubic inches of air by Biot's experiments will weigh 30.808 grains, and by Mr. Rice's estimate 30.519, He considers with Dr. Prout the at- mosphere to be a compound of 4 volumes of nitrogen, and I of oxygen ; the specific gravity of the first being to that of the se- cond as l.llU to 0.9722. Hence 0.8 vol nitr. sp. gr. 0.001166=0,000933 0.2 oxy. 0.001340=0.00026.8 0.001201 The numbers are transposed in the Annals of Philosophy by some mistake. Biot and Arago found the specific gravity of oxygen to be 1.10359 and that of nitrogen, 0.96913 air being reckoned, 1.00000 Or compared to water as unity, — Nitrogen is Oxygen, And 0.8 nitrogen 0.2 oxygen And 0.79 nitrogen, 0.21 oxygen 0.001182338 0.001346379 =0.00094587 =0.00026927 0.00121514 =0.000934 =0.000283 0.001217 A number which approaches very nearly to the result of expe- riment. Many analogies, it must be confessed, favor Dr. Prout's proportions ; but the greater number of experiments on MATERIA MEDICA. 211 the composition and density of the atmosphere agree with Bi- ot's results. Nothing can decide these fundamental chemical proportions^ xcept a new, elaborate, and most minutely accu- rate series of experiments. We shall then know whether the atmosphere contains in volume 20 or 21 per cent." — Ure's Cheni. Diet. 2d. matter organi^ed-or the outlines of ANATOMY. When we look at the wonderful machine which the Deity has placed upon the earth, to preside over his creation — when we consider the beautiful adaptation of its various parts to the purposes for which they are designed — we are struck with awe and admiration, even upon a superficial glance at its beauty and propriety. But when we penetrate beneath the surface, and behold the play of its ten thousand arteries carrying sustenance to every part of the system — the veins returning their purple current to the heart and lungs, to be re-supplied with the ele- ments of life; when we observe the lacteals taking up the nu- tritious particles from the bowels, and conveying them through countless channels to be mingled with the blood — the absorb- ents removinsf those parts which are no longer fitted to fulfil their duty, and the glands rejectmg them from the body as use- less incumbrances, while the vessels again supply their place with fresh materials; when v/e reflect, I say, that this most intricate machine is so constantly undergoing waste and repair, that in a very few years it loses every individual atom which formed a part of Its original structure, v/hile it still preserves its form and motions unimpaired, we are lost in wonder; not less at the wise ordinations of Nature that regulate its operations, than at the audacity of those who dare to interfere with her arrange- ments, even when disorder is perceived among the wheels and springs of this masterpiece of Divine wisdom and power. But Nature governs all her works by a few simple laws ; and when these laws are discovered, the explanation of her most involved phenomena are often brought within the grasp of hu- man reason. By contemplating the fall of an apple, Newton was enabled to expose the hidden cause of all the movements of the heavenly bodies. Now, although we have not arrived at nearly the same simplicity in the study of the science of life which that philosopher has reached in speculating on natural philosophy, we have discovered many general principles which shed no inconsiderable light on the otherwise incomprehensible operations of the human frame, in health and in disease. Let us then proceed to elucidate these principles, as far as the limits and the object of this work will permit. The simplest of all animals, which mostly reside in the 212 THE THOMSOMAN water, appear to be entirely divested of feeling, or voluntary motion; tliey have no blood-vessels, no nerves, no intestines. no organs; they are composed of a kind of membrane contain- ing many cells and fibres of different shapes and sizes, filled and surrounded with a peculiar fluid. In structure they are not unlike a sponge, enclosed in a bladder of tlie same sub- stance, and shaped into different forms according to the species. Iti composition tliis membrane does not differ very widely from the white of an e^rg when boiled. Such is the picture of the simplest specimens of animal life ; and although the. labors of recent naturalists have proved the existence of more complex organs in many of the tribes of miiuite beings, whose existence is scarcely perceptible, except by the aid of powerful micro- scopes, there are not wanting many of much larger size, and, therefore, open to accurate observation, in whom the whole bo- dy is devoid of any systematic arrangement, other than that which has been just described. These animals live by imbibing their sustenance tiirough the skin from the fluid m which they swim, and as they select such particles as are fitted to their wants, they may be said to per- form a kind of external digestion. The membrane of which they are composed is supposed to contract when touched, and also when acted on by light, heat, electricity, and perhaps other causes ; thus the fluids which it contains are agitated and mov- ed from place to place, so that an imperfect kind of circulation is effected without the aid of blood-vessels, and all parts of the body are nourished and furnished with the means of growth. If respiration be necessary to these animals, it must be effected by the external surface, and whatever matters require to be ejected from the body are compelled to pass by the same route. This substance of which they arc composed, and which is call- ed cellular membrane, or cellular (issue, seems, therefore, to be capable of fulfilling all the fiuictions of life, as far as they are necessary to the existence of the most simple animals ; and, strangle as it may appear, even the human embryo, when it first becomes visible, and for some time afterward, cannot be distin- guished from a small .mass of cellular tissue ! Although it is obvious that it must be endowed witb life, it contains no vessels nor organs, but resembles a mere piece of asiimated jelly. AViieu we beoMu to examine animals more and more advanc- ed in the scale of nature, we find that those which are designed to move about in search of food, instead of having their food brought to them, require to be furnished with organs especially devoted to this purpose. ']' hey have muscles; for the occa- sional, and, as it wert>, accidental, contractions of the cellulai? tissue, are too irregular iuid uncertain to answer their necessi- ties, and they require an apparatus for locomotion. From the MATERIA MEDICA. 213 moment that the character of perfect simphcity is thus lost, it seems that mere absorption from the surface is insufiicient to supply the materials for the different organs, and the animal is supplied with an internal cavity or stomach, and bowels more or less complex in structure, in which food may be enclosed until it can undergo a more careful and deliberate digestion. Still these muscles of which we have spoken, though they look like fibres of considerable length, are thought by most to be in reality composed of globules or particles, ranged in rows in the midst of the cellular tissue, which ties them together in bun- dles, and keeps each particle in its proper place ; they are strict- ly interstitial deposites, filling the cavities and adhering to the layers of the membrane. Now the movements of the muscles would bo embarrassed, and perhaps destroyed, if the liquids which support life were permitted to pervade the whole body in these, as they do in the simplest animals, which have no well defined organs ; the nu- tritive fluid or blood is, therefore, generally enclosed in distinct vessels, formed ultimately of the same cellular tissue, but hav- ing no communication with its cells. These vessels divide and re-divide, carrying the blood to every part of the body, and re- turning it ao-ain to a reservoir, or heart, which forms the cen- tre of the circulation. As every part of the body receives its nourishment from the blood, it is obvious that this fluid is constantly undergoing con- siderable waste ; nature has, therefore, provided a system of vessels which is rather an appendage to tlie circulatory appara- tus than a part of it. These vessels, which physicians call the lacieals, arise in countless numbers from every part of the bowels. They take up, by some invisible means, such parts of the food as are suited to enter t!ie blood, leaving the rest to be ejected from the body by the natural passages. They pursue a winding course, uniting gradually with each other, and thus becoming larger, as the little streams from a thousand springs are slowly collected first into rivulets, then into brooks, until at length they give rise to a noble river. The river of the lacte- als into which they are all finally collected, is in man, a vessel about as large as a crow-quill, which, running for some distance along the spine, near the back part of the chest, empties its con- tents into one of the principal veins of the body, just before it enters the heart. The heart is a strons: hollow muscle, which alternately re- ceives the blood as it flows toward it, and then forces it by a strong contraction through vessels, which go on continually branching until they reach every part of the system, like the limbs and twigs of a great tree. The principal trunk and great branches of this class of ves- 214 THE THOMSOIs'IAN sels are termed arteries ; the blood is propelled through them chiefly by the direct force ot" the heart, but they are provided with a coat or envelope of fibres resemblino; those of muscles, which aid in urging the current more uniformly in proper di- rections, and as the arteries grow smaller, these fibres increase in their relative strength, as the bark of the smaller twigs be- comes thicker jn proportion than that of the body of the tree. At length these little arteries become capable of hastening or retarding the flow of blood, and sometimes perhaps they check it altogetlier for a moment. They now change their name, and are called the capillaries. It is through the capillaries that all those particles which are required for the growth and preservation of the body and its several organs are separated from the blood and placed in their proper stations. The same vessels are supposed by some to take up and mingle with the blood those particles which have done their duty and are worn out in the service, in order that they may be disposed of, in tlie manner in which most bodies corporate reward the past services of friends no longer found necessary; that is, by being turned out of doors. In this most thankless duty, however, they are certainly aided by a subsidi- ary class of vessels called the absorbents, which convey only co- lorless fluids collected from all parts of the body. Most of these last named vessels finally empty their contents into the common trunk of the lacteals, and thus into the veins, but some of them reach the same destination by a more direct route. This constant addition of nutritive matter to the blood bij the lacteals, its distribution to every organ of the animal iy the heart and arteries, its separation from the mass of circulation, and its application to the growth and repair of all parts by the capillaries, together with the removal of injured, useless or de- bilitated particles by the absorbents, are subjects connected with the all-important process oi nutritiov. After the blood has passed the capillaries it falls into another system of vessels called the veins, by which it is returned to the heart. The veins are destitute of the seemingly muscular coat of the arteries and capillaries, and although the blood is con- stantly pushed into them by the joint action of the heart, the arteries and the capillaries, they are unable to propel it by any effort of their own ; they are mere passive conduits. To sup- ply this apparent defect, they are provided with numerous valves, set here and there along their course, which permit the blood to pass toward the heart, but prevent its return in the opposite direction. By the constant motion of the muscles in breathino:, walking, coughing, sneezing, &c., the veins are very frequently compressed, and their contents urged forward more rapidly; hence the healthful ness of exeicise EOid gymnastics. MATERIA MEDICA. 215 All the veins of the hody are gradually collected into a few- great trunks or canals, which pour their contents into the heart, and those which belong to the general circulation — that circu- lation which is destined" to supply nutriment to the body — form, in the more perfect animals, two great conduits; one coming down from the head and upper extremities, the other coming up from the trunk and inferior extremities. These conduits meet directly end to end, so as to form but one trunk, which opens into the heart by a gap at the side. The blood thus returned is of course altered, in the first place by having parted with a great deal of matter for the repair and growth of the diiferent ors:ans, and secondly, by being loaded with all the useless particles which the absorbents have taken np. In order, then, that it may be fitted for circulation again, it must receive considerable additions, and it must cast off" con- siderable impurities. The former are supplied by the lacteals, but the latter process requires a different set of vessels, endowed with other powers. One of the chief impurities which the blood receives from the absorbents is carbon or charcoal. To rid it of this, a part, and in the more perfect animals the whole of the blood, is made to pass through an organ where the vessels come almost into con- tact with the element in which the animal lives, as the water in fishes, and the air in birds and man. Both these elements contain oxygen, or vital air, and by some hidden means the carbon of the blood, being supposed by most to unite with this vital air, escapes through the thin coats of the vessels in the form of carbonic acid gas, the same gas that rises from ferment- ed liquors, soda water, &c. Thus we see some animals breath- ing water, and others air. The former generally have the breathing organs placed externally ; they are termed hranchim or gills ; in the latter, they are situated within the body, and are called lungs, or lights. The function performed by these organs is called respiration. It is believed by many physiologists, that nature, always nn- willing to perform any useless labor, and anxious to efiect as many operations as possible with a very few materials, has so ordered the laws of respiration that it shall preserve the warmth of the animal at the same time that it purifies the blood. While the blood is acted upon by the atmosphere in the lunos, or by the water in the gills, it is supposed to absorb a great quantity of heat; and as it flows toward every part of the body, under- going a gradual change, it is thought to throw out this heat, and thus to keep every part at its proper temperature. The effects of respiration are not sufficient to remove all the impurities of the blood, and therefore a nurhber of ciirious or- gans called glands are provided, some of which aid in separat- 216 THE THOMSONIAN hig many of these impurities, each gland furnishing its own pecuUar fluid, which it pours out eiiher into the bowels or into tlie skin. The product of many of these glands is made useful for various purposes before it is thrown oti'from the body; thus the liver, the largest of the glands, iorms the ii/e, which is the natural purgative, producing, when healthy, regular and com- fortable stools ; and when diseased, occasioniug costiveness, or bowel complaints: the pancreas and the glands about the mouth pour out the spittle, which assists digestion. These useful flu- ids are called secretions ; but those which are ejected, like the urine, without fulfilling any important purpose, are called ex- a'etions.. From what has been said, it is obvious that tlie motions ne- cessary to maintain life, even in very simple animals, are nume- rous and complex. The stomach and intestines must receive and digest food; the lacteals must take up the nutritious part of the food and carry it to the blood; the arteries must convey this blood to the diflerent orofans; the capillaries must supply the ijrowth and waste of those organs; thi-; absorbents must aid the capillaries in taking away the v/orn out and useless parts, to mingle them with the blood in the veins; these vessels must convey the blood back to the heart, which must then pass it to tlie lungs, to be deprived of some of its impurities, and to ena- ble it to sustain the heat of the body. In addition to all this, the glands must assist in purifying the blood, or they must fur- nish fluids to aid in digestion and other functions, or to purge away those useless remains of the food which cannot be digest- ed. So many diflerent motions all dc^pendent on each other, would necessarily produce continual confusion, by actmg irre- gularly and to cross purposes, if they had not some common bond of union by which they can mutually inform each other, OS it were, of their several wants and actions. This bond of union is furnished by the nerves. In the more simple animals, we find only a few nervous fi- bres, running in different directions, with here and there little knots called ganqlions, joining several fibres together. When any impression is made upon one of these fibres, it is instantly comma nicated to the parts with which it is connected, and calls them into action. If the fibre is united with others, or with one or more of the little knots just mentioned, they are also called into action, and several different parts are then put in motion at once. Thus when food enters the stomach, its nerves receive the impression and cause the capillaries of that orcran to dilate, in order to receive the blood required to carry on the process of (ligestion ; they also give notice to the heart, which, if necessa- ry^ acts with more force in hastening the circulation, and the capillaries of tlie skin contract, and drive the blood from the MATERIA MEDICA. 217 surface toward the bowels. This is the cause of the sHght chill and consequent fever so often felt during- and after a hearty- dinner. The animal, however, remains unconscious of all this hurry of business within, and the nerves which are the messen- gers and agents of the manufactory are called the nerves of or- ganic life. They are altogether independent of the will, and are found in animals supposed to have no brain. in beings of a higher order, that are obliged to choose their food with judgment and to travel far in search of it, other nerves are required to enable them to recognize its presence ; these are the jierves of sensation. There must also be a brain, to enable the animal to judge of its impressions, and to perceive its wants, and another system of nerves is required to pass from the brain to the different muscles, by which the former may di- rect the latter ; these are the nerves of voluntary motion. All these several systems, though in some degree independent, are connected together by the brain and the httle knots or gangli- ons, so that they mutually influence each other. Finally, to enclose and protect this multiform and delicate structure, there is a coat of condensed cellular tissue covering tlie whole body, and called the true skin, over which is spread a thin layer of horny matter, called the cuticle, or scarf skin. This cuticle is totally insensible, and forms a mere crust which protects the delicate and exquisitely sensitive surface of the true skin. The horns, nails, hairs, spines, shells, and crusty coverings of various animals, are all classed properly with the cuticle, being either excrescences of, or substitutes for, that membrane. Each of the parts of an animal that have now been enume- rated may be found even in a common snail, or in the meanest of the reptiles; but as we ascend in the scale of nature, every system of organs is observed to become more and more complex in structure, and capable of actions more and more various. Man, the most perfect of animals, not only requires the whole of this complex apparatus, but his brain also contains systems of nervous fibres, for the exercise of the higher instincts, moral feelin^rs, and reasonins: faculties. He is at first nothino: but a little mass of cellular tissue; but as the infant in the mother increases in size, one organ is added after another, nearly in the order described, and many of his parts do not reach their full developement until he approaches middle life. 15 218 THE THOMSONIAN SKELETON, In anatomy^ is the assemblage and combination of all the bones in the body, except the os hyoides ; it constitutes the ba- sis or ground-work of the animal frame, being the point of sup- port and union for all the other organs. Its component parts form a series of levers, of which the muscles are the moving powers ; thus the skeleton conjprehends one division ot the moving organs. Its constituent pieces in some cases form ca- vities, as tFiose of the head, chest, and pelvis, which contain the important internal organs, and protect them from external force. The connexions of the different pieces of the skeleton are called joints^ and differ very considerably from each other — some of them admitting of no motion, some an inconsiderable motion, and others allowing them to move freely, either in cer- tain directions or in every way. The word skeleton denoting the bony fabric in its united state, of course includes the joints, or media of union ; and in this respect we distinguish two kinds of skeletons. A iiatural skeleton, is that in which the bones are all joined by their natural connexions ; that is, the articular ends are covered by their cartilaginous strata, tied together by li- gaments, and enveloped by synovial membranes : in this sense the skeleton includes, besides the bony system, the accessory structures of cartilage, ligament, and synovial membranes. When all the soft parts have been allowed to putrefy and rot, and the separated bones, after being cleaned and dried, have been joined again by wires, &c., so as to be reunited artificially in their former order, an artificial skeleton is formed. In the spine and the ribs, the places of the cartilages which are lost in cleaning the bones, are supplied by portions of leather, cork, or other materials. The latter, exhibiting merely the assemblage of the dried bones, is applicable to the study of osteology only in the me- chanical points of figure, size, &c. ; and although extremely useful to the anatomist and surgeon, by representing the parts in their natural connexion and relations, is less convenient than the separate bones for the study of many points, particularly the articular ends of the bones. For the formation of artificial skeletons, the bones are depriv- ed of their soft parts, either by boiling or by maceration in water. The boiling must be continued until the tendons, ligaments, periosteum, (fee, are so loosened as to admit of being easily de- tached. The bony texture acquires in this method a dirty and greasy appearance, which cannot be entirely got rid of by any after process. For the purpose of maceration, the bones with the flesh, (fee, roughly cut off, must be left in the same water MATERIA MEDICA. 219 for some months ; the soft parts will then fall off, and leave the bones of a much better color, and freer from grease, than when they have been 'boiled. Exposure to the air, and frequently- wetting them, will make them beautifully white after they have been well macerated. Their color may be often much improv- ed by exposure to chlorine (oxymuriatic gas). The bones which possess large medullary cavities should be bored at the articu- lar ends, to get out the fatty substance. Emaciated and particularly anasarcous subjects, are the best for making skeletons; because there is no fat in the bones, and they consequently continue dry and clean, when they have been originally well prepared. Persons dying in good health, or from sudden attacks, have so much adipous matter in the interior of their bones, that they continue greasy, particularly at the articular ends, whatever pains may be taken to clean them. In natural skeletons, the cartilages, ligaments, and synovial membranes being all left, the joints possess their natural mo- bility. But in order to keep them in this state, they must be preserved in spirits, or some other fluid capable of preventing the putrefaction of the soft parts. This is particularly neces- sary with the skeletons of young subjects, which are in a great part cartilaginous. When a natural skeleton is dried, the soft parts shrink and are shrivelled up ; the cartilages become con- tracted, and thus the natural figure is greatly impaired. The contraction of the cartilages diminishes the height by an inch or more. So long as the bones are composed of separate pieces, and have more or less cartilage in their structure, the osseous sys- tem can only be studied in natural skeletons ; but when the os- sification is complete, artificial skeletons are preferable. The bones, being the levers by which the motions of the bo- dy are performed, have the muscles or moving powers fixed to them. But as they are subservient, in the construction of our frame, to other purposes besides those of motion, there are some bones, though very few, to which no muscles are attached ; such are the incus in the ear, the ethmoid and inferior turbin- ated bones, and some bones of the carpus. Although the form of the bones is variously modified, accord- ing to the figure of the parts in which they are placed, or to their destinations, they may be classed under the three divi- sions of broad or flat bones, cylindrical bones, and short bones. The broad bones represent flat shells, and consist of an inner stratum of reticular or spongy bony substance, which is cover- ed on its surfaces with thicker or thinner plates of compact bony matter. The cylindrical, or long bones, form long shafts, ex- panded at their extremities into thicker heads, and containing a 220 THE THOMSONIAN medullary cavity internally. The short bones are such as are nearly equal in their length, breadth, and thickness ; variously shaped, according to their situations and offices, and consist of the loose spongy texture, covered by a thin rind of compact bone. The long bones belong in general to the locomotive appara- tus, where they form levers, moved by the muscles in various directions. They are all placed in the limbs, where they form a central column, movable in various directions. They dimi- nish in length and increase in number, successively from above downwards, from the humerus and femur to the phalanges of the fingers and toes. Hence the upper part of the limbs is cha- racterized by extent of motion, the lower by multiplicity and variety of movements. The broad bones have not much to do with locomotion, ex- cept as they afford extensive surfaces for the attachment of muscles. They compose cavities, such as those of the cranium and pelvis, for which their form is well adapted. Several are united to form one cavity, and this circumstance adds to the solidity of the structure, as the effect of external force is lost in the joints. They are generally concave and convex on their two surfaces. The short bones are found in parts which unite mobihty and solidity, as the vertebral column, the carpus and tarsus. They are always of inconsiderable size, and therefore are found in large number in the parts which they compose. These parts are strong, because external force is lost in the articulations ; they are movable, because the combinations of several small motions produce a considerable effect. The skeleton is divided into the head, trunk, and extremities or limbs. As almost all the bones are formed originally of more than one piece, which separate portions of osseous matter gradually come together, and are ultimately consolidated, the number of dis-tinct pieces of bone belonging to the skeleton is different at different ages. The following is the number of bones when the ossification is complete, that is, about the twen- tieth year. I. In the Head, consisting of the cranium, and the FACE,^i the former is made up of V| 1 or 2 ossa frontis, 2 ossa parietalia, i 1 OS sphenobasilare, or spheno-occipitale, I 2 ossa temporum, 2 mallei, 2 incudes, 2 Etapedes, and 1 os ethmoideum. The latter of 2 ossa maxillaria superiora, MATERIA MEDICA. 221 2 ossa palatina, 2 ossa malarum, or zygoraatica, 2 ossa nasi, 2 ossa lacrymalia, 2 ossa turbinata inferiora, 1 vomer, 1 maxilla inferior, 32 teeth. The whole amotint of bones in the head five pieces of the os hyoides added to these, is 59 or make 64 60. or The 65. 11. The Trunk, comprehending the spine, chest and consists of 7 cervical, ) 12 dorsal, \ vertebrge, 5 lumbar, ) 2 or 3 bones of the sternum, 24 ribs, pelvis, 1 sacrum, 4 ossa coccygis, 2 ossa innominata. 57 or 58 III. The Extremities. The upper contain, T *i u ^A ^2 clavicles, In the shoulders, I g ^.^p^^i^' In the arms, 2 humeri. In the fore-arms, j ^ '^"^'^^ 2 ossa navicularia, or scaphoidea, 2 ossa lunaria, 2 ossa cuneiformia, 2 ossd pisiformia, or orbicularia, In the wrists, .j 2 ossa trapezia, or multangula majora, 2 ossa trapezoidea, or multangula mino- ra, 2 ossa capitata, 2 ossa unciformia, or hamata. In the metacarpi, ^ 10 ossa metacarpi. ^ 10 first or metacarpal phalanges, In the fino-er«5 i ^ ™^^^^ °^ ^^^°°^ phalanges, ° ' I 10 third or unguinal phalanges, [ 8 sesamoid bones. 72 222 THE THOMSONIAN The lower extremities contain. In the thighs, In the leofs. In the tarsi, In the metatarsi. In the toes, 2 femora. 2 tibiae, 2 patellae,, 2 fibulae. 2 astragali, 2 calcanei, or ossa calcis, 2 ossa navicularia, 2 ossa cuneiformia magna, 2 '• " parva, 2 « « media, 2 ossa cuboidea. 10 ossa metatarsi. C 10 first or metatarsal phalanges, I S middle or second phalanges, I 10 third or unguinal phalanges, [ 6 sesamoid bones. 66 The whole number of bones will be 259, or 261. There is frequently a small bone of the sesamoid kind in the tendon of the external head of the gastrocnemius ; and a roundish bit in the hyo-thyroid ligament. If both these should exist, we must add 4 to the preceding number. A complete dry natural skeleton of a male subject of the mid- dle size weighs from 150 to 200 ounces ; that of a female, from 100 to 160 ounces. Of the bones just enumerated, the frontal, spheno-occipital, vomer, lower jaw, vertebrae, sacrum, coccyx, sternum, and os linguale medium, are single, (imparia,) and being placed on the middle line of the body, symmetrical ; all the others are double, or in pairs, (paria,) each pair being composed of a right and left corresponding bone. Hence the structure of the whole skele- ton is symmetrical ; that is, if we imagine a perpendicular line to be drawn through the whole body, from before backwards, it will divide the skeleton into two corresponding halves, a right and left — the single bones having their right and left sides ex- actly alike. This observation, however, of the symmetry of the skeleton, is not to be understood rigorously ; since the right and left of the double bones, or the right and left sides of the single ones, are not accurately alike. The right or left bone, or the right or left side of a bone, may be longer or shorter, broader or nar- rower, (fcc, than the other. The vomer is generally bent to one side — the internal surface of the skull is seldom symmetricaL The last rib is often an inch longer on one side than ou the MATERIA MEDICA. 223 Other. The sternum is seldom symmetrical ; and the carti- lages of the ribs are not fixed to it exactly opposite to each oth- er. The articulations of the ribs with the spine often differ considerably on the two sides. But the symmetry of the exter- nal form is not disturbed by these differences. If the right side of a vertebra is more elevated than the left, the corresponding part of the neighboring bone, or of the intervertebral cartilage, is accommodated to the deviation, so that the perpendicular line of the spinal column is not impaired, &c. The single bones may be regarded as the media of union of the two lateral halves which constitute the skeleton; they join together these two halves into one solid whole. In this respect there is a marked difference between the bones and the other organic instruments of locomotion, the muscles. The dia- phragm is the only muscle placed on the median line, and its structure is not symmetrical ; it belongs in a great measure to the internal or organic life, and corresponds, in its want of sym- metry, to the arrangements of the internal organs. The skele- ton, being the basis or point of support of the muscles, as well as of all the other organs, constitutes an entire aud firm fabric; an attribute which it derives from the single bones, which may be regarded as the key-stones of the building. The muscles, not contributing to the solidity of the animal structure, are not united into such a single aud firm assemblage. The observation which we have made of the bones in gene- ral, that they influence and determine the form of the soft parts, holds good more particularly of the whole skeleton. Its form, in all men, and in all stages of their life, corresponds so entirely to the configuration of their body, that an experienced eye would easily determine, from a tolerably preserved skeleton, not only the age and sex, but the growth and most striking charac- ters of bodily formation of the individual to whom it had be- longed. Hence it is not enough for an artist to know the mus- cles : he must begin with studying the skeleton. However nu- merous the differences of individual configuration in the human race, still retaining its general character and resemblance, ac- curate examination will show us not fewer diversities in the structure, form, size, greater or less elegance, and even greater or less fineness and firmness in the grain of the bone, in hu- man skeletons, which still preserve the general character. Be- sides th-.-se endless individual traits, distinguishing each skele- ton from others, we find very striking differences according to age and sex. With respect to the former of these circumstances, skeletons have bnten divided into perfect and imperfect ; the latter not ve- ry well ;^.hosen term being applied to fostuses, to childien, and subject: m whom the epiphyses are not yet consolidated with 224 THE THOMSONIAN the bodies of the bones, or converted into true apophyses; al- though, in relation to the rest of the structure, the bones are then as perfect as in the aduU. The youns;er the subject, the more cartilage does the skeleton contain. Reckoning from the twentieth year backwards, the younger the subject the larger is the head, compared to the trunk and limbs ; (the head is about one half of the body in the second month of utero-gestation ; one fourth in the ninth month : one fifth at the age of three years ; and one eighth when the growth is complete :) the smaller are the bones of the face, and the larger the organ of hearing, in comparison to the cranium ; the larger are the fontanelles ; the flatter is the lower part of the face; the larger the chest in re- lation to the pelvis ; the shorter the limbs ; the larger the clavi- cles ; the smoother and flatter the broad bones, and the rounder the cylindrical bones. The male and female skeletons difler. not only in the whole combination, or the o-eneral impression, from a comparative sur- vey, but also in the form and properties of the individual parts. These differences, however, are not clearly perceptible, until some years have elapsed after birth. Soemmering enumerates the following as the charticters of the female. The female skeleton is smaller and slenderer in all parts than the male. The ratio of the head including the teeth to the rest of the bony structure, is greater than in the male ; the numbers are as 1 to 6 in the former, 1 to 8 or 10 in the latter. The cir- cumference of the female skull is larger on the first view, in skeletons of the same height. The skull is larger in proportion to the face ; its foramina, the palatine arch, and the whole ca- vity of the mouth, are smaller. The whole thorax is shorter; larger above, as far as the fourth rib, narrower below ; more movable, less conical; more convex in front: more distant from the pelvis, the interval between the last rib and the os innomi- natum being greater ; less prominent anteriorly, so that when the trunk is supine, the symphysis pubis is the highest point in the female, the thorax in the male subject. Generally, the car- tilages of the true ribs are longer in proportion to the bone. The vertebral canal is more capacious, and the lateral openings lor the nerves are also larger. The spinous processes are less prominent; the sternum is shorter, ending at the plane of the fourth rib, while it reaches to the plane of the fifth in the male. The loins are longer, and the angle between the last lumbar vertebra and the sacrum, constituting the promontory, is more acute. All the diameters of the pelvis are greater ; the cristae and tuberosities of the ossa innominata further apart ; the space be- MATERIA MEDICA. 225 tween the ossa pubis wider, and the Hgaments of the symphysis consequently broader, although shorter. The sacrum is turned more backwards, so that the apex and the coccyx do not project so much into the pelvis. The aceta- bula are fartiier apart, and hence the unsteady gait of the sex ; they are, however, nearer to the front of the pelvis, so that, when in the progress of pregnancy the centre of gravity is thrown more torwards, its equiilibrium is better preserved. The lower limbs form a more acute angle with the pelvis ; the feet are smaller. The shoulders are more slanting, and the articulations near- er together ; the upper limbs are shorter, and the fingers more pointed. Female bones are distinguished from the male by having fewer asperities, smaller spmes and protuberances, shallower impressions, smaller articulations, and being, on the whole, smoother and more finely turned. The shaft or body of a cy- lindrical bone is more slender, in comparison to the articular ends ; and hence the fact which was specified above, of the greater weight of the head in proportion to the rest of the ske* leton. The bones are not so hard in the female ; they liave, on the whole, a something peculiar — a feminine character — which is not easily described. Their extremities remain longer cartila- ginous. The frontal sinuses are smaller ; the interval between them, or the glabella, less elevated ; and the superciliary arches less prominent. All the bones of the face are more slender. The figure of the alveolar circle is more ellipticcl in both jaws ; in man more circular. The teeth are smaller. The os hyoides more slender. In the vertebrae, the bodies are longer, and 'more hollowed at the sides; the transverse processes are directed more back- wards, so that thechannels on each side of the spinous processes are deeper. The spinous processes are sharper pointed, short- er, and more slanting. The ribs are more slender, and flatter ; their margins are consequently sharper. That the cartilages of the upper ribs are more frequently os- sified ; that those of the middle ribs are broader, and those of the lower longer, which has been asserted by some anatomists, does not seem clearly made out. Tiie first bone of the sternum is lono-er in comparison to the second. The latter is more than double the length of the former in the male skeleton ', but in the female it is ofien not so much as double. It is also thicker, in comparison with the second bone, in the female. These differences are observable in the embryo. 226 THE THOMSONIAN The lumbar vertebrge are lons^er and more slender ; the sa- crum broader and more excavated. The ossa coccygis are smaller, more moveable, and directed more forwards. Some have observed, that five of these bones are met with more frequently in the female than in the male. The ossa innominata are broader, flatter, and more expanded horizontally. The angle formed between the descending ra- mus of the pubes and the symphysis is more open. The angle between the ossa pubis is acute in the male, but of SO deg. to 90 deg. in the female, where it approaches much more to the figure of an arch. The ischiatic tuberosities are larger and smoother. The space between the tuberosity and the acetabulum is smaller; the ischiatic notch more considerable ; the foramen ovale larg- er ; the notch for the tendon of the obturator externus less con- siderable. The clavicles are less strongly curved, so that the scapulae are thrown backwards ; the male clavicles are more arched, and the shoulders therefore brought more forwards. In the male skeleton, the clavicles are inclined a little downwards, so as to form an obtuse angle with the sternum ; while they form near- ly a right angle in the fem.ale. The" female scapulae are smaller, slenderer, flatter, and have acuter angles. In the female, the thigh bones are bent more forwards; the neck forms a greater angle with the body; the internal condyle is larger, more prominent, and longer, in comparison with the external. There are diSerences in some parts of the skeleton in the va- rious races of mankind ; that is, certain characters by which they can be distinguished from each other. The head is the part in which the strongest distinctive marks are observable. The national differences in stature, in the size, length, and proportion of the limbs, &.C., must be accompanied with corres- ponding variations in the bony fabric. But there are no pecu- liarities of form in the individual bones, no varieties in the con- figuration of processes, or articular heads or cavities, nor in their mutual adaptation. The individual diversities of size and form must be attended with differences in the skeleton. The bones are sometimes longer, sometimes thicker. The head may be comparatively large or small; the shoulders broad or contracted ; the thorax flat or prominent; the vertebral column more or less curved; tlie loins thick or slender; the thighs or legs, the fingers and toes, longer or shorter, &c. Food seems to have no influence on the skeleton. External causes have certainly, in some instances, ifluenced MATERIA MEDICA. 227 particular parts in individuals ; as the application of artificial pressure to the head of the newly born. The effect of analo- gous pressure in contracting the feet of the Chinese women, producing anchylosis of the articulations, and thus rendering these instruments of locomotion nearly useless, is well known. But a more destructive process is that of the tight laced stays of females, who choose to fancy that beauty consists .in having the chest large above and narrow below, although nature has reversed these proportions. The ribs are contracted ; the infe- rior aperture of the chest narrowed ; the liver, stomach, and other abdominal viscera, subjected to a severe and most injuri- ous pressure, by this barbarous practice of civilized people. We have seen the figure of the thorax quite altered by this prac- tice ; the lower ribs being pushed in on the liver, and having left deep indentations in that organ. The effect of artificial causes in modifyins: the form has, how- ever, been much exaggerated ; the round shape of the skull in the Turks being ascribed to their turbans, &.c. A change is only to be effected by considerable and continued pressure on the bones in their growing state. These alterations are merely individual ; they do not affect the race ; as the offspring are born with the ordinary formation and characters of the species. Note. — Calcined human hones, according to Berzelius, are composed, in 100 parts, of 81.9 phosphate of lime, 3 fiuate of lime, 10 lime, 1.1 phosphate of magnesia, 2 soda, and 2 car- bonic acid. 100 parts of bones by calcination are reduced to 63. Fourcroy and Vauquelin found the following to be the composition of 100 parts of ox bones : — 51 solid gelatin, 37.7 phosphate of lime, 10 carbonate of lime, and 1.3 phosphate of magnesia; but Berzelius gives the following as their constitu- ents : 33.3 cartilage, 55.35 phosphate of lime, 3 fiuate of hme, 3.85 carbonate of lime, 2.05 phosphate of magnesia, and 2.45 soda, with a little common salt. 228 THE THOMSONIAN. MATERIA MEDICA. 229 FRONT \"IEW OF THE SKELETON, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 n 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 SI 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 The Head. 50 Os frontis. 51 Right OS parietale or bregmatis. 52 Squamous portion of the right os 53 temporis. 54 Mastoid process. 55 Meatus auditorius externus. 56 Condyloid process of inferior max- 57 ilia. 58 Coronoid proces f 59 Angle > of infer.maxilla. 60 Symphysis ) 61 Right superior maxilla. Right OS malae or jugale. Left ditto. The Trunk. Seventh cervical vertebra. First rib. Eighth or first false rib. First lumbar vertebra. Sacrum. Ileum. Pubes. Ischium. Upper Extremities. Clavicle. Scapula. Acromion. Coracoid process. Humerus. Greater tuberosity. Smaller ditto. Eminence for the radius. Trochlea. Internal condyle. Radius. Tubercle of the radius. Ulna. Coronoid process of the ulna. Os naviculare, or scaphoides. Os lunare. Os cuneiforme, or ti-iquetrum. Os pisiforme. 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 « 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 Os trapezium, or multangulum ma- 91 jus, 92 Ostrapezoides, or multangulum mi- 93 nus. 94 Os capitatum. 95 Os unciforme, or hamatnm. 96 Metacarpal bone of the thumb. 97 Do. do. of the fore finger. 98 Do. do, of the middle finger. 99 Do. do. of the ring finder 100 Do. do. of the little finger. 101 Sesamoid bones. First phalanx i Second phalanx > of fore finger. Third phalanx ) First phalanx ^ Second phalanx > of middle finger. Third phalanx ) First phalanx ^ Second phalanx > of ring finger. Third phalanx ) First phalanx ^ Second phalanx > of little finger. Third phalanx ) Lower Extremities. Thigh bone. Trochanter major. Trochanter minor. Internal condyle. External condyle. Patella. Semilunar cartilage. Tibia. Internal condyle. External condyle. Tuberosity. Internal malleolus. Fibula. Its head. External malleolus. Astragalus. Os calcis. Os naviculare, Os cuneiforme primum. Do. dn. secundum. Do. do. tertium. Os cuboideum. Mesta tarsal bone of the great toe. Do. do. of the second toe. Do. do. of the third toe. Do. do. of the fourth toe. Do. do of the fifth toe. First phalanx Second phalanx First phalanx ' Second phalanx Third phalanx First phalanx ' Second phalanx Third phalanx First phalanx ' Second phalanx Third phalanx ' First phalanx " Second phalanx Third phalanx ' of the great toe. of the second toe. of the third toe. of the fourth toe. of the fifth toe. 230 THE THOMSOJSIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 231 BACK VIEW OF THE SKELETON. Head. 50 1 Os parietalCj or bregmatis. 51 2 Foramen. parietale. 52 3 Malar process of the os frontis. 53 4 Os malae. 54 5 Zygoraa. 55 6 Squamous portion of the temporal 56 bone. 57 7 Mastoid foramen. 58 8 Mastoid process. 59 9 Styloid process. 60 10 Os occipitis. 61 11 Lower jaw. 62 Trunk. 63 12 Seventh cervical vertebra. 13 Twelfth dorsal vertebra. 64 14 Fifth lumbar vertebra. " 65 15 Sacrum. 66 16 Os coccygis. 67 17 Ileum. 68 18 Pubes. 69 19 Ischium. * 20 Foramen ovale. 70 21 First rib. 71 22 Eighth or first false rib. 72 23 Twelfth rib. 73 Upper Extremities. 74 24 Clavicle. 75 25 Scapula. 76 26 Spine of the scapula. 77 27 Acromion. 78 28 Humerus. 79 29 Greater tuberosity. 80 30 External condyle. 81 31 Internal condyle. 82 32 Radius. 83 33 Its head. 84 34 Ulna. 85 35 Olecranon. 86 36 Os naviculare. 87 37 Os lunare. 88 38 Os cunieforme, or triquetrum. 89 39 Os pisiforme. 90 40 Os multangulum majus. 91 41 Os multangulum minus. 92 42 Os capitatum. 93 43 Os hamatum, or unciforme. 94 44 Metacarpal bone of the thumb. 95 45 Do. do. of the fore finger. 96 46 Do. do. of the middle finger. 97 47 Do. do. of the ring finger. 98 48 Do. do. of the little finger. 99 49 Sesamoid bone. 100 of the thumb. First phalanx Second phalanx First phalanx ) Second phalanx > of fore finger. Third plialanx j) First phalanx ^ Second phalanx > of middle finger. Third phalanx ) First phalanx ^ Second phalanx > of ring finger. . Third phalanx ) First phalanx i Second phalanx > of little finger. Third phalanx ) Lower' Extremities. Thigh bone. Its neck. Trochanter major. Trochanter minor. External condyle. Internal condyle. Semilunar cartilage. Tibia. Its external condyle. Its internal condyle. Internal malleolus. Fibula. Its head. External malleolus. Astragalus. Os calcis. Os cuboideum. Os naviculaie. Os cuneiforme primum. Do. do. secundum. Do. do. tertium. Metatarstal bone of the great toe. Do. do. of the second toe. Do. do. of the third toe. Do. do. of the fourth toe. Do. do. of the fifth toe. ? Sesamoid bones. First phalanx of the great toe. Do. do. of the second toe. Do. do. of the third toe. Second phalanx of the third toe. First phalanx j) Second phalanx > of the fourth toe. Third phalanx ) First phalanx Second phalanx Third phalaax ' of the fifth toe. 232 THE TIIOMSONIAN DESCRIPTION OF THE TRUNK, INTERNAL OR- GANS, AND EXTREMITIES. In natural philosophy, all bodies are divided into ponderable and imponderable. The first are those which may act upon several of our sen- ses, and of which the existence is sufficiently established: of this kind are solids, fluids, and gases. The second are those which, in general, only act on one of our senses, the existence of which is by no means demonstrated, and which, perhaps, are only forces, or a modification of other bodies ; such are caloric, light, the electric and magnetic fluids. Ponderable bodies are endowed with common or general properties, and likewise with particular or secondary properties. The general properties of bodies are — extent, divisibility, impenetrability, mobility. A ponderable body, of whatever kind, always presents these four properties combined. Second- ary properties are variously distributed among different bodies, as hardness, porosity, elasticity, fluidity, &c. They constitute, by their combination with the general properties, the condition or state of bodies. It is by gaining or losing some of these se- condary properties that bodies change their state ; for instance, water may appear under the form of ice, of a fluid, or of vapor, although it is always the same body. Bodies are simple or compound. Simple bodies are rarely met with in nature ; they are almost always the product of art, and we even name them simple, only because art has not arrived at their decomposition. At present, the bodies regarded as simple are the following: oxygen, chlo- rine, iodine, fluorine, sulphur, hydrogen, boracinm, carbon, phosphorus, azote, silicium, zirconium, aluminum, yttrium, glu- cium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, barium, sodium, potas- sium, manganese, zinc, iron, tin, arsenic, molybdenum, chromi- fljfei, tungsten, columbium, antimony, uranium, cerium, cobalt, titanium, bismuth, copper, tellurium, nickel, lead, mercury, os- mium, silver, rhodium, palladium, gold, platinum, iridium, se- lenimn, lithium, thorenum, wood, anium, cadmium. Compound bodies occur every where ; they form the mass of the globe, and of all the beings which are seen on its surface. This diversity of bodies is extremely important ; it divides them naturally into two classes; bodies the composition of which is constant are named brute, or gross, inert, inorganic; but those [the elements of which continually vary, afe called living, organized bodies. Brute and organized bodies differ from each other, in respect 1st of form — 2d of compositipa — 3d of the laws which regulate their changes of state. MATERIA MEDICA. 233 The human body is divided by anatomists into the trunk and extremities, i. e. the head, and inferior and superior extre- mities, each of which have certain regions before any part is removed, by which the pliysician is enabled to direct the appli- cation of stimulants and the like, and the situation of diseases is better described. The head is distinguished into the hairy part and the face. The former has five reg-ions, viz. the crown of the head, or vertex — the fore part of the head, or sinciput — the hind part, or occiput — and the sides, 'partes laterales capitis. In the latter are distinguished, the region of the forehead, /rons — tem- ples, or tempora — the nose, or nosiis — the eyes, or ociili — the mouth, or os — the cheeks, hucca — the chin, or meiiiimi — and the ears, or aures. The trunk is distinguished into three principal parts — the neck, thorax, and abdomen. The neck is divided into the an- terior region, or pars a?Uica, in which, in men, is an eminence called pormim Adami ; the posterior region is called nucha colli : and the lateral regions, partes laterales colli. The thorax is distinguished into the anterior region, in which are the stei'jiiwi and manimoi, and at the inferior part of which is a pit or hollow called scrobicuhis cordis : a posterior region, called dorsum ; and the sides, or latera thoracis. The abdomen is distinguished into an anterior region, pro- perly called the abdo?fie?i ; a posterior region, called the loins, or lumbiy and lateral regions or flanks, called latera abdomi- nis. The anterior region of the abdomen, being very extensive, is subdivided into the epigastric, hypochondriac^ umbilical, and hypogastric regions. Immediately below the abdomen is the mons veneris, and at its sides the groins, or ingiiina. The space between the organs of generation and the a7ius, or funda- ment, is called the perina:wn. The superior extremity is distinguished into the shoulder,,^ summitas humeri, under which is the arm-pit, called axilla, ox fovea axillaris ; the brachium, or arm ; the antebrachium, or fore-arm, in which anteriorly is the bend of the arm, where the veins are generally opened, cnWe^ Jlexura antibrachii ; and posteriorly the elbow, called anguhis cubiti ; and the hand, m which are the carpus, or wrist, the back, or dorsum manus, and the palm, or vola. The inferior extremity is divided into, 1. the region of the femur, in which is distinguished the coxa, or regio-ischiadica, forming the outer and superior part ; 2. the leg, in which are the knee, or genu, the bend, or cavum poplitis, and the calf, or sura; 3. the foot, in which are the outer and inner ankle, or malleotus externus and internus. the back, or dorsum, &nd tlie sole, or planta. 16 234 THE THOMSONIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 235 VISCERA, III anatomy, is a term originally applied to the bowels or in- testines, but now used indiscriminately for the organs contain- ed in any cavity of the body — as the Heart, Lungs, Thymus, Stomach, Intestines, Liver, Spleen, Pancreas, Epiploon, and Generation. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 3, Being a front view of the chest and abdomen m a newly born child ; the sternum and neighborino: part of the ribs, with the corresponding pleurEE, the front of the abdominal parietes and diaphragm, having been cut through and removed. Os hyoides. Portion of the sterno-hyoideus and omo-hyoideus mus- cles. Portion of the sterno-thyroideus turned back. Thyroid cartilage. Hyo-thyroideus. Thyroid gland. 7 Trachea. Portion of the sterno-cleido mastoideus. Clavicle. 10 10 First rib. Ninth rib. 12 Thymus. 13-15 Right lung : 13, its superior lobe; 14, middle lobe ; 15, inferior lobe. 16 17 Left lung : 16, ihe superior lobe ; 17, the interior lobe. 18 Pericardium. 19 19 Diaphragm. 20 21 Liver: 20, the right lobe ; 21, the left lobe. 22 Suspensory ligament of the liver. 23 The umbilical vein turned back. 24 The spleen. 25 26 Great omentum: 25, its portion lying on the mesocolon; 26, loose portion. 27 27 Arch of the colon. 28 Left portion of the colon. 29 The right portion. 30 30 30 The jejunum, filled partly with meconium, partly with air. 31 31 31 The ileum. 32 Urinary bladder, with its fundus turned forwards. 33 33 Umbilical artery. 34 Urachus. 35 Internal surface of the peritoneum. 36 36 Internal jugular vein. 37 37 Thyroid vein. 38 38 Subclavian vein. 39 39 Common caroted artery. 40 40 Subclavian artery. 41 (Esophagus. 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 5 6 6 8 8 9 9 11 11 236 THE THOMSONIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 237 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 4, Exhibiting- the same view as the last^ except that the thymus and pericardium have been removed, and the hver turned up towards the right, so as to expose the stomach. 1 — 4 The heart: 1, appendix of the right auricle ; 2 pulmo- nary ventricle ; 3, appendix of the left auricle ; 4, aor- tic ventricle. (The outline of the heart is marked by a dotted line ou the surface of the liver.) 5 Pulmonary artery. 6 Aorta, 7 Left subclavian artery. 8 Left carotid. 9 Arteria innominata. 10 Right carotid. 11 Right subclavian artery. 12 Superior vena cava. 13 14 Right internal jugular vein : 13, portion in the chest ; , 14, portion in the neck. 15 Right subclavian vein. 16 17 Left internal jugular vein : 16, thoracic portion ; 17, cervical portion. IS Left subclavian vein. 19-22 Concave or under surface of the liver : 19, right lobe ; 20, square portion ; 21, left lobe ; 22, lobulus spigelii, seen through tKe small omentum. 23 Part of the superior or convex surface. 24 24 24 Thin edge. 25 25 Thick edge. 26 Umbilical vein cut through and turned back. 27 The pons covering the notch of the umbihcal vein. 2S Gall-bladder. 29 Part of the diaphragm. 30 Spleen. 31 (Esophagus entering the stomach. 32 (Esophagus in the neck. 33 Stomach. 34 Pylorus. 35 Duodenum. 36 36 36 Transverse portions of the colon. 37 Right portion of the colon. The other parts are the same as in the preceding plate. 238 THE THOMSONIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 239 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 5. The heart and large vessels only are seen in the chest, the other parts having been removed. The small intestine is re- moved from the abdomen, and the arch of the colon is turned upwards. 1 Right or pulmonary ventricle of the heart. 2 Aortic or left ventricle. 3 Appendix of the right auricle. 4 Appendix of the left auricle. 5 Piihnonary artery. G Aorta. 7 Arteria innoniinata. S Rifjht carotid. 9 Right subclavian. 10 Left carotid. 11 Left subclavian. 12 Inferior vena cava covered by the pericardium. 13 Superior vena cava. 14 Right internal jugular vein. 15 Left internal jugular vein. 16 Trachea. 17 17 Thyroid gland. 18 Thyroid cartilage. 19 19 Thyro-ho'ideus. 20 20 Sterno-thyroideus detached and turned back. (The sterno-hoideus is removed.) 21 21 Part of the sterno-cleido mastoideus. 22 22 Clavicle. 23 23 First rib. 24 24 Second rib. 25 25 Cut edge of the diaphragm. 26 Arch of the colon. 27 Right portion of the colon. 28 Part of the left colon. 29 Transverse mesocolon. 30 Stomach seen obscurely through the mesocolon. 31 Left or great extremity of the stomach. 32 Spleen. 33 Right kidney. 34 Right portion of the colon. 35 Caecum and appendix vermiformis. 36 End of the ileum. 37 Commencement of the jejunum. 38 Mesentery. 39 39 Sigmoid flexure of the colon. 40 Its mesocolon. 41 Rectum. 42 Urinary bladder, turned forwards and downwards. 43 43 Umbilical arteries. 44 Urachus. 240 THE THOMSONIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 241 DESCRIPTION OP PLATE 6. All the thoratic visceia are removed; also, the diaphragia and the small intestine, excepting the duodenum. The perito- neum is cleared from the kidney and larger vessels. 1 1 Thyroid gland. 2 2 Portion of the sterno-cleido-mastoideus. 3 3 Sterno-thyroideus detached and turned back. (The sterno-hyoideus is removed.) 4 4 Thyro-hyoideus. 5 Thyroid cartilage. 6 6 Clavicle. 7 Trachea. 8 S (Esophagus ; its longitudinal muscular fibres are ex- posed. 9-11 Stomach moderately distended, 9 The cardia. 10 The blind pouch. 11 Pylorus. 12-14 Duodenum: 12, the first curvature; 13, the second; 14, the third. 15 Pancreas. 16 Spleen. 17 Right kidney. 18 Left kidney. 19 Right renal capsule. 20 Portion of diaphragm. 21 Arch of the aorta with its three great branches. See plate 3, No. 7, 10, 11. 22 Canalis arteriosus. 23 Descending thoracic aorta. 24 Descending abdominal aorta. 25 Right iliac artery. 26 Left iliac artery. 30 30 Spermatic artery and vein, 31 31 Ureter. 32 The cut orifice of the rectum. 33 Urinary bladder turned down. 34 34 Umbilical artery. 35 Urachus. 36 36 First rib. 242 THE THOMSON I AX MATERIA MEDIC A. 243 DESCRIPTION OF VLATE 7. View of the thoracic and abdominal viscera from behind. — The muscles of the neck and back, the back of the ribs and the spinous processes of the vertabree are removed. 1 1 First rib. 2 2 Eleventh rib. 3 3 Twelfth rib. with the diaphragm and abdominal muscles still attached. The ribs are gently drawn aside, to expose the lungs. 4 4 Sixth cervical vertebra. 5 5 Sacrum. 6 6 Gluteus maximus. 7 7 Gluteus medius. 8 8 8 The vertebral theca of the dura mater. 9 The same, covering the oauda equina. 10 10 The scapulas a little drawn aside. 11 12 The left lung: 11, superior lobe; 12, inferior lobe. 13-15 Right lunof: 13, superior lobe ; 14, middle lobe ; 15, in- ferior lobe. 16-18 Diapliragm: 16, covering the left lobe of the liver, sto- mach and spleen ; 17, covering the right lobe ; 18 18, attached to the twelfth rib. 19 Right renal capsule. 20 Left kidney. 21 Right kidney. 22 Interior surface of tlie riaht lobe of the liver. 23 Left part of the colon. 24 Sigmoid flexure of ihe colon. 25 Portion of the ileum. 244 THE THOMSONIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 245 DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 8. "View of the thoracic and abdominal viscera from behind — the vertebral column, together with part of the os innomina- tLim, bemg removed. 1 1 First rib. 2 2 Eleventh rib. 3 3 Scapula drawn aside. 4 4 Internal jugular vein. 5 5 Common carotid artery. G 6 Subclavian artery. 7 7 Inferior thyroid artery. 8 Part of the aortic arch. 9-10 l^escending aorta : 9, thoracic ; 10, abdominal, 11 Division of the aorta into the common iliacs. 12 Midddle sacral artery. The intercostal, renal and lum- bar arteries are not numbered. 13 Vena azygos cut off. 14 Inferior vena cava. 15 Left renal vein. 1(3 Right renal vein, double in this subject. 17 Union of the iliac veins to form the inferior cava. IS IS Par vagum 19 19 Thyroid gland; the blood-vessels are drawn aside by a hook on the left side. 20 Lower part of the pharynx. 21 21 Thyroid cartilage. 22 (Esophagus. 23 Oesophagus entering the stomach. 24 Part of the stomach. 26 27 Superior and inferior lobes of the left lung. 28 29 30 Superior, middle, and inferior lobes of the right lung. 31 31 31 Diaphragm. 32 32 Abdominal muscles. 33 Spleen. 34 Part of the pancreas. 35-37 Left and riorht lobes and processus caudatus of the liver. 38 Left renal capsule. 39 Right renal capsule. 40 Left kidney. 41 Riijht kidney. 42 Left ureter. 43 Right ureter. 44 44 Spermatic vessels. 45 Left portion of the colon. 46 Sigmoid flexure. 47 Part of the jejunum seen through the peritoneum. 48 Rectum. 49 Portion of the ilium. 246 THE THOMSONIAN No. 9.— FIRST VIEW OP THE HEART. DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE. (The convex or superior surface.) 1 Riii^ht auricle. 2 Its appendix. 3 Left auricle. 4 Its appendix. 6 Left pulmonary veins. 7 Superior vena cava. 8 Place from wliich the pulmonary artery has been cut off, 9 Aorta. 10 Arteria innominata. 11 Left carotid artery. 12 Left subclavian artery. 13 Right or inferior coronary artery. 14 Left or superior coronary artery. 16 Anterior branch of the great coronary vein. MATERIA MEDICA. 247 No. 10.— SECOND VIEW OF THE HEART. DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE. (The heart and blood-vessels seen on the inferior or flat surface.) 1 Rie:ht auricle. 2 Inferior vena cava cut off and tied. 3 Superior vena cava. 4 Left auricle. 5 Its appendix. 6 7 Ricrht pulmonary veins. 8 One of the left pulmonary veins. 9 Right coronary artery. 10 Circumflex branch of the left coronary artery. 12 Great posterior branch of the great coronary vein. 13 14 Smaller posterior branches. 15 Smull branch from the right auricle. 16 Trunk of the great coronary vein ending in the right auricle. 17 A small vein of the heart opening into the right auricle. 248 THE THOMSONIAN THE TRUNK. This term, in anatomy, is applied to the body strictly so call- ed. It is divided into the thorax, or chest— the abdomen, or belly — and the pelvis. No. 11. DESCEIPTIO:^ OF THE PLATE. 1 1 Thyroid cartilao;e. 2 2 Internal jugular veins coming from the head. 3 3 The principal veins from the arms, coming to join the great vein. 4 5 The great vein descending from the head aad upper extre- mities, called the vena cava. 6 Right ventricle of the heart. 7 Left ventricle of do. 8 The great artery of the body called the aorta. 9 Aortic ventricle. 10 Right lung. 11 Left lung. 12 12 Diaphragm. 13 13 Right and left lobes of the liver, 14 Round ligament of the liver. 15 Gall-bladder. 16 Stomach. 17 17 Small intestines. 18 Spleen. MATERIA MEDICA. 249 THORAX. The thorax is the conical cavity, situated at the upper part of the trunk of the body ; it is narrow above and broad below, and is bounded in front by the sternum, six superior costal car- tilao;es, ribs, and intercostal muscles ; laterally, by the ribs and intercostal muscles ; and behind, by the same structures, and by the vertebral column, as low down as the upper border of the last rib and the first lumbar vertebra; snjieriorly, by the thoracic focia and first ribs ; and inferiorly by the diaphragm. It is much deeper on the posterior than on the anterior wall, in consequence of the obliquity of the diaphragm, and contains the heart, enclosed in its pericardium, with the great vessels; the lungs, with their serous coverings, the pleurae; the oeso- phagus ; some important nerves ; and, in the foetus, the thymus gland. NO. 12. — ANTERIOR VIEW OF THE THORAX.* * Description of the plate. — 1. The superior piece of the sternum. 2. The middle piece. 3. The inferior piece, or ensiform cartilage. 4. The first dorsal vertebra. 5. The last dorsal vertebra. 6. The iirst rib. 7. Its head. 8. Its neck, resting against the transverse process of the first dorsal vertebra. 9. Its tuberosity. 10. The seventh or last true rib. 11. The costal cartila- ges of the true ribs. 12. The two last false ribs — the floating ribs. 13. The groove alonjr the lower border of a rib, for the lodgment of the intercostal vessels and nerve. 17 250 THE THOMSO.MAN THE HEART. The central orsfan of circulation, the heart, is situated be- tween the two layers of pleura, which constitute the mediasti- num, and is enclosed in a proper membrane, the pericardium. Pericardhun. — The pericardium is a fibro-serous membrane like the dura mater, and resembles that membrane in deriving its serous layer from the reflected serous membrane of the vis- cus which it encloses. It consists, therefore, of two layers, an external fibrous, and an internal serous. The fibrous layer is attached, above, to the great vessels at the root of the heart, where it is continuous with the thoracic facia; and belov;, to the tendinous portion nf the diaphragm. The serous mem- brane invests the heart with the commencement of its great ves- sels, and is then reflected upon the internal surface of the fi- brous layer. NO. 13. ANATOIMY OF THE HEART.* * Description of the pi,ate. — 1. The right auricle. 2. The entrance of the superior vena cava. 3. The entrance of the inferior cava. 4. the open- ing of the coronary vein, half closed by the coronary valve. The Eusta- MATERIA MEDICA. 251 The heart is placed obliquely in the chest, the base being di- rected upwards and backwards towards the right shoulder ; the apex forwards, and to the left, points to the space between the fifth and sixth ribs, at about two or three inches from the ster- num. Its under side is flattened, and rests upon the tendinous portion of the diaphragm ; its upper side is rounded and con- vex, and formed principally by the right ventricle, and partly by the left. Surmounting the ventricles are the corresponding auricles, whose auricular appendages are directed forwards, and sliyhtly overlap the root of the pulmonary artery. The pulmonary artery is the large anterior vessel at the root of the heart; it crosses obliquely the commencement of the aorta. The heart consists of two auricles and two ventricles, which are respectively named from their position, right and left. The right IS the venous side of the heart; it receives into its auricle the venous blood from every part of the body, by the superior and inferior cava and coronary vein. From the auricle the blood passes into the ventricle, and from the ventricle, through the pulmonary artery, to the capillaries of the lungs. From these it is returned as arterial blood to the left auricle ; from the left auricle it passes into the left ventricle ; and from the left ventricle is carried through the aorta, to be distributed to every part of the body, and again returned to the heart by the veins. This constitutes the course of the adult circulation. The heart is best studied in situ. If, however, it be remov- ed from the body, it should be placed in the position indicated in the above description of its situation. A transverse incision should then be made along the ventricular margin of the right chian valve. 6. The fossa ovalis, surrounded by the annulus ovalis. 7. The tuberculum Loweri. 8. The muscular pectinati in the appendix auriculae. 9. The auriculo-ventricular opening. 10. The cavity of the rignt ventricle. 11. The tricuspid valve, attached by the chordae tendinae to the carnae colum- nae (12). 13. The pulmonary artery, guarded at its commencement by three semilunar valves. 14. the right pulmonary artery, passing beneath the arch and behind the ascending aorta. 15. The left pulmonary artera, crossing in front of the descending aorta. The remains of the ductus arteriosus, acting as a ligiment between the pulmonary artery and arch of the aorta. The ar- rows mark the course of the venous blood through the right side of the heart. Entering the auricle by the superior and inferior cavae, it passes through the auriculo-ventricular opening into the ventricle, and thence through the pulmo- nary artery to the lungs. 1(3. The left auricle. 17. The openings of the four pulmonary'veins. 18. The auriculo-ventricular opening. 19. The left ventri- cle. 20. The mitral valve, attached by its chordae tendinie to two large co- lumnae carnse, which project from the walls of the ventricle. 21. The com menceraent and course of the ascending aorta behind the pulmonary artery, marked by an arrow. The entrance of the vessel is guarded by three semi- lunar valves. 22. The arch of the aorta. The comparative thickness of the two ventricles is shown in the diagram. The course of the pure blood through the left side of the heart is marked by arrows. The blood is brought from the lungs by the four pulmonary veins into the left auricle, and passes through the auriculo-ventricular opening into the left ventricle, from whence it is con- veyed by the aorta to every part of the body. 252 THE THOMSONIAN auricle, from the appendix to its right border, and crossed by a perpendicular incision, carried from the side of the superior to the inferior cava. The blood must then be removed. Some fine specimens of white fibrin are frequently found wuh the co- agula; occasionally they are yellow and gelatinous. This ap- pearance deceived the older anatomists, who called these sub- stances "polypus of the iieart:"' they are also frequently found in the right ventricle, and sometimes in the left cavities. The rig'ht auricle is larger than the leit, and is divided into a principal cavity or sinus, and an appendix auncula?. The interior of the sinus presents for examination five openings ; two valves, two relicts of icalal structure, and two peculiarities in the proper structure of the auricle. They may be thus ar- ranged : I" Superior cava, 1 Inferior cava, Openings - - - - \ Coronary vein, I Foramina Thebes; i, i Auriculo-ventriculnr opening. ^ Eustachian valve, ^^'''^^^ j Coronary valve. r, 1- . ^ J- , 1 s s ^ Annulus ovalis. Relicts of fcBtal structure p^ssa ovalis. cy. , r ,, ., ( Tuberculum Loweri, Structure of the auricle | ^^^^^,,x, pectinati. The superior cava returns the blood from the upper half of the body, and opens into the upper and front part of the auri- cle. The inferior cava returns the blood from the lower half of the body, and opens into the lower and posterior wall, close to the partition between the auricles (septum auricularum). The direction of these two vessels is such, that a stream forced through the superior cava would be directed towards the auri- culo-ventricular opening. In like manner, a stream rushing upwards by the inferior cava, would force its current against the septum auricularum ; this is the proper direction of the two currents during fcctal life. The coronary vein returns the venous blood from the sub- stance of the heart ; it opens into the auricle between the infe- rior cava and the auriculo-ventriculav opening, under cover of the coronary valve. The foramina Thehesil are minute pore-like openings, by which the venous blood exhales directly from the muscular structure of the heart into the auricle, without entering the ve- MATERIA MEDICA. 253 nous current. These openings are also found in the left auri- cle, and in the right and left ventricles. The auricnlo-vc utricular openiug is the large opening of communication between the auricle and ventricle. The Eustachian valve is a part of the apparatus of foetal cir- culation, and serves to direct the placental blood from the infe- rior cava, through the foramen ovale, into the left auricle. In the adult it is a mere vestige and imperfect, though sometimes it remains of large size. It is formed by a fold of the lining membrane of the auricle, containing some muscular fibres, is situated between the opening of the inferior cava and the auri- culo-ventricular opening, and is generally connected with the coronary valve. The coronary valve is a semilunar fold of the lining mem- brane, stretching across the mouth of the coronary vein, and preventing the reflux of the blood in the vein during the con- traction of the auricle. The anmdus ovalis is situated on the septum auricularum, opposite the termination of the inferior cava. It is the rounded margin of the septum, which occupies the place of the foramen ovale of the foetus. The fossa ovalis is an oval depression corresponding with the foramen ovale in the foetus. The opening is closed at birth by a thin valvular layer, which is continuous with the left margin of the annulus, and is frequently imperfect at its upper part. The depression or fossa in the right auricle results from this arrangement. There is no fossa ovalis in the left auricle. The tnherculujn Loioeri is the portion of auricle intervening between the openings of the superior and inferior cava. Being thicker than the walls of the veins, it forms a projection, which was supposed by Lower to direct the blood from the superior cava into the auriculo-ventricular opening. The musculi psctinati are small muscular columns situated in the appendix auricula;. They are very numerous, and are arranged parallel with each otiier ; hence their cognomen — ■ '^ pectinati,''^ like the teeth of a comb. The right ventricle is triangular and three-sided in its form. Its anterior side is convex, and forms the larger proportion of the front of the heart. The inferior side is flat, and rests upon the diaphragm; and the inner side corresponds with the parti- tion between the two ventricles, septum ventriculorum. The right ventricle is to be laid open by making an incision parallel with, and a little to the right of, the middle line from the pulmonary artery in front, to the apex of the heart, and thence by the side of the middle line behind, to the auriculo- ventricular opening. It contains, to be examined, two openings, the auriculo-ven- 254 THE THOMSONIAN tricalar and that of the pulmonary artery : two apparatuses oi* valves, the tricuspid and semilunar ; and a muscular and ten- dinous apparatus belonging to the tricuspid valves. They may be thus arranged : Auriculo-ventricular opening, Opening of the pulmonary artery, Tricuspid valves, Semilunar valves, Chordas tendineas, CarneBB columncc. The aiiriculo-ventricAdar opening is surrounded by a fi- brous ring, covered by the lining membrane of the heart. It is the opening of communication between the right auricle and ventricle. The opening- of the i^iihnonary artery is situated close to the septum ventriculorum, on the left side of the right ventri- cle, and upon the anterior aspect of the heart. The tricuspid valves are three triangular folds of the lining membrane, strengthened by a thin layer of fibrous tissue. They are connected by their base around the auriculo-ventricular opening ; and by their sides and apices, which are thickened, give attachment to a number of slender tendinous cords, colled chorda3 tendineas. The diordcn tendinem are the tendons of the thick muscular columns [coliwma, carnecB) which stand out from the walls of the ventricle, and serve as muscles to the valves. A number of these tendinous cords converge to a sin- gle muscular attachment. The tricuspid valves prevent the regurgitation of blood into the auricle during the contraction of the ventricle, and they are prevented from being themselves driven back, by the chorda) tendinea3 and their muscular attach- ments. This connection of the muscular columns of the heart to the valves, has caused their division into active and passive. The active valves are the tricuspid and mitral ; the passive, the mere folds of lining membrane, viz. the semilunar, Eustachian, and coronary. From the remarkable arrangement of the valves, it follows, that if the right ventricle be over distended, the thin or "yield- ing wall" will give way, and carry with it the columns of the anterior and right valves. The cords connected with these columns will draw down the edges of the corresponding valves, and produce an opening between the curtains, through which the superabundant blood may escape, and the ventricle be reliev- ed from over pressure. This beautiful mechanism is therefore adapted to fulfil the function of a safety valve. The cohimncB carnem (fieshy columns) is a name expressive MATERIA MEDICA. 255 of the appearance of the internal walls of the ventricles, which seem (ormed of muscuhir coUminSj'interlacino: in almost every direction. They are divided nito three sets, according to the manner of their connection. 1. The greater nnmber are at- tached by the whole of one side, and merely form convexities into the cavity of the ventricle. 2. Others are connected by both extremities, being free in the middle. 3. A few (colum- nae papillares) are attached by one extremity to the walls of the heart, and by the other give insertion to the chordos tendinee. The semilunar valves, three in number, are situated around the commencement of the pulmonary artery, being formed by a folding of its lining membrane, strengthened by a thin layer of fibrous tissue. They are attached by their convex borders, and free by the concave which are directed upwards in the course of the vessel, so that, during the current of blood along the ar- tery, they are pressed against the sides of the cylinder ; but if any attempt at regurgitation ensue, they are immediately ex- panded, and effectually close the entrance of the tube. The margins of the valves are thicker than the rest of their extent, and eacli valve presents in the centre of this margin a small fibro-cartilaginous tubercle, called corpus Araniii, which locks in with the two others during the closure of the valves, and se- cures tlie triangular space that would otherwise be left by the approximation of three semilunar folds. Between the semilunar valves and the cylinder of the artery are three pouches, called the pulmonary sinuses. Similar si- nuses are situated beneath .the valves at the commencement of the aorta, and are much larger and more capacious than those of the pulmonary artery. . The pulmonary artery commences by a scalloped border, corresponding with the three valves, which are attached along its edge. It is connected to the ventricle by muscular fibres, and by the lining membrane of the heart. The left auricle is somewhat smaller than the right; of a cu- boid form, and situated more posteriorly. Tlie appendix au- riculce is constricted at its junction with the auricle, and has an aborescent appearance ; it is directed forwards towards the root of the pulmonary artery, to which the auriculae of both sides ap- pear to converge. The left auricle is to be laid open by an- shaped incision, the horizontal section being n)ade along the border which is attach- ed to tlx' base of the ventricle. It presiMits for examination five openings, and the muscular structure of the appendix; these are — Four pulmonary veins, Auriculo- ventricular opening, Musculi pectinati. 256 THE THOMSONIAN The 'piilmonary veins, two from the right and two from ihe left lung^, open into the corresponding sides of the auricle. The two left pulmonary veins terminate frequently by a common opening. The miricnlo-ventricular oj^ening is the aperture of commu- nication between the auricle and ventricle. The 7misculi jyeciinati are fewer in number than in the right auricle, and are situated only in the appendix auricula3. Left ventricle. — The left ventricle is to be opened by mak- ing an incision a little to the left of the septum ventriculorum, and continuing it around the apex of the heart, to the auriculo- ventricular opening behind. The left ventricle is conical, both in external figure and in the form of its internal cavity. It forms the apex of the heart, by projecting beyond the right ventricle, while the latter has the advantage in length towards the base. Its walls are about seven lines in thickness, those of the right ventricle being about two lines and a half. It presents for examination in its interior, two openings, two valves, and the tendinous cords and muscular columns ; they may be thus arranged : Auriculo-ventricular opening, Aortic opening. Mitral valves. Semilunar valves. Chordas tendines, Columnoe earner. The auriculo-ventricular ojtening is a dense fibrous ring;, covered by the lining membrane of the heart, but smaller jn size than that of the right side. The initral valves are attached around the auriculo-ventri- cular opening, as are the tricuspid in the right ventricle. They are thicker than the tricuspid, and consist of only two segments, of which the larger is placed between the auriculo-ventricular opening and the commencement of the aorta, and acts the part of a valve to that foramen, during the filling of the ventricle. The difference in size of the two valves, both being triangular, and the space between them, has given rise to the idea of a «' bishop's mitre," after which they are named. These valves, like the tricuspid, are furnished with an apparatus of tendinous cords, chordoi tendinea, which are attached to two very large column'ce. carnece. The cobannm carneoi admit of the same arrangement into three kinds as on the right side. Those which are free by one MATERIA MEDICA. 257 extremity, the columnae papillares, are only two in nunnber, and much larger than those on the opposite side. The semiliDiar valves are placed around the commencement of the aorta, like those of the pulmonary artery; they are simi- lar in structure, and are attached to the scalloped border by which the aorta is connected with the ventricle. Tiie tubercle in the centre of each Ibid is larger than those in the pulmonary valves, and it was these that Arantius particularly described ; but the term corpora arantii is now applied indiscriminately to both. The fossa between the semilunar valves and the cylin- der of the artery are much larger tlian those of the pulmonary artery; they are called the ^- sirms aortici.^' STRUCTURE OF THE HEART. The arrangement of the fibres of the heart has been made the subject of careful and accurate investigation. For the sake of clearness of description, the fibres of the ven- tricles have been divided into three layers — superficial, middle, and internal — all of which are disposed in a spiral direction around the cavities of the ventricles. The mode of formation of these three layers will be best understood by adopting the plan pursued by Mr. Searle in tracing the course of the fibres from the centre of the heart towards its periphery. The left surtace of the septum ventriculorum is formed by a broad and thick layer of fibres, which proceed backwards m a spiral direction around the posterior aspect of the left ventricle, and become augmented on the outer side of that ventricle, by other fibres derived from the bases of the two columnae papil- lares. The broad and thick band formed by the fibres from these two sources curves around the apex and lower third of the left ventricle, to the anterior border of the septum, where it divides into two bands — a short or apicial band, and a long or basial band. The short or apicial band is increased in thickness at this point by receiving a layer of fibres (derived from the root of the aorta and carnoe columneas) upon its internal surface, from the right surface of the septum ventriculorum ; it is then continued onwards in a spiral direction from left to right, around the low- er third of the anterior surfoce, and the middle third of the pos- terior surface of the rio;ht ventricle to the posterior border of the septum. From the latter point the short band is prolonged around the posterior and outer border of the left ventricle to the anterior surface of the base of that ventricle, and is inserted in- to the anterior border of the left auriculo-ventricular ring, and the anterior part of the root of the aorta and pulmonary artery. The long or basial band, at the anterior border of the sep- tum, passes directly backwards through the septum, forming its 258 THE THOMSONIAN middle layer, to the posterior ventricular groove, where it be- comes joined by fibres derived from the root of the pulmonary artery. It then winds spirally around the middle and upper third of the left ventricle to the anterior border of the septum, where it is connected by means of its internal surface with the superior fibres dirived from the aorta, which form part of the right wall of the septum. From this point it is continued around the upper third of the anterior and posterior surface of the right ventricle to the posterior border of the septum, where it is con- •nected with the fibres constituting the right surface of the sep- tum ventriculorum. At the latter point the fibres of this band begin to be twisted upon themselves, like the strands of a rope, the direction of the twist beins: from below upwards. This ar- rangement of fibres is called by Mr. Searle "the rope ;"' it is con- tinued spirally upwards, forming the brim of the left ventricle, to the anterior surface of the base of that ventricle, where the twisting of the fibres ceases. The long band then curves in- wards towards the septum, and spreads out upon the left sur- face of the septum into the broad and thick layer of fibres with which this description commenced. The most inferior of the fibres of the left surface of the sep- tum ventriculorum, after winding spirally around the internal surface of the apex of the left ventricle, so as to close its extre- mity, form a small fasciculus, which is excluded from the inte- rior of the ventricle, and expands in a radiated manner over the surface of the lieart, constituting its superficial layer of fibres. The direction of these fibres is, for the most part, oblique, pass- ing from left to right on the anterior, and from right to left on the posterior surface of the heart, becoming more longitudinal near its base, and terminating by being inserted into the fibrous rings of the auriculo-ventricular openings, and of the pulmonary artery and aorta. Over the right ventricle the superticial fibres are increased in number by the addition of accessory fibres from the right surface of the septum, which pierce the middle layer, and take the same direction with the superficial fibres from the apex of the left ventricle, and of other accessory fibres from the surface of both ventricles. From this description it will be perceived, that the svperjicial laijer of fibres is very scanty, and is pretty equally distributed over the surface of both ventricles. The middle layer of both . ventricles is formed by the two bands, short and long. But the internal layer of the two ventricles is very difterently consti- tuted : that of the left is formed by the spiral expansion of the fibres of the rope, and of the two columnac piapillares; that of the right remains to be described. The septum ventriculorum also consists of three layers — a left layer ^ the radiated expan- sion of the rope and carnese columnse ; a middle layer, the » MATERIA MEDICA. 259 long band ; and a right layer., belonging to the proper wall of the right ventricle, and continuous botli in front and behind with the long band, and in front also with the short band, and with the superficial layer of the right ventricle. The internal layer of the right ventricle is formed by fasci- culi of fibres which arise from the right segment of the root of the aorta, from the entire circumference of the root of the pul- monary artery, and from the bases of the columuce papillares. The fibres from the root of the aorta, associated with some from the carnea3 columnas, constitute a layer which passes obliquely forwards upon the right side of the septum. The superior fi- bres coming directly from tlie aorta join the internal surf;\ce of the long band at the anterior border of the septum, while the lower two thirds of the layer aie continuous with the internal surface of the short band, some of its fibres piercing that band to augment the number of superficial fibres. The fibres deriv- ed from the root of the pulmonary artery, conjoined with those from the base of one of the columns papillares, curve forwards from their origin, and wind obliquely downwards and back- wards around the internal surface of the wall of the ventricle to the posterior border of the septum, where they become con- tinuous with the long band, directly that it has passed back- wards through the septum. Fibres of the auricles. — The fibres of the auricles are dis- posed in two layers, external and internal. The internal layer is formed of fasciculi which arise from the fibrous rings of the auriculo-ventricular openings, and proceed upwards, to enlace with each other, and constitute the appendices auricularum. These fasciculi are parallel in their arrangement, and in the appendices form projections, and give rise to the appearance which is denominated musculi pectinati. In their course they give off branches, which connect adjoining fasciculi, and form a columnar interlacement between them. External layer. — The fibres of the right auricle having completed the appendix, wind from left to right around the right border of this auricle, and along its anterior aspect, beneath the appendix, to the anterior surface of the septum. From the sep- tum they are continued to the anterior surface of the left auri- cle, where they separate into three bands — superior, anterior, and posterior. 'l^hQ superior hand proceeds onwards to the appendix, and encircles the apex of the auricle. The anterior hand passes to the left, beneath the appendix, and winds as a broad layer completely around the base of the auricle, and through the septum to the root of the aorta, to which it is partly- attached, and from this point is continued onwards to the ap- pendix, where its fibres terminate by interlacino with the mus- culi pectinati. The posterior band crosses the left auricle ob- 260 THE THOMSONIAN liqiiely to its posterior part, and winds from left to right around its base, encircling: the openins^s of the pulmonary veins ; some of its fibres are lost upon the surface of the auricle, others are continued onwards to the base of the aorta; and a third set, forming a small band, is prolonged along the anteVior edge of the appendix to its apex, where it is continuous with the supe- rior band. The septum anricularum has four sets of fibres en- tering into its formation : — 1. The fibres arising from the auri- culo-vetricular rings at each side; 2. Fibres arising from the root of the aorta, which pass upwards to the transverse band, and to the root of tile superior cava ; 3. Those fibres of the an- terior band that pass through tlie lower part of the septum in their course around the left auricle; and, 4. A slender fascicu- lus, which crosses through the septum from the posterior part of the right auriculo-venlricular ring to the left auricle. It wiU be remarked from this description, that the left auricle is considerably thicker and more muscular than the right. Vessels and nerves. — The arteries supplying the heart are the anterior and posterior coronary. The veins accompany the arteries, and empty themselves by the common coronary vein into the right auricle. The lym- phatics terminate in the glands about the root of the heart. The jierves of the heart are derived from the cardiac plexuses, which are formed by communicating filaments from the sym- pathetic and pneumogastric. ORGANS OF RESPIRATION AND VOICE. The organs of respiration are the two lungs, with their air- tube, the trachea, to the upper part of which is adapted an ap- paratus of cartilages, constituting the organ of voice, or larynx. LARYNX. The larynx is situated at the fore part of the neck, between the trachea and the base of the tongue. It is composed of car- tilages, ligamc7its. viziscles, vessels, and nerves, and mucus membrane. The cartilages are — the Thyroid, Cricoid, Two Arytenoid, Epiglottis. The thyroid is the largest cartilage of the larynx; it con- sists of two lateral portions, or alee, which meet at an acute an- gle in front, and form the projection which is known by the name o( pomuin Adami. Where the pomum Adami is promi- nent, a bursa mucosa is often found between it and the skin. Each ala is quadrilateral, and forms a rounded border posteri- MATERIA MEDICA. 261 orly, which terminates above in the superior cornu, and below in the inferior cornu. Upon tlie side of the ala is an oblique line, into which the sterno-thyroid muscle is inserted, and from which the thyro-hyoide takes its origin. Behind this is a ver- tical line, which gives origin to the inferior constrictor muscle. In the receding angle formed by the meeting of the two alae upon the inner side of the cartilage, and near to its lower bor- der, are attached the epiglottis, the chordtx; vocales, the thyro- arytenoid, and thyro-epiglottidean muscles. The cricoid is a ring of cartilage, narrow in front and broad behind, where it is surmounted by tico rounded surfaces, which articulate with the arytenoid cartilages. Upon the middle line, posteriorly, is a vertical ridge which gives' attachment to the GBSophagus, and on each side of the ridge are the depressions which lodge the crico-arytenoidei postici muscles. On either side of the ring is a glenoid cavity, which articulates with the inferior cornu of the thyroid cartilage. The arytenoid cartilages, two in number, are triangular in form. They are broad below, where they articulate with the upper border of the cricoid, and give attachment to the crico- arytenoidei postici, crico-arytenoidei laterales, and thyro-aryte- noidei muscles, and chordas vocales; and pointed above, where they articulate with two little curved cartilages, called corni- cula laryngis (capitula laryngis). On the posterior surface they are concave, and lodge the arytenoideus muscle. The epiglottis is a fibro-cartilage of a yellowish color, stnd- ed with a small number of mucus glands, which are lodo^cd in shallow pits upon its surface. It is shaped like a cordate leaf, and is placed immediately in front of the opening of the larynx, which it closes completely when the larynx is drawn up be- neath the base of the tongue. It is attached by its point to the receding angle, between the two alas of the thyroid cartilage. Two small cartilaginous tubercles (cuneiform) are often found in the folds of the mucous membrane which bound the openino- of the larynx laterally. Ligaments. — The ligaments of the larynx are numerous, and may be arranged into four groups: I. Those that articu- late the thyroid with the os hyoides. 2. Those which connect it with the cricoid. 3. Ligaments of the arytenoid cartilages. 4. Ligaments of the epiglottis. 1. The ligaments which connect the thyroid cartilage with the OS hyoides are three in number: The two thyro-hyoidean ligameiits pass between the supe- 262 THE THOMSONIAN rior cornua of the thyroid and the extremities of the greater coriiua of the os hyoides; a sesamoid bone is found in each. The thyro-hyoidean membrane is a broad membranous lay- er, occupying the entire space between the thyroid cartilage and OS hyoides. It is pierced by the superior laryngeal nerve and artery. 2. The ligaments connecting the thyroid to the cricoid car- tilage are also three in number: Two capsular liga?ne}its, with their synovial membranes, which form the articulation between the inferior cornua of the thyroid and the sides of the cricoid, and the crico-thyroidean membrane^ throusfh which the operation of laryngotomy is per- formed. The latter is generally crossed by a small artery, the inferior laryngeal. 3. The ligaments of the arytenoid cartilages are four in num- ber : Two capsular ligaments and synovial membranes, which articulate the arytenoid cartilages with the cricoid; and the thyro-arytenoid ligaments^ or chorda:, vocales^ which pass backwards from the receding angle of the thyroid cartilage, near to its lower border, to be inserted into the bases of the ary- tenoid cartilages. The space between these two ligaments is the glottis, or rima glotiidis. 4. The ligaments of the epiglottis are live in number: 1. Three folds of mucous membrane, one at the middle, and one on each side, called fra.na epiglottidis, which hold the epiglottis back to the tongue. 2. Epiglotto-hyoideaji liga- m,ent, which connects the epiglottis to the posterior surface of the OS hyoides. 3. The ligament which attaches the epi2:lottis to the receding angle of the thyroid cartilage. l^he muscles o{ the larynx are eight in number: the five larger are the muscles of the chordae vocales and rima glottidis ; the three smaller are muscles of the epiglottis. The five muscles of the chordas vocales and rima glottidis are — the Crico-thyroid, Crico-arytenoideus posticus, Crico-arytenoideus lateralis, Thyro arytenoideus, Arytenoideus. MATERIA MEDICA. 263 NO. 14. — POSTERIOR* AND SIDEt VIEWS OF THE LARYNX. The crico-ihyroid muscle arises from the anterior surface of the cricoid cartilage, and is inserted into the lower and inner border of the thyroid. The cricoaiytenoideus postiats arises from the depression on the posterior surface of tliecroicoid cartilage, and is niserted into the outer angle of the base of the arytenoid. The crico-arytenoidens lateralis arises from the upper bor- der of the side of the cricoid, and is inserted into the outer an- gle of the base of the arytenoid cartilage. The thyro-arytenoideiis arises from the receding angle of the thyroid cartilage, close to the outer side of the chorda voca- lis, and passes backwards parallel with the chord, to be inserted into the base of the arytenoid cartilage. The aryf.enoideus muscle occupies the posterior concave sur- face of the arytenoid cartilages, between which it is stretched. It consists of three planes of transverse and oblique fibres ; hence it was formerly considered as several muscles, under the names oi transversi and obUqvi.. The three muscles of the epiglottis are — the Thyro-epiglottideus, Aryteno-epiglottideus superior, Aryteno-epiglottideus inferior (Hilton's muscle). * 1. The thyroid cartilage. 2. One of its ascending cornua. 3. One of the descendina; cornua. 4. The cricoid cartilage. 5, 5. The arytenoid carti- lages. 6. The arytenoideus muscle, consisting of oblique and transverse fas- ciculi. 7. The crico-arytcnoidei postici muscles. 8. The epiglottis. t [One ala of the thyroid cartilage has been removed.] 1. The remaining ala of the thyroid cartilage. 2. One of the arytenoid cartilages. 3. One of the cornicula laryngis. 4. The cricoid cartilage. 5. The crico-arytenoideus posticus muscle. G. The crico-arytenoideus lateralis. 7. The thyro-aryte- noideus. 8. The crico-thyroidean membrane. 9. One half of the epiglottis. 10. The upper part of the trachea. 264 THE THOMSOMAN. The thyro-epiglottideus appears to be formed by the upper fibres of the tliyro-arytenoideus muscle ; tliey spread out upon the external surface of the sacculus laryngis, on which they are lost; a few of the anterior fibres being continued onwards to the side of the epiglottis. The aryteno-epiglottidevs superior consists of a few scat- tered fibres, which pass forwards in the fold of mucus mem- brane forming the latteral boundary of the entrance into the la- rynx from the apex of the arytenoid cartilage to the side of the epiglottis. The aryteno-epiglottidejis inferior. — This muscle was dis- covered by Mr. Hilton, and is very important in relation to the sacculus laryngis, willi which it is closely connected. It may be found by raising the mucous membrane immediately above the ventricle of the larynx. It arises by a narrow and fibrous origin from the arytenoid cartilage, just above the attachment of the chorda vocalis; and passing forwards, and a little up- wards, expands over the upper half, or two thirds of the saccu- lus larygnis, and is inserted by a broad attachment into the side of the epiglottis. Actions. — The crico-thyroid and arytenoid muscles are con- tractors of the rima giottidis ; the crico-arytenoideus posticus and lateralis, and the thyro-arytenoideus, are dilators. The crico-thyroid muscles elongate, and thereby bring toge- ther the chordse vocales, by drawing the thyroid cartilage down- wards and forwards ; their posterior attachment at the aryte- noid cartilages being fixed. The arytenoid muscle approxi- mates the arytenoid cartilages, and consequently the chordge vocales, directly. The crico-thyroidei postici being attached to the outer angles of the bases of the arytenoid carti leges, draw them from each other, and stretch the chorda3 vocales. The crico-arytenoidei laterales draw the arytenoid cartilages from each other, but relax the chordas vocales ; and tiie thyro-aryte- noidei increase the width of the glottis, by directly relaxing the chordos vocales. The thyro-epiglottider;s acts principally by compressing the glands of the sacculus laryngis and the sac itself: by its attach- ment to the epiglottis it v/ould act feebly upon that valve. The aryteno-epiglottideus superior serves to keep the mucous mem- brane of the sides of tlie opening of the glottis tense, when the larynx is drawn upwards, and the opening clo.sed by the epi- glottis. Of the aryteno-epiglottideus, the functions appear to be, to compress the subjacent glands which open into the pouch ; to diminish the capacity of that cavity, and change its form ; and to approximate the epiglottis and the arytenoid cartilage. Mucous membrane. — The larynx is lined by the mucous MATERIA MEDICA. 266 membrane, which is continued from the mouth and pharynx, and prolonjred onwards throucjh the trachea and bronchi to the bronchial cells. The chordas vocales form two horizontal pro- jections of the mncons membrane, and constitute the lateral boundaries of the ^/c»//w, ovrimaglotlidis. Immediately above the horizontal projection of the chorda vocalis, at each side, is a depressed fossa, the ventricle of the larynx. The superior boundary of the ventricle is an arched border of mucous mem- brane, which is very incorrectly termed the superior chorda vocalis. If the rounded extremity of a probe be introduced in- to the ventricle of the larynx, and then directed upwards, it will enter a considerable pouch, which has been recently described by Mr. Hilton as the sacculus laryngis. From the ventricle of the larynx the sacculus is continued upwards, nearly as high as the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, and sometimes be- yond it. When dissected from the interior of the larynx, it is found covered by the aryteno-epiglottideus muscle, and a fibrous membrane, which is attached to the superior chorda vo- calis below ; to the epiglottis in front ; and to the upper border of the thyroid cartilage above. If examined from the exterior of the larynx, it will be seen to be covered by the thyro-epiglot- tideus muscle. On the surface of its mucous membrane are the openings of sixty or seventy small follicular glands, which are situated in the sub-mucous tissue, and give its external surface a rough and ill-dissected ap[)earance. This mucous secretion is intended for the lubrication of the chordee vocales, and is di- rected upon them by two small valvular folds of the mucous membrane, which are situated at the entrance of the sacculus. The entrance of the larynx- is formed by two folds of mu- cous membrane, stretched between the apices of the arytenoid cartilages and the sides of the epiglottis. The arytenoid glands and superior aryteno-epiglottidean muscles are situated within these folds. The glands of the larynx are — 1. The e/)i^/oi;i!tc— most im- properly named — for it consists merely of a mass of fot, situat- ed between the convexity of the epiglottis and the thyro-hyoid membrane. 2. The arytenoid glands^ some small granules found in the folds of mucous membrane near the apex of the arytenoid cartilage. Vessels and nerves. — The ar^erfe^ of the larynx are derived from the superior and inferior thyroid. The Jierves are the su- perior laryngeal and recurrent laryngeal ; both branches of the pneumogastric. The two nerves communicate with each oth- er freely; but the superior laryngeal is distributed principally to the mucous membrane at the entrance of the larynx; the re- current, to the muscles. In children, and in the female, the larynx is less developed 18 266 THE THOMSONIAN than in the adult male ; the thyroid cartilage forms a more ob- tuse angle and is less firm : in the male the angle is acute, and the cartilages often converted into hone. TBE TRACHEA. The trachea extends from opposite the fifth cervical verte- bra to opposite tlie third dorsal, where it divides into the two bronchi. The right bronchus, larger than the lelt, passes oft" at nearly right angles, to the upper part of the corresponding lung. The left descends obliquely, and passes beneath the arch of the aorta, to the left lutJg. The trachea is composed of — Fibro-cartilaginous rings, Fibrous membrane, Mucous membrane, Lotiofitudinal elastic fibres, Muscular fibres, Glands. The fihrocartilnrrinous rings are from fifteen to twenty in number, and extend for two tlurds around the cylinder of the trachea. 'J'hey are deficient at the posterior part, where the tube is completed by fibrous membrane. The last ring has usually a triano:ular form in front. The rings are connected to each other by a membrane of yellow elastic Jihrovs tissue, which in the space between the extremities of the cartilages, posteriorly, forms a distinct layer. The longitudinal elastic fibres are situated immediately be- neath the mucous membrane, on the posterior part of the tra- chea, and enclose the entire cylinder of the bronchial tubes, to their ultimate terminations. The fmiscular fibres form a thin layer, extending transverse- ly betw^een the extremities of the cartilages. On the posterior surface they are covered by a ccllulo-fibrous lamella, m which are lodged the tracheal glands. These are small flattened ovoid bodies, situated in a great number between the fibrous and muscular layers of the membranous portion of the trachea, and also between the two layers of elastic fibrous tissue con- necting the rings. They pour their secretion upon the mucous membrane. Thyroid gland. — The thyroid gland is one of those organs which it is found extremely difficult lo classify, from the ab- sence of any positive knowledge with regard to its function. It is situated upon the trachea, and in an anatomical arrangement should therefore be considered in this place, althousfh bearins: no part in the function ot respiration. This gland consists of two lobes, which are placed one on MATERIA MEDICA. 267 each side of the trachea, and are connected with each other by means of an isthmus, which crosses its upper rings. There is considerable variety in the situation and breadth of this isth- mus ; which should be recollected in the performance of ope- rations upon the trachea. In structure it appears to be com- posed of a dense cellular parenchyma, enclosuig a great num- ber of vessels. The gland is larger in young subjects, and in females, than in the adult and males. It is the seat of an en- largement called broncliocele, goitre, or the Derbyshire neck. A muscle is occasionally found connected with its upper bor- der or with its isthmus; and attached, superiorly, to the body of the OS hyoides, or the thyroid cartilage. It was named by Soemmering the levator glandnla:. thyroidcB. Vessels and nerves. — It is abundantly supplied with blood by the superior and inferior thyroid arteries. Sometimes an additional artery is derived from the arteria innominata, and ascends upon the front of the trachea, to be distributed to the gland. The wound of this vessel in tracheotomy might be fa- tal to the patient. The nerves are derived from the superior laryngeal and sympathetic. THE LUNGS. The lungs are two conical organs, situated one on each side of the chest, embracing the heart, and separated from each oth- er by a membranous partition, the mediastinum. On the ex- ternal or thoracic side they are convex and correspond with the form of the cavity of the chest ; internally they are concave, to receive the convexity of the heart. Superiorly, they terminate in a tapering cone, which extends above the level of the first rib; and inferiorly they are broad and concave, and rest upon the convex surface of the diaphragm. Their posterior border is rounded and broad, the anterior sharp and marked by one or two deep fissures, and the inferior which surrounds the base is also sharp. The color of the lungs is pinkish grey, mottled, and various- ly marked with black. The surface is figured with irregularly quadrilateral and pentagonal outlines, which represent the lo- bules of the organ, and the area of each of these quadrilateral and pentagonal spaces is crossed by lighter lines. Each lung is divided into two lobes, by a long and deep fis- sure, which extends from the posterior surface of the upper part of the organ, downwards and forwards to near the anterior an- gle of its base. In the right lung the upper lobe is subdivided by a second fissure, which extends obliquely forwards from the middle of the preceding to the anterior border of the organ, and marks off a small triangular lobe. 268 THE THOMSONIAN The right lung' is larger than the left, in consequence of the inclination of the heart to the left side. It is also shorter, from the great convexity of the liver, which presses the diaphragm upwards upon the right side of the chest considerably above the level of the left. It has three lobes. The left lung is smaller, has but two lobes, but is longer than the right. Each lung is retained in its place by its root, which is form- ed by the pulmonary artery, pulmonary veins, and bronchial tubes, together with the bronchial vessels and pulmonary plex- uses of nerves. The larire vessels of the root of each lun2; are arranged in a similar order, from before backwards, on both sides, viz : — Pulmonary veins, Pulmonary artery, Bronchus. From above, downwards, on the right side, this order is ex- actly reversed ; but on the left side the bronchus has to stoop beneath the arch of the aorta, which alters its position to the vessels. They are thus disposed on the two sides : — Ri^ht. Left. Bronchus, . Artery, Artery, Bronchus, Veins. Veins. Structure. — The lungs are composed of the ramifications of the bronchial tubes which terminate in bronchial cells (air cells) of the ramifications of the pulmonary artery and veins, bron- chial arteries and veins, lymphatics and nerves. The whole of these structures being held together by cellular tissue, which constitutes their parenchyma. Bronchial tubes. — The two bronchi proceed from the bifur- cation of the trachea to their corresponding lungs. The right takes its course nearly at right angles with the trachea, and en- ters the upper part of the right lung, while the left, longer and smaller than the right, passes obliquely beneath the arch of the aorta, and enters the lung at about the middle of its root. Up- on entering the lungs they divide into two branches, and each of these divides and subdivides dichotomously to their ultimate termination in small dilated sacs, the bronchial or pulmonary cells. The fibro-cartilaginous rings which are observed in the tra- chea become incomplete and irregular in shape in the bronchi, and in the smaller bronchial tubes are lost altogether. At the termination of these tubes the fibrous and muscular coats be- bome extremely thin, and are probably continued upon the li- ninof mucous membrane of the air cells. MATERIA MEDICA. 269 The fmlmonary artery^ conveying the dark and impure ve- nous blood to the lungs, terminates in capillary vessels, which form a minute net-work upon the parietes of the bronchial cells, and then converge, to form the pulmonary veins by which the arterial blood, purified in its passage through the capillaries, is returned to the left auricle of the heart. The bronchial arteries, branches of the thoracic aorta, rami- fy upon the bronchial tubes and m the tissue of the lungs, and supply them with niitrilion, while the venous blood is returned by the bronchial veins to the vena azygos. The lymphatics, commencing upon the surface and in the substance of the lungs, terminate in the bronchial glands. These glands, very numerous aud often of large size, are placed at the roots of the lungs, .around the bronchi, and at the bifurcation of the trachea. In early life, they resemble lymphatic glands in other situations; but in old age, and often in the adult, they are quite black, and filled with carbonaceous matter, and occa- sionally with calcareous deposits. The nerves are derived from the pneumogastric and sympa- thetic. They form two plexuses — anterior jndmonary plexus situated upon the front of the root of the lungs, and composed chiefly of filaments from the great cardiac plexus ; and poste- rior pulmonary plexus, on the posterior aspect of the root of the lungs, composed principally of branches from the pneumo- gastric. The branches from these plexuses follow the course of the bronchial tubes, and are distributed to the bronchial cells. PLEURA. Each lung is enclosed, and its structure maintained, by a se- rous membrane, the pleura, which invests it as far as the root, and is thence reflected upon the parietes of the chest. That por- tion of the membrane which is in relation with the lungf is call- • • • ed pleura pulmonalis, and that in contact with the parietes, pleura costalis. The reflected portion, besides forming the in- ternal lining to the ribs and intercostal muscles, also covers the diaphragm and the thoracic surface of the vessels at the root of the neck. The pleura must be dissected from off" the root of the lung, to see the vessels by which it is formed, and the pulmonary plexuses. MEDIASTINUM. The approximation of the two reflected pleurae in the middle line of the thorax forms a septum which divides the chest into the two pulmonary cavities. This is the mediastinum. The two pleuras are not, however, in contact with each other at the middle line in the formation of the mediastinum, but leave a 270 THE THOMSONIAN space between them which contains all the viscera of the chest, with the exception of the lungs. The mediastinum is divided into the anterior, middle, and posterior. The anterior mediastinum is a triangular space, bounded in front by the sternum, and on each side by the pleura. It con- tains a quantity of loose cellular tissue, in which are found some lymphatic glands and vessels passing up from the liver; the remains of the thymus gland, the origins of the sterno-hy- oid and sterno-thyroid muscles, and the internal mammary ves- sels of the left side. The 7niddle mediastinum contains the heart enclosed in its pericardium, the ascending aorta, the superior vena cava, the bifurcation of the trachea, the pulmonory arteries and veins, and the phrenic nerves. The posterior mediastinum is bounded behind by the ver- tebral column, in front by the pericardium, and on each side by the pleura. It contains the descendinof aorta, the o-reater and lesser azygos veins and superior intercostal vein, the thoracic duct, the oesophagus and pneumogastric nerves, and the great splanchnic nerves. ABDOMEN. The abdomen is the inferior cavity of the trunk of the body; it is bounded in front and at the sides by the lower ribs and ab- dominal muscles ; behind, by the vertebral column and abdo- minal muscles: above, by the diaphragm, and below by the pelvis ; and contains the alimentary canal, the organs subservi- ent to digestion, viz. the liver, pancreas, and spleen, and the or- gans of excretion, the kidneys, with the supra-renal capsules. Regions. — For convenience of description of the viscera, and reference to the morbid atfections of this cavity, the abdomen is divided into certain districts or regions. Thus, if two trans- verse lines be carried around the body, the one parallel with the convexities of the ribs, the other with the highest points of the crests of the ilia, the abdomen will be divided into three zones. Again, if a perpendicular line be drawn at each side, from the cartilage of the eighth rib to the middle of Poupart's ligament, the three primary zones will each be subdivided into three com- partments or regions, a middle and two lateral. The middle region of the upper zone being immediately over the small end of the stomach, is called episcastric. The two lateral regions beinw under the cartilages of the ribs, are called hypochondriac. The middle region of the middle zone is the umbilical ; the two lateral, the btmbar. The middle region of the infeior zone is the hypogastric, and the two lateral the iliac. In addition to these divisions, we constantly use the term ingui- nal region, in reference to the vicinity of Poupart's ligament. Position of the viscera. — lu. the upper zone will be seen the MATERIA MEDICA. 271 liver, extending across from the ri2:ht to the left side; the sto- mach and spleen on the left, and the pancreas and dnodenum behind. In the middle zone is the transverse portion of the co- lon, with the upper part of the ascending and descending colon, omentum, small intestines, mesentery, and behind, the kidneys and supra-renal capsules. In the inlerior zone is the lower part of the omentum and small intestines, the Ccccum, ascending and descendmg colon, with the sigmoid flexure and ureters. The smooth and polished surface which the viscera and pa- riates of the abdomen present, is due to the peritoneum, which should in the next place be studied. PLATE 15.* • The Reflections of the Peritoneum. D. The diaphragm. S. The stomach. C. The transverse colon. D. The transverse duodenum. P. The Pancreas. 1. The small intestines. R. The Rectum. B. The urinary bladder. 1. The anterior layer of the peritoneum, linina; the under surface of the diaphragm. 2. The posterior layer. 3. The two layers passing to tlie posterior border of the liver, and forming the coronary ligament. 4. The lesser omentum ; the two layers passing from the under surface of the liver to the lesser curve of the stomach. .O. The two layers meeting at the greater curve, then passing downwards and returning upon themselves, forming (6) the greater oment- um. 7. The transverse meso-colon. 8. The posterior layer traced upwards 272 THE THOMSONIAIf PERITONEUM. The peritoneum is a serous membrane, and therefore a shni sac ; a single exception exists in the iiiiman subject to this cha- racter, viz. in the female, where the peritoneum is perforated by the open extremities of the Fallopian tubes, and is continu- ous with their mucous lining. The simplest idea that can be given of a serous membrane, which may apply equally to all, is, that it invests the viscus or viscera, and is then reflected upon the parietes of the contain- ing cavity. If the cavity contain only a single viscus, the con- sideration of the serous membrane is extremely simple. But in the abdomen, where there are a number of viscera, the serous membrane passes from one to the other until it has invested the whole, before it is reflected on the parietes. Hence its reflec- tions are a little more complicated. In tracing the reflections of the peritoneum in the middle line, we commence with the diaphragm, which is lined by two layers, one from the parietes in front, anterior, and one from the parieties behind, posterior. These two layers of the same membrane, at the posterior part of the diaphragm, descend to the upper surface of the liver, forming the coronary and lateral ligaments of the liver. They then surround the liver, one go- ing in front, the other behind that viscus, and, meeting at its under surface, pass to the stomach, forming the lesser omen- tum. They then, in the same manner, surround the stomach, and, meeting at its lower border, descend for some distance in front of the intestines, and return to the transverse colon, forn> ing the great omentum ; they then surround the transverse co- lon, and pass directly backw-ards to the vertebral column, form- ing the transverse meso-colon. Here the two layers separate ; the posterior ascends in front of the pancras and aorta, and re- turns to the posterior part of the diaphragm, where it forms the posterior layer with which we commenced. The anterior de- scends, invests all the small intestines, and returning to the ver- tebral column forms the mesentery. It then descends into the pelvis in front of the rectum, which it holds in its place by means of a fold called meso-rectuTn, forms a pouch, the recto- vesical fold, between it and the bladder, ascends upon the pos- terior surface of the bladder, forming its false ligaments, and in front of D, the transverse duodenum, and P, the pancreas, to become con* tinuous with the posterior layer (2). 9. The foramen of Winslow ; the dot- ted line bounding this foramen inferiorly, marks the course of the hepatic ar- tery forwards, to enter betweeii the layers of the lesser omentum. 10. The mesentery encircling the small intestine. l\. The rccto-vesical fold, formed by the descending anterior layer. 12. The anterior layer traced upwards up- on the internal surface of the abdominal parietes to the layer (])_vwith whidi the examination commenced. MATERIA MEDIC A. 273 returns upon the anterior parietes of the abdomen, to the dia- phragm, whehce we first traced it. In the female, after descending into the pelvis in front of the rectum, it is reflected upon the posterior surface of the vagina and uterus. It then descends on the anterior surface of the uterus, and forms at either side the broad ligaments of that or- gan. From the uterus it ascends upon the posterior surface of the bladder and anterior parietes of the abdomen, and is conti- nued, as in the male, to the diaphragm. •In this way the continuity of the peritoneum, as a whole, is distinctly shown, and it matters not where the examination commence or where it terminate ; still the same continuity of surface will be discernable throughout. If we trace it from side to side of the abdomen, we may commence at the umbili- cus ; we then follow it outwards lining the inner side of the parietes to the ascending colon ; it surrounds that intestine ; it then surrounds the small intestine, and returning on itself forms the mesentery. It then invests the descendina: colon, and reaches the parietes on the opposite side of the abdomen, from whence it may be traced to the exact point from which we started. The viscera, which are thus shown to be invested by the pe- ritoneum m its course downwards, are — the Liver, Stomach, Transverse colon, Small intestines, Pelvic viscera. The folds formed between these and between the diaphragm and the liver, are — (Diaphragm.) Broad, coronary, and lateral ligaments. (Liver.) Lesser omentum. (Stomach.) Greater omentum. (Transverse colon.) Transverse meso-colon. Mesentery, Meso-rectum, Recto-vesical fold. False ligaments of the bladder. And in the female, the Broad ligaments of the uterus. 274 THE THOMSONIAN The ligaments of the liver will be examined with that organ. The lesser omentum is the duplicature passing between the liver and the upper border of the stomach. It is extremely thin, excepting at its right border, where it is free, and con- tains between its layers, the Hepatic artery, Ductus communis choledochus, Portal vein. Hepatic plexus of nerves, , Lymphatics. The structures are enclosed in a loose cellular tissue, called Glisson's capsule. The relative position of the three vessels is, the artery to the left, the duct to the right, and the vein between and behind. If the finger be introduced behind this right border of the lesser omentum, it will be situated in an opening called the fo- ramen of WinsloiD. In front of the finger will lie the right border of the lesser omentum; behind it the diaphragm, cover- ed by the ascending or posterior layer of the peritoneum ; be- low, the hepatic artery, curving forwards from the coeliac axis; and abov^e, the lobus Spigelii. These, therefore, are the boun- daries of the foramen of VVinslow, which is nothing more than a constriction of the general cavity of the peritoneum at this point, arising out of the necessity for the hepatic and gastric arteries to pass forwards from the coeliac axis to reach their respective viscera. If the air be blown through the foramen of Winslow, it will descend behind the lesser omentum and stomach to the space between thedesending and ascending pair of layers, forming the great omentum. This is sometimes called the lesser cavity of the peritoneum, and that external (o the foramen the greater cavity; in which case the foramen is considered as the means of communication between the two. There is a great objection to this division, as it might lead the inexperienced to believe that there were really two cavities. There is but one only, the foramen of Winslow being merely a constriction of that one, to facilitate the communication between the nutrient arteries and the viscera of the upper part of the abdomen. The great oi?ieviin?i consists of four layers of periionctim, the two which descend from the stomach, and the same two, returning upon themselves to the transverse colon. A quantity of adipose substai.'ce is deposited around the vessels which ram- ify through its structure. It would appear to perform a double function in the economy. 1st. Protecting the intestines from cold; and, 2dly. Facilitating the movement of the intestines upon each other during theirvermicular action. MATERIA MEDICA. 275 The transverse meso-colon is the medium of connection be- tween the transverse colon and the posterior wall of the abdo- men. It also afibrds to the nutrient arteries a passage to reach the intestine ; and encloses between its layers, at the posterior part, the transverse portion of the duodenum. The mesentery is the medium of connection between the small intestines and the posterior wall of the abdomen. It is oblique in its direction, being attached to the posterior wall, from the left side of tiie second lumbar vertebra to the right iliac fossa. It retains the small intestines in their places, and gives passage to the mesenteric arteries, veins, nerves, and lym- phatics. The meso-rectiwi, in like manner, retains the rectum in con- nection with the front of the sacrum. Besides this, there are some minor folds in the pelvis, as the recto-vesical fold, the false ligaments of the bladder, and broad ligaments of the uterus. The appendices epiploicce are small irregular pouches ot peritoneum, filled with fat, and situated like fringes upon the large intestine. Three other duplicatures of peritoneum are situated 'n\ the sides of the abdomen ; they are the gastro-splenetic omentum, the ascending and descending meso-colon. The gasiro-sple- nic omentum is the duplicature which connects the spleen to the stomach ; and the ascending and descendiiig meso-cnla. are the folds which retain the corresponding portions of the colon in their situations. Structure of serous m,enibrane. — Serous membrane consists of two layers, an external or cellular layer, and an interiial lay- er, or epithelium. The cellular layer upon its outer surface is rough and vascular, and adherent to surrounding structures; but on its inner surface is dense and smooth, and wholly defi- cient of vessels carry ins: red blood. The smooth and brilliant surface of serous membrane is due to a distinct epithelium, which has been shown to be composed of laminae of viscicles, and of flattened polygonal scales with central nuclei, like the epithelium of mucous membrane. This structure may be easi- ly demonstrated with a good microscope upon the surface of all the serous membranes of the body, upon the surface of the li- ning membrane of arteries and veins, and upon synovial mem- branes. The general characters of a serous membrane are its resem- blance to a shut sac, and its secretion of a peculiar fluid resem- bling the serum of the blood; but neither of these characters is absolutely essential to the identity of a serous membrane ; for in the internal ear we have an instance of a mucous membrane being a shut sac, a condition not uncommon among animals. 276 THE THOMSONIAN Again, as we have shown, the peritoneum in the female is per- forated by the extremities of the Fallopean tubes; while in rep- tiles there is a direct communication between its cavity and the medium in which they hve. From the variable nature of the secretion of these membranes, they have been divided into two classes — the true serous mem- branes, viz. the arachnoid, pericardium, pleuras, peritoneum and tunicse vaginales, which pour out a secretion containing but a small proportion of albumen ; and the synovial membranes and bursae, which secrete a fluid containing a larger quantity of al- bumen. ALIMENTARY CANAL The alimentary canal is a musculo-membranous tube, ex- tending- from the mouth to the anus. It is variously named ia the diifereut parts of its course; hence it is divided into the Mouth, Pharynx, . Oesophagus, Stomach, C Duodenum, Small intestine < Jejunum, ( Ileum, I Cascum, Large intestine < Colon, I Rectum. The mouth is the irregular cavity which contains the organs of taste and the principal instruments of mastication. It is bounded in front by the lips, on either side by the internal sur- face of the cheeks; above, by the hard palate and teeth of the upper jaw; below, by the tongue, by the mucous membrane stretched between the arch of the lower jaw and the under sur- face of the tongue, and by the teeth of the inferior maxilla; and behind by the soft palate and fauces. The lips are two fleshy folds, formed externally by common integument, and internally by mucous membrane, and contain- ing between these two layers the muscles of the lips, a quantity of fat, and numerous small labial glands. They are attached to the surface of the upper and lower jaw, and each lip is con- nected to the gum in the middle line by a fold of mucous mem^ brane, the fr,i;num labii superioris, and fra;num labii inferioris, the former beino^ the larsfer. The cheeks (buccns) are continuous on either hand with the lips, and form the sides of the face ; they are composed of inte- gument, a large quantity of fat, muscles, mucous membrane, and buccal glands. MATERIA MEDICA. 277 The mucous membrane lining the cheeks is reflected above and below upon the sides of the jaws, and is attached posterior- ly to the anterior margin of the ramus of the lower jaw. At about its middle, opposite to the second molar tooth of the up- per jaw, is a papilla, upon which may be observed a small open- ing, the entrance of the duct of the parotid gland. The hard palate is a dense structure, composed of mucous membrane, palatal 5:lands, fibrous tissue, vessels, and nerves, and firmly connected to the palate processes of the superior max- illary and palate bones. It is bounded in front, and on each side, by the alveolar processes and gums, and is coniinuons be- hind with the soft palate. It is marked along the middle \\iw by an elevated raphe, and presents upon each side of the raphe a number of transverse ridges and grooves. Near the anterior extremity, and immediately behind the middle incisor teeth, is a papilla which corresponds with the termination of the naso- palatine caaal, and has been supposed to be endowed with a peculiar sensibility. The gums are composed of a thick and dense mucous mem- brane, which is closely adherent to the periosteum of the alveo- lar processes, and embraces the necks of the teeth. They are remarkable for their hardness and insensibility, and for their close contact, without adhesion, to the surface of the tooth. From the neck of the tooth they are reflected into the aveolus, and become continuous with the periosteal membrane of that cavity. The tongue has been described as an oro-an of sense ; it is invested by mucous membrane, which is reflected from its un- der part upon the inner surface of tlie lowf^r jaw, and consti- tutes, with the muscles beneath, the floor of the month. Upon the under surface of the tongue, near to its anterior part, the mucous membrane forms a considerable fold, which is called the frcenum lingutc ; and on each side of the fr£enum is a large papilla, the commencement of the duct of the submaxillary gland, and several smaller openings, the ducts of the sublmgual gland. The soft palate (velum pendulum pnlati) is a fold of mucous membrane, situated at the posterior part of the mouth. It is continuous superiorly with the hard palate, and is composed of mucous membrane, palatal glands, and muscles. Hanging from the middle of its inferior border is a small rounded process, the uvula: and passing outwards from the uvula on each side are two curved folds of the mucous membrane, the arches or pillars of the palate. The anterior pillar is continued downwards to the side of the base of the tongue, and is formed by the projec- tion of the palato-glossus muscle. The posterior pillar is pro- longed downwards and backwards into the pharynx, and is 278 THE THOMSONIAN formed by the convexity of the palato-pharyngeus muscle. These two pillars, closely united above, are separated below by a triangular interval or niche, in which the tonsil is lodged. The tonsils (amygdalae) aie two glandular organs, shaped like almonds, and situated between the anterior and posterior pillar of the soft palate, on each side of the fauces. They are cellular in texture, and composed of an assemblage of mucous follicles, which open upon the surface of the gland. External- ly, they are invested by the pharyngeal fascia, which separates them from the superior constrictor muscle and internal carotid artery, and prevents an abscess opening in that direction. In relation to surrounding parts, they correspond with the angle of the lower jaw. The space included between the soft palate and the root of the tongue is the isthmua of the fauces. It is bounded above by the sott palate ; on each side, by the pillars of the soft palate and tonsils ; and beloio, by the root of the tongue. It is the opening between the mouth and pharynx. SALIVARY GLANDS. Communicating with the mouth are the excretory ducts of three pairs of salivary glands, the parotid, submaxillary, and sublingual. The parotid gland, the largest of the three, is situated im- mediately in front of the external ear, and extends superficially for a short distance over the masseter muscle, and deeply behind the ramus of the lower jaw. It reaches inferiorly to below the level of the angle of the lower jaw, and posteriorly to the mas- toid process, slightly overlapping the insertion of the sterno- mastoid muscle. Embedded in its substance is the external ca- rotid artery, temporo-maxillary vein, and facial nerve; and, emerging from its anterior border, the transverse facial artery, and blanches of the pes anserinus ; and, above, the temporal artery. The duct of the parotid gland commences at the papilla upon the internal surface of the cheek, opposite the second molar tooth of the upper jaw ; and, piercing the buccinator muscle, crosses the masseter to the anterior border of the gland, where it divides into several branches, which subdivide and ramify through its structure, to terminate in the small coecal pouches of which the gland is composed. A small branch is generally given off from the duct while crossing the masseter muscle, which forms, by its ramifications and terminal dilatations, a small glandular appendage, the socia parotidis. Stenon's duct is remarkably dense and of considerable thickness, while the area of its canal is extremely small. The submaxillary gland is situated in the posterior angle MATERIA MEDICA. 279 ot the submaxillary triangle of the neck. It rests upon the hyo-glossus and nivlo-hyoideus muscles, and is covered in by the body of the lower jaw and by the deep cervical fascia. It is separated from the parotid gland by the stylo-maxillary liga- ment, and from the sublingual by the mylo-hyoideus muscle. Embedded among its lobules is the facial artery and the sub- maxillary ganglion. The excretory duct (Wharton's) of the submaxillary gland commences upon the papilla, by the side of the frsenum hnguce, and passes backwards beneath the mylo hyoideus and resting upon the hyo-glossus muscle, to the middle of the gland, where it divides into numerous branches, which ramify through the structure of the gland to its ca3cal terminations. It lies in its course against the mucous membrane forming the floor of the mouth, and causes a projecting ridge upon its surface. The sublino-ual is an elongated and flattened gland, situated beneath the mucous membrane of the floor of the mouth, on each side of the frasnum linguee. It is in relation, above, with the mucous membr^ ; in front., with the depression by the side of the symphysiM)f the lower jaw ; externally, wWh the mylo-hyoideus muscle ; and internally, with the lingual nerve and genio-hyo-glossus muscle. It pours its secretion into the mouth by seven or eight small ducts, which commence by small openings on each side of the frsenum linguae. Structure. — The salivary are conglomorate glands, consist- ing of lobes, which are made up of angular lobules, and these of still smaller lobules. The smallest lobule is apparently composed of granules, which are minute coecal pouches, formed by the dilatation of the ex- treme ramifications of the ducts. These minute ducts unite to form lobular ducts, and the lobular ducts constitute by their union a single excretory duct. The coecal pouches are connected by cellular tissue, so as to form a minute lobule : the lobules are held together by a more condensed cellular layer ; and the larger lobes are enveloped by a dense cellulo-fibrous capsule, which is firmly attached to the deep cervical fascia. Vessel.ortal vein distributes its numberless branches through portal canals, which are channelled through every part of the organ ; it brings the returning blood from the chylopoictic vis- cera ; it collects also tlie venous blood from the ultimate ramifi- cations of the hepatic artery in the liver itself. It gives off branches in tiie canals, which are called vaginal, and form a venous vaginal plexus ; these give off interlobular branches, and the latter enter the lobules and form lobular venous plex- uses, from the blood circulating in which the bile is secreted. Tiic bile in the lobule is recaived by a network of minute ducts, the lobular biliary ])lexus ; it is conveyed from the lo- bule into the interlobular ducts : it is thence poured into the biliary vaginal plexus of the portal canals, and tlience into the excreting ducts, by which it is carried to the duodenum and gall-bladder, after being mingled in its course with the mucous secretion from the numberless muciparous follicles in the walls of the ducts. The hepatic artery distrilintcs branches through every por- tal canal ; gives off vaginal branches, which form a vaginal hepatic plexus, from which the interlobtilar branches arise, and those latter terminate ultimately in the lobular venous plexuses of the portal vein. The artery ramifies abundantly in the coats of the hi:^patic ducts, enabling them to provide their mucous se- cretion : and supplies the vasa vasorum of the portal and hepa- tic veins, and the nutrient vessels of the entire organ. The hepatic veins commence in the centre of each lobule by minute radicles, which collect the impure blood from the lobu- lar venous plexus and convey it into the intralobular veins, and the sublobular veins unite to form the large hepatic trunks by which the blood is conveyed into the vena cava. The physiological deduction arising out of this anatomical arrangement is, that the bile is wJtolly secreted from venous blood, and not from a mixed, venous and arterial blood ; for al- though the portal vein receives its blood from two sources, viz. from the chylopoictic viscera and from the capillaries of the he- patic artery, yet the very fact of the blood of the latter vessel having passed through its capillaries into the portal vein, or in extremely small quantity into the capillary network of the lo- bular venus plexus, is sufficient to establish its venous charac- ter. The pathological deductions depend upon the following facts: Each lobule is a perfect gland, of uniform structure, of uniform color, and possessing the same degree of vascularity through- out. It is the seat of a double venous circulation, the vessels of 20 298 • THE THOMSONIAN the one (hepatic) being situated in the centre of the Jobule, and those of the other (portal) in the circumference. Now the co- lor of the lobule, as of the entire liver, depends chiefly upon the proportion of blood contained in these two sets of vessels ; and so ionor as the circulation is natural, the color will be uniform. But the instant that any cause is developed which shall inter- fere with the free circulation of either, there will be an imme- diate diversity in the color of the lobule. Thus, if there be any impediment to the free circulation of the venous blood throuiih the heart or lungs, the circulation in the hepatic veins will he retarded, and the sublobular and the intralobular veins will become congested, giving rise to a more or less extensive redness in the centre of each of the lobules, while the marginal or non-congested portion presents a distinct border of a yellowish white, yellow, or green color, according to the quantity and quality of the bile it may contain. This is passive congestion of the liver, the usual and natuial state of the organ alter death ; and, as it commences with the hepatic vein, it may be called the first stage of hepatic venous conges- tion. But if the causes which produced this state of congestion continue, or be from the beginning of a more active kind, the congestion will extend through the lobular venous plexuses in- to those branches of the portal vein situated in the ivlcrlohvlar Jissures, but not to those in the sjmces, which, being larger, and giving origin to those in the fissures, are the last lo be con- gested. In tills second stage, the liver has a mottled appear- ance ; the noncon^ested substance is arranged in isolated, cir- cular, and ramose patches, in the centres of which the spaces and parts of the fissures are seen. This is an extended degree of hepatic xenons congestion ; it is active congestion of the liver, and very commonly attends diseases of the heart and lungs. There is anotlier form of partial venous congestion, whicli commences in the portal vein ; this is, therefore, portal venous conen- viform, converging like the plumes of a pen to one side of a tendon which runs the whole length of the muscle, as in the peronei; or bipenniform, converging to both sides of the ten- don. In other muscles, the fibres pass obliquely from the sur- face of a tendinous expansion spread out on one side, to that of another extended on the opposite side, as in the semimembra- nosus ; or they are composed of penniform or bipenniform fas- ciculi, as in the deltoid, and constitute a compound muscle. The nomenclature of the muscles is defective and confused, and is generally derived from some prominent character which each muscle presents. Thus, some are named from their situ- MATERIA MEDICA. 335 aiion. as the tibialis, peroneus; others from their uses, as the flexors, extensors, adductors, abductors, levators, tensors, &c. Some again from their form, as the trapezius, triangularis, del- toid, &c. : and otiiers from their direction, as the rectus, ob- liquus, transversalis, etc. Some have received names expres- sive of their attachments, as the sterno-mastoid, sterno-hyoid, &c. ; and others of their divisions, as the biceps, triceps, digas- tricus, complexus, 6cc. In the description of a muscle, we express its attachment by the words origin and insertion. The term origin is generally applied to the more fixed or central attachment, or to the point towards which the motion is directed, while insertion is assign- ed to the more movable point, or to that most distant from the centre; but there are many exceptions to this principle, and as many muscles pull equally by both extremities, the use of such terms must be rejjarded as purely arbitrary. In structure, muscle is composed of bundles of fibres of va- riable size called fasciculi, and is enclosed in a cellular mem- branous investment or sheath, M'hich is continuous with the cellular frame work of the fibres. Each fasciculus is compos- ed of a number of smaller bundles, and these of single fibres, which from their minute size and independent appearance have been distinguished by the name of ultimate fibres. The nlti- mate fibre is found by microscopic investigation to be itself made up of a number of ultimate fibrils, enclosed in a delicate sheath, or myolema. Two kinds of ultimate muscular fibres ex- ist in the animal economy, viz. that of voluntary or animal life, and that of involuntary or organic life. Tb.Q fibre of animal life is recognized from being marked by transverse and slio-htly waving striae ; while the fibre of or- ganic life is known by the negative character of an absence of transverse strise. The ultimate fibrils are minute, beaded or varicose filaments in the fibre of animal life, and cylindrical and uniform in the organic fibre. Muscles are divided into two orreat classes, voluntary and in- voluntary, to which may be added as an intermediate and con- necting link, the muscle of the vascular system — the heart. The voluntary, or system of animal life, is developed from the external or serous layer of the germinal membrane, and comprehends the whole of ihe muscles of the limbs and of the trunk. The involuntary, or organic system, is developed from the internal or mucous layer, and constitutes the thin muscular structure of the intestinal canal, bladder, and internal organs of generation. At the commencement of the alimentary canal, in the Gjsophagus and near its termination in the rectum, the mus- cular coat is formed by a blending of the fibres of both classes. 336 THE THOiMSONIAN The heart is developed from the middle or vascular layer of the germinal membrane; and although involuntary in its action, is composed of ultimate fibres, having the transverse striae of the muscles of animal life. The muscles may be arranged in conformity with the gene- ral division of the body, into — 1. those of the head and neck •, 2. those of the trunk; 3. those of the upper extremity ; 4. those of the lower extremity. MUSCLES OF THE HEAD AND NECK. The muscles of the head and neck admit of a subdivision in- to those of the head and face, and those of the neck. Dissection. — The occipito-fronlalis is to be dissected by making a longitudinal incision along the vertex of the head^ from the tubercle on the occipital bone to the root of the nose, and a second incision along the forehead and around the side of the head, to join the two extremities of the preceding. Dis- sect the integument and superficial fascia carefully outwards, beginning at the anterior angle of the flap, where the muscular fibres are thickest, and remove it altogether. This dissection requires care ; for the muscle is very thin, and v.'ithout at- tention would be raised with the integument:. There is no deep fascia on the face and head, nor is it required ; for here the muscles are closely applied against the bones upon which they depend for support, whilst in the extremities the support is de- rived from the dense layer of fascia by which they are invested, and which forms for each a distinct sheath. The occipito-frontalis is a broad musculo-tendinous layer, which covers the whole of one side of the vertex of the skull, from the occiput to the eyebrow. It arises from the outer two thirds of the superior curved line of the occipital bone, and from the mastoid portion of the temporal, and is inserted into the or- bicularis palpebrarum muscle and nasal tuberosity of the frontal bone. The muscle is fleshy in front over the frontal bone, and behind over the oc^jpital, the two portions being connected by a broad aponeurosis. The two muscles cover the whole of the vertex of the skull, hence its designation [falea capitis. They are loosely adherent to the pericranium, but very closely to the integument, particularly over the forefiead. Action. — to raise the eyebrows, thereby throwing the integu- ment of the forehead into tranverse wrinkles. Siuie persons have the power of moving the entire scalp upon the pericranium by means of these muscles. Dissection. — The dissection of the face is to be effected by continuing the longitudinal incision of the vertex of the previ- ous dissection onwards to the tip of the nose, and tljence downwards to the margin of the upper lip; then ca' ly an inci- MATERIA MEDICA. 337 sion along the margin of the lip to the angle of the mouth, and transversely across the face to the meatus auditorius. Lastly, divide the integument in front of the external ear upwards to the transverse incision which was made for exposing the occi- pito frontalis. Dissect the integument and superficial fascia from tlie region included by these incisions, and the three next groups of muscles (see 4 on plate 20) will be brought into view. PLATE 26* Dissection. — To open the orbit, (pi. 27.) the calvarium and braui being removed, the frontal bone must be sawn through at the inner extremity of the orbital rido^e, and externally at its outer extremity. The roof of the orbit may then be con)minu- ted with the hammer, a process easily accomplished, on account of the thinness of the orbital plate of the frontal bone and lesser wing of the sphenoid. The superciliary portion of the orbit may now be driven forwards by a smart blow, and the broken • The Muscles of the Head and Face. — 1. The frontal portion of the occipi- to-frontalis. 2. Its occipital portion. 3. Its aponeurosis. 4. The orbicularis palpebrarum, which conceals the corrugator supercilii and tensor tarsi. 5. The pyramidalis nasi. 6. The compressor nasi. 7. The orbicularis oris. 8. The levator labii superioris alaeque nasi. 9. The levator labii superioris pro- prius; the lower part of the levator ansuli oris is seen between the muscles 10 and II. 10. The z3-gomaticns minor. 11. The z3-gomaticus major. 12. The depressor labii inferioris. 13. The depressor anguli oris. 14. The levator menti. 15. The superficial portion of the masseter. 16. Its deep portion. 17. The attrahens aurem. ]8. The buccinator. 19. Theattollens aurcm. 20. The temporal fascia which covers in the temporal jmuscle. 21. The retra- heus aurem. 22. The anterior belly of the digastricus muscle ; the tendon is seen passing through its aponeurotic pulley. 23, The stylo-hyoid muscle, pierced by the posterior belly of the digastricus. 24. The mylo-hyoideus muscle. 2.5. The upper part of the sternc-mastoid. 26. The upper part of the trapezius. S38 THE THOMSONIAN fragments of the roof of the orbit removed. The periosteum will then be exposed unbroken and undisturbed. Remove the periosteum from the whole of the upper surface of the exposed orbit, and the muscles may then be examined. Actions. — The levator palpebral raises the upper eyelid. The four recti, acting singly, pull the eyeball in the four directions of upwards, downwards, inwards, and outwards. Acting by- pairs, they carry the eyeball in the diagonal of these directions, viz. upwards and inwards, upwards and outwards, downwards and inwards, or downwards and outwards. Acting all togeth- er, they direcdy retract the globe within the orbit. The supe- rior oblique muscle acting alone, rolls the globe inwards and forwards, and carries the pupil outwards and downwards to the lower and outer angle of the orbit. The inferior oblique, act- ing alone, rolls the globe outwards and backwards, and carries the pupil outwards and upwards, to the upper and outer angle of the eye. Both muscles acting together, draw the eyeball for- wards, and give the pupil that slight degree of eversion which enables it to admit the largest field of vision. Dissection (for plate 28). — Make an incision along the upper border of the zigoma, for the purpose of separating the temporal fascia from its attachment. Then saw through the zygomatic process of the malar bone, and through the rnot of the zygoma, near to the meatus auditorius. Draw down the zygoma, and with it the origin of the masseter, and dissect the latter muscle away from the ramus and angle of the inferior maxilla. Now PLATE 27.* • The Muscles of the Eyeball— the view being taken from the outer side of the right orbit.— 1. A small fragment of the sphenoid bone around the entrance of the optic nerve into the orbit, 2. The optic nerve. 3. The globe of the eye. 4. The levator palpebral muscle. 5. The superior oblique muscle. 6. Its cartilaginous pulley. 7. Its reflected tenddn. 8. The inferior oblique muscle ; the small square knob at its commencement is a piece of its bony origin broken ofl'. 9. The superior rectus. 10. The external rectus, almost concealed by the optic nerve. 11. Part of the internal rectus, showing its two heads of origin. 12. The extremity of the external rectus at its insertion ; the intermediate portion of the muscle having been removed. 13. The inferior rectus. 14. The tunica albuginea.formed by the expansion of the tendons of the four recti. MATERIA MEDICA. 339 remove the temporal fascia from the rest of its attachment, and the whole of the temporal muscle will be exposed. Actions. — The maxillary miis- plate 28.* cles are the active agents in masti- cation, and form an apparatus beau- tifully fitted for that office. The buccinator circumscribes the cavity of the mouth, and with the aid of tlie tongue keeps the food under the immediate pressure of the teeth. By means of its connection with the su- perior constrictor it shortens the ca- vity of the pharynx, from before backwards, and becomes an important auxiliary in deglutition. The temporal, the masseter, and the internal pterygoid, are the bruising muscle's, drawing the lower jaw against the upper with great force. The two latter, by the obliquity of their direction, assist the external pterygoid in grinding the food, by carrying the lower jaw forward upon the upper; the jaw being brought back again by the deep portion of the masseter and posterior fibres of the temporal. The whole of these muscles, acting in succession produce a rotary movement of the teeth upon each other, which, with the direct action of the lower jaw against the i]pper, effects the proper mastication of the food. Dissections (for plate 29). — The dissection of the neck should be commenced by making an incision along the middle line of the neck from the chin to the sternum, and bounding it superi- orly and inferiorly by two transverse incisions, the superior one baing carried along the margin of the lower jaw, and across the mastoid process to the tubercle on the occipital bone, the inferi- or one along the clavicle to the acromion process. The square flap of integument thus included should be turned back from the entire side of the neck, which brings into view the superfi- cial fascia, and on the removal of a thin layer of superficial fas- cia the platysma myoides will be exposed. The sterno-hyoid, sterno-thyroid, thyro-hyoid and omo-hyoid muscles are brought into view by removing the deep fascia from off the front of the neck between the two sterno-mastoid mus- cles. The omo-hyoid, to be seen in its whole extent, requires that the sterno-mastoid muscle be divided from its origin and turned aside. Actions. — The sterno-mastoids are the great anterior muscles • The two Pterygoid Muscles. The zygomatic arch and the greater part of the ramus of the lower jaw have been removed, in order to bring these mus- cles into view. — 1. The spenoidal origin of the external pterygoid muscle. 2. Its pterygoid origin. 3. The internal pterygoid muscle. 340 THE THOMSONIAN of connection between the thorax and the head. Both muscles actino- together will bow the head directly forwards. The cla- vicular portions, acting more forcibly than the sternal, give sta- bility and steadiness to the head in supporting great weights. Either muscle acting singly would draw the head towards the shoulder of the same side, and carry the face towards the oppo- site side. Actions. — The sterno-hyoid. sterno-thyroid, thyro-hyoid and omo-hyoid, are the depressors of the os hyoides and larynx. The digastricus, the stylo, mylo, and genio hyoids, and the genio-hyo-glossus, act upon the os hyoides when the lower jaw is closed, and upon the lower jaw when the os hyoides is drawn downwards, and fixed by the depressors of the os hyoides and larynx. PLATE 29.* • Tha Muscles of the anterior aspect of the Neck. — On the left side the su- perficial muscles are seen, and on the right the deep. 1. The posterior belly of the digastricus muscle. 2. Its anterior belly. The aponeurotic pulley, through which its tendon is seen passing, is attached to tlie body of the os hyoides (3). 4. The stylo-hyoideiis muscle, transfixed by the posteror belly of the digastricus. 5. The mylo-liyoideus. G. The genio-hyoideus. 7. The tongue. .S. The hyo-glossus. 9. The stylo-glossus. 10. The styio-pharyn- geus. 11. The sterno-mastoid muscle. 12. Its sternal origin. 13. Us clavi- cular origin. 14. The sterno-hyoid. 1-5. The sterno-thyroid of the right side. 16. The thyro hyoid. 17. The hyoid portion of the onio-liyoid. IS, 18. Its scapular portion; on the left side the tendon of the muscle is seen to be hound down by a portion of the deep cervical fascia. 19. The clavicular portion of the trapezius. 20. The scalenus anticus of the right side. 21. The scalenus posticus. MATERIA MEDICA. 341 Dissection (for plate 30.)— The digastncus, slylo hyoid, my- lo-hyoid. crenio-hyoid and jjenio-hyo-glossus, are best dissected by placing a high block beneath the neck, and throwmg the head backwards. The integument has aheady been dissected away, and the removal of the cellular tissue and fat brmgs them clearly into view. Ac'lions.— The ^enio-hvo-glossus muscle eflects several movements of the tongue, as might be expected from its extent. When the tongue is steadied and pointed by the other muscles, the posterior fibres of the genio-hyo-glossus would dart it from the mouth, wlnle its anterior fibres would restore it to its origi- nal position. The whole length of the muscle acting upon the tongue, would render it concave along the middle line, and form a channel for the current of fluid towards the pharynx, as in sucking. The apex of the tongue is directed to the roof of the mouth, and rendered convex from before backwards by the hnguales. The hyo-glossi, by drawing down the sides of the PLATE 30.* • The Styloid Muscles, and the Muscles of ike Tongue. — 1. A portion of the lemporal bone of the left side of the skull, including the styloid and mastoid processes, and meatus auditorius externus. 2, 2. The right side of the lower jaw, divided at its symphysis, tlie left side having been removed. ^ '^'■" tongue. 4. The genio-hyoideus muscle. 5. The genio-hyo-glossus. 3. The tongue. 4. i lie genio-liyoideus muscle. 0. lUe genio-tiyo-glossus. 6. The hyo-glossus muscle — its basio-glcssu8 portion. 7. Its cerato-glossus portion. 8. The anterior fibres of the lingualis, issuing from between the hyo-glossus and genio-hyo-glcssus. 9. The stylo-glossus muscle, v^ith a small portion of the stylo-maxillary ligament. 10. T!i* stylo-hyoid. 11. The stylo-pharynge- us muscle. 12. The oshyoides. 13. The thyro-hyoidean membrane. 14.Th« thyroid cartiUlge. 15. The thjTO-hyoideus muscle, arising from the oblique line on the thyroid cartilage. 16. The cricoid cartilage. 17. The crico-tliy- toidean membrane, through which the operation of laryngotomy is performed^ 18. The trachea. 19. The commencement of the eesophagus. 342 THE THOMSON I AN tonofae, render it convex along the middle line. It is drnwn upwards at its base by the palato-glossi, and backwards or to either side by the stylo-glossi. Thus the whole of the compli- cated movements of tlie tongue may be explained, by reasoning upon the direction of the fibres of the muscles, and their proba- ble actions. Dissection (for plate 31). — To dissect the pharynx, the tra- chea and oesophagus are to be cut through at the lower part of the neck, and drawn upwards by dividing the loose cellular tis- sue which connects the pharynx to the vertebral column. The saw is then to be applied behind the styloid processes, and the base of the skull sawn through. The vessels and loose struc- tures should be removed from the preparation, and the pharynx stuffed with tow or wool, for the purpose of distending it, and rendering the muscles more easy of dissection. Actions. — The three constrictor muscles contract upon the morsel of food as soon as it is received by the pharynx, and convey it gradually downwards into the oesophagus. The sty- lo-pharyngei draw the pharynx upwards, and widen it laterally. The palato-pharyngei also draw it upwards, and narrov/ the opening of the fauces. PLATE 31*. • A Side Vuv of the Muscles of the Pharynx. — 1. The trachea. 2. The cri- coid cartilage. 3. The crico-thyroid piembrane. 4. The thyroid cartilage. 5. The thyro-hyoidean membrane. 6. The os hyoides. 7. The stylo-hyoid- ean ligament. 8. The oesophagus. 9. The inferior constrictor. 10. The middle constrictor. 11. The superior constrictor. 12. The stylo-pharyneeus muscle passing down between the superior and middle constrictor. 13. The upper concave border of the superior constrictor ; at this point the muscular fibres of the pharynx are deficient. 14. The pterygo-maxillary ligament. 15. The buccinator muscle. 16. The orbicularis oris 17. The mylo-hyoideug. MATERIA MEDICA. 343 Dissection (for plate 32).— To plate 32*. examine these muscles, the pha- rynx must be opened from behind, and the mucous membrane care- fully removed from off the poste- rior surface of the soft palate. The levator palati muscle must be tur- ned down from its orii^in on one side and removed, and the superi- or constrictor dissected away from its pterygoid origin, to bring the tensor palati into view. Actions. — The levator palati raises the soft palate, while the tensor spreads it out laterally so as to form a septum between the pharynx and posterior nares during deglutition. The palato- glossus and pharyngeus constrict the opening of the fauces, and by drawing dowM the soft palate they serve to press the mass of food from the dorsum of the tongue into the pharynx. Dissection (for plate 33). — The muscles have already been exposed, by the removal of the face from the anterior aspect of the vertebral column. Actions. — The rectos anticus major and minor preserve the equilibrium of the head upon the atlas; and, acting conjointly with the longus colli, they flex and rotate the head and the cer- vical portion of the vertebral column. The scaleni muscles, taking their fixed point from below, are flexors of the vertebral column ; and, from above, elevators of the ribs, and therefore inspiratory muscles. * The Muscles of the Soft Palate. — 1. A transverse section through the mid- dle of the base of the skull, dividing the basilar process of the occipital bone in the middle line, and the petrous portion of the temporal bone at each side. 2. The vomer, covered by mucous membrane and separating the two posteri- or nares. 3, 3. The Eustachian tubes. 4. The levator palati muscle of the left side ; the risht has been removed. 5. The hamular process of the inter- nal pterygoid-plate of the left side, around which the aponeurosis of the tensor palali is seen turning. 6. The pterygo-maxillary ligament. 7. The superior constrictor muscle of the left side, turned aside. 8. The azygos uvulae mus- cle. 9. The internal pterygoid plate. 10. The external pterygoid plate. 11. The tensor palati nauscle. 12. Its aponeurosis, expanding in the structure of the soft palate. 13. The external pterygoid muscle. 14. The attachments of two pairs of muscles cut short. The superior pair belong to the genio-hyo- glossi muscles; the inferior pair to the genio-hyoidei. 15. The attachment of the mylo-hyoideus of one side and part of the opposite. 16. The anterior attachments of the digastric muscles. 17. The depression on the lower jaw, corresponding with the submaxillary gland. The depression above the mylo- hyoideus on which the number 15 rest corresponds with the sublingual gland. 344 THE TH0M30NIAN PLATE 33.* Dlsseciioiis (for plates 33 and 34).— The muscles of tiie first layer are to be dissected by making an incision along the mid- dle line of the back, from the tubercle on the occipital bone to tlie coccyx. From the upper point of this incision, carry a se- cond along the side of the neck, to the middle of the clavicle, Inferiorly, an incision must be m.ade from the extremity of the sacrum, along the crest of the ileum, to about its middle. For convenience of dissection, a fourth may be carried from the middle of the spine to the acromion process. The integument and superficial fascia, together, are to de dissected off the mus- cles, in the course of their fibres, over the whole of this region. The second layer is brought into view by dividing the two preceding muscles, near to their insertion, and turning them to the opposite side. The third layer consists of muscles which arise from the spi- nous processes of ttie vertebral column, and pass outwards. It is brought into view by dividing the levator anguli scapulae near its insertion, and reflecting the two rhomboid muscles up- wards froui their insertion into the scapula, and removing them altofrether. • The Pravcrtehral Group of Muscles of the Neck. — 1. The rectus anticus major muscle. 2. The scalenus anticus. 3. The lower part of the longus colli of the light side ; it is concealed superiorly by the rectus anticus major. 4. The rectus anticus minor. 5. The upper portion of the longus colli muscle. 6. Its lower portion ; the figure rests upon the seventh cervical vertebra. 7. The scalenus posticus. 8. The rectus lateralis of the lef side.t 9, Oae of the intertransversalis muscles. I MATERIA MEDICA. 345 B The two serrati and two splenii must be removed by cuttin£r them away from their origins and insertions, to bring the fourth ?ayer into view. PLATE 31* * Tke Urst and secend, and part of the third lay-er of Muscles of the Back; Wit first layer being showa upon the right, and the second on the left side. — i I. The trapezius muscle. 2. The tendinous portion, which, with a corres- ponding portion in th€ opposite muscle, fonns the tendinous ellipse on the back of the neck. 2. The acromion process and spine of the scapula. 4. The lalissimus dorsi muscle. 5. The deltoid. 6. The muscles of the dorsum of the ■scapula, iiifra-spinatus, teres minor and teres major. 7, The external oblique muscle. 8. The gluteus medius. 9. The glutei maximi. 10. The lavator an- guli scapulae. 11. The rhomboideus minor. 12. The rhomboiJeus major. 13. The splenius capitis; the muscle immediately above and overlaid by the sple- nius. is the complexus. 14. The splenius colli only parliully seen ; the common origin of the splenius is seen attached to the spinous processes below the low- er border of the rhomboideus major. 15. The verte'bral -aponeurosis. 16. The serralus posticus inferior. 17. The supra-spinatus muscle, IS. The infra-spi- nalus. 19. The teres minor muscle 20. Tlie teres major. 21. The long head of the triceps, passing between the teres minor and major to the upper arm. .■22. The serratus maguus, proceeding forwards from its origin at the base of Che •scapuliu i23-. The iEternal oblique m\i«cle. S3 346 THE THOMSONIAN The muscles of the preceding Inyer are to be removed by dividing them transversely through the middle, and turning* one extremity upwards, the other downwards. In this way the whole of the muscles of the Ibiirth layer may be g-ot rid of, and the remaining muscles of the spine brought into a state to be examined. The semi-spinales muscles must both be removed to obtain a good view of the multitidas spinse which lies beneath them, and fills up the concavity between the spinous and transverse pro- cesses, the whole length of the vertebral column. Plate 35.* * The fourth and fifth and fart of the sixth layer of the Muscles of the Back •1. The common origin of the erector spinae muscle. 2. The sacro-lumbalis. 3. The longissimus dorsi. 4. The spinalis dorsi. 5. The cervicaiis ascend- ens. 6. The transversalis colli. 7. The Irachelo-mastoideus. :S. The com- plexus. 9. The transversalis colli, showing its origin. 10. The semispinnlis dorii. 11. The semispinalis colli. 12. Tlie rectus posticus minor. 13. The rectus posticus major. 14. The obliquus superior. 15. The obliquus inferior. 16. The multihdus spinae. 17 The levatores costarum. 18. lutertransver- sales. 19. The quadratus lumborum. MATERIA MEDICA. 347 Actions. — The upper fibres of the trapezius draw the shoul- der upwards and backwards ; the middle fibres, directly back- wards ; and the lower, downwards and backwards. The lower fidres also act by producing rotation of the scapula upon the chest. If the shoulder be fixed the upper fibres will flex the spine towards the corresponding side. The latissimus dorsi is a muscle of the arm, drawing it backwards and downwards, and at the same time rotating it inwards; if the arm be fixed, tile latissimus dorsi will draw the spine to that side, and rais- ing the lower ribs be an inspiratory muscle ; and if both arms be fixed, the two muscles will draw the whole trunk forwards, as in climbing or walking on crutches. The levator anguli scapulas lifts the upper angle of the scapula, and with it the entire shoulder, and the rhomboidei carry the scapula and shoulder upwards and backwards. The serrati are respiratory muscles acting in opposition to each other — the serratus posticus superior, drawing the ribs upwards, and thereby expanding the chest ; and ihe inferioi', drawing the lower ribs downwards and diminishing the cavity of the chest. The former is an inspiratory, the latter an expi- ratory muscle. The splenii muscles of one side draw the ver- tebral column backwards and to one side, and rotate the head towards the corresponding shoulder. The muscles of opposite sides acting together, will draw the head directly backwards. They are the natural antagonists of the sterno-mastoid mus- cles. The sacro-lumbalis, with its accessory muscle, the lonfi^- simus dorsi and spinalis dorsi, are known by the general term oi erector spine, which sufficiently expresses their actions. They keep the spine supported in the vertical position by their broad origin from below, and by m.eans of their insertion by distinct tendons into the ribs and spinous processes. Being made up of a number of distinct fasciculi, which alternate in their ac- tions, the spine is kept erect without fatigue, even when they have to counterbalance a corpulent abdominal developement. The continuations upwards of these muscles into the neck preserve the steadiness and uprightness of that region. When the muscles of one side act alone, the neck is rotated upon its axis. The complexus, by being attached to the occipital bone draws the head backwards, and counteracts the muscles on the anterior part of the neck. It assists also in the rotation of the head. The semi-spinales and inultifidus spine muscles act directly on the vertebrae, and contribute to the general action of sup- porting the vertebral column erect. The four little muscles situated between the occiput and the two first vertebrce, effect the various movements between these 348 THE THOMSONIAr? * The Muscles of the ^interior ^-Is/jcct of the Trunk. — On the left side the superficial layer is seen, and on the right the deeper layer. 1. The peclora- Jis major muscle. 2. The deltoid ; the interval between these muscles lod?es the cephalic vein. 3. The anterior border of the latissimus dorsi. 4. The serrations of the serratus magnus. 5. The subclavius muscle of the rig^ht side. 6. The pectoralis minor. 7. The coraco-brachialis muscle, 8. The upper part of the biceps muscle, showing its Wo heads. 9. The coracoid process of the scapula. 10. The serratus magnus of the right side. 11. The external intercostal muscle of the fifth intercostal space. 12. The external oblique muscle. 13. Its aponeurosis, the median line to the right of this number is the linea alba ; the fiexuous line to its left is the linea semilunaris ; and the transverse lines above and below the number, the lina; transverste of wliich there v/e.re only three in this subject. 14. Poupart's ligament. 13. The external abdominal ring ; the margin above (he ring is the superior or internal pillar ; the margin below the ring, the inferior or external pillar; the curved intercolumnar fibres are seen proceeding upwards from Poupart's lisament to strengthen the ring. The numbers 14 and \h are situ- ated upon the fascia lata of the thigh; the opening immediately to the right of 15 is the saphenous openin?. 1(5. The rectus muscle of the right side, brought into view by the removal of the anterior segment of its sheath ; the posterior segment of its sheath with the divided edge of the anterior segment. IT. The pyramidalis muscle. IS. The internal oblique muscle. 19. The con- joined tendon of the internal oblique and transVersaiis, descending behind Poupart's ligament to the pectineal line. 20. The arch formed between the lower curved border of the internal oblique and Poupart's ligament ; it is be neatli tMs arch that the spermatic cord and hernia pass- MATERIA MEDICA, 349 bones; the recti prodncinjr the antero-posterior actions, and the ohllqai the rotatory" motions of tlie atlas on the axis. The aclionsofthe remaining niusclesof the spine, -the supra and inter-spinales and intertrausversales are expressed in their names. The intercostal muscles raise tlic ribs when they act from above, and depress them when they take their fixed point from foelow. They are, therefore, botn inspiratory and expiratory muscles. [The preceding- dissection and action includes plate 36.] PLATE 37.* * Lateral View of the Trunk of the Body, showing its muscles, and particu- larly the transversalis abdominis. — 1. The costal origin of the latissimus dor- si muscle. 2. The serratus mas^nus. 3. The upper part of the external ob- lique muscle, divided in the direction best calculated to show the muscles be- neath without interfering with its digitations with the serratus magnus. 4. Two of the external intercostal muscles. 5. Two of the internal intercostals. »). The transversalis muscle. 7. Its posterior aponeurosis. S. Its anterior aponeurosis, formina; the posterior boundary of the sheath of the rectus. 9. The lower part, of the left rectus, with tiie tipoueurosis of the transversalis .passing ia front. 39. The riglit ieetus muscle. 11. Th^e arched opening left betvv^eeui the lower border nf th(3 tranavcrsalis muscle and Poupart's ligament, through which the spermatic cord and hernia pass. 12. The gluteous maxi- mus, attd medius, and tensor vagince feraoris muscles invested by fascia lata. 350 THE THOMSONIAN Dissection (for plate 37), — The dissection of the abdominal muscles is to be commenced by making three incisions : — The first, vertical, in the middle line, from over the lower part of the sternum to the pubes ; the second, ohliqve^ from umbilicus, upwards and outwards, to the outer side of the chest, as high as the fifth or sixth rib ; and third, obliqve, from the umbilicus, downwards and outwards, to the middle of the crest of the ilium. The three flaps included by these incisions should theu be dissected back in the direction of the fibres of the ex- ternal oblique muscle, beginning at the angle of each. The integument and superficial fascia should be dissected off to- gether so as to expose the fibres of the muscle at once. If the external oblique muscle be dissected on both sides, a white tendinous line will be seen alon^ the middle of the abdo- men, extending from the ensiform cartilage to the pubis : this is the linea alba. A little external to it, on each side, two curved lines will be observed extending from the sides of the chest ta tire pubis, and bounding the recti muscles : these are the linem semilunar es. Some transverse lines, lineee transversal, three or four in number, connect the lincce semilunares with the li- nea alba. The external oblique is now to be removed by making an in- cision across the ribs, just below its origin, to its posterior bor- der, and another along Poupart's ligament and the crest of the ilium. Poupart's ligament should be left entire, as it gives at- tachment to the next muscles. The muscle may then be turn- ed forwards towards the linea alba, or removed altogether. The internal oblique muscle is to be removed by separating it from its attachment to the ribs above, and to the crest of the ilium, and Poupart's ligament below. It should be divided be- hind by a vertical incision extending from the last rib to the crest of the ilium, as its lumbar attachment cannot at present be exa- mined. The muscle is then to be turned forwards. Care will be required in performing this dissection, from the difficulty of dis- tinguishing between this muscle and the one beneath. A thia layer of cellular tissue is all that separates them for the greater part of their extent. Near the crest of the ilium the circum- flex ilii artery ascends between the two muscles, and forms a valuable guide to their separation. Just above Poupart's lig- ament they are so closly connected that it is impossible to~ di- vide them. To dissect the rectus muscle, the sheath should be opened by a vertical incision extending from over the cartilages of the lower ribs to the front of the pubis. The sheath may then be dissected off and turned to either side : this is easily done ex- cepting at the linese transversac, where a close adhesion subsists MATERIA MEDICA. 351 between the muscle and the external boundary of the sheath. The sheath contains the rectus and pyrimadahs muscles. The rectus may now be divided across the middle, and the two ends drawn aside for the purpose of examining the mode of formation of its sheath. The two next muscles can only be examined when the whole of the viscera are removed. To see thequadratus lumborum, It is also necessary to divide and draw aside the psoas muscle and the anterior lamella of the aponeurosis of the transversalis. To obtain a good view of tlie diaphragm, the peritoneum should be dissected from its under surface. PLATF 3S-* r^-^ * Tlie under or abdominal side of the Diaphragm.. — 1, 2, 3. The greater muscle ; the ligure 1 rests upon the central leaflet ol' the tendinous centre ; the number 2 on the left or smallest, and number 3 on the right leaflet. 4. The thin fasciculus which arises from the ensiform cartilage ; a small triangular space is left on either side of this I'asciculus, which is completed only by the se- rous membranes of the abdomen and chest. 5. The ligamentum arcuatum ex- ternum of the left side. (J. The ligamentum arcuatum internum. 7. A small arched opening occasionally found, tlirough which the lesser splanchnic nerve passes- 8. The right or larger tendon of the lesser niuscle; a muscular fasci- cuius from this tendon curves to the left side of the greater muscle, between the oesophageal and aorfic openings. 9. The fourth lumbar vertebra. 10. The left or shorter tendon of tlie lesser muscle. 11. The aortic opening through which the aorta is seen issuing. 12. A portion of the (Esophagus is- suing through the oesophageal opening. 13. The opening for the inferior ve- na cava, in the tendinous centre of the diaphragm. 14. The psoas magnus muscle passin? beneath the ligamentum arcuatum internum ; it has been re- moved on the opposite side, to show the arch more distinctly. 15. The quad- ratus lumborum passing beneath the ligamentum arcuatum externum ; this muscle has also been removed on the left side. IG. lutertransversales mus- cles. 352 THE THOMSONIAN Actions. — The externa) obliqne mnscle, acting singly, vfordd draw the thorax towards the pelvis, and twist the body to the- opposite side. Both muscles, acting together, would flex the- thorax directly on the pelvis. Tiie internal oblique of one side draws the chest downwards and outwards : both together bend it directly forwards. Either transversalis muscle, acting singly, will diminish the size of the abdomen on its own s-ide, and both together will constrict the entire cylinder of the cavity. The recti muscles, assisted by the pyramidales, flex the thorax upon tire chest, and, through the medium of the lineas transversas, are enabled to act when their sheath is curved inwards by the action of the transversales. The pyramidales are tensors of the hnea alba. The abdominal are expiratory muscles, and the chief agents of expulsion ; by their action the fostus is expelled from the uterus, the urine from the bladder, the faeces from the rectum, the bile from the gall-bladder, the ingesta from the slo- maci'i and bowels in vomiting, and the mucous and irritating substances from the bronchial tubes, trachea, and nasal passa- ges, during couching and sneezing. To produce these efforts they all act together. Their violent and continued action pro- duces hernia ; and, actins" spasmodically, they may occasion rupture of the viscera. The quadratus lumborum draws the last rib downwards, and is an expiratory muscle ; it also serves to bend the vertebral cohimn to one or the other side. The psoas parvus is a tensor of the iliac fascia, and, taking its fixed origin from below, it may assist in flexing the vertebral columri forwards. The diaphragm is an inspiratory muscle, and the sole agent in tranquil inspiration. When in action, the muscle is drawn downwards, its plane being rendered oblique from the level of the ensiform cartilage, to the upper hmibar vertebras. During relaxation it is convex, and encroaches considerably on the cavity of the chest, particularly at the sides, where it cor- responds with the lungs. It assists the abdominal muscles pow- erfully in expulsion, every act of that kind being preceded or accompanied by a deep inspiration. Spasmodic action of the diaphragm produces hiccough and sobbing, and its rapid alter- nation of contraction and relaxation, combined with laryngeal and fascial movements, laughing and crying. Muscles of the Perineum. The muscles of the perineum are situated in the outlet of the pelvis, and consist of two groups, one of which belongs espe- cially to the organs of generation and urethra, the other to the termination of the alimentary canal. To these mny be added, the only pair of muscles which is proper to the pelvis, the coc~ cygeus. The muscles oi this region in the male, are, the MATERIA MEDICA. 333 Accelerator nrinse, Erector penis, TransversLis perinei, Compressor urethree, Spincter ani, Levator ani, Coccygens. Dissection (for plate 39). — To dissect the perineum, the sub- ject should be fixed in the position for lithotomy, that is, the hands should be bound to the soles of the feet, and the knees kept apart. An easier plan is the drawing of the feet upwards by means of a cord passed through a hook in the ceiling. Both of these means of preparation have for their object the full ex- posure of the perineum. And as this is a dissection which de- mands some degree of delicacy and nice manipulation, a strong light should be thrown upon the part. Having fixed the sub- ject, and drawn the scrotum upwards by means of a string or hook, carry an incision from the base of the scrotum along the ramus of the pubis and ischium and tuberosity of the ischium, to a point parallel with the apex of the coccyx ; then describe a curve over the coccyx to the same point on the opposite side, and continue the incision onwards along the opposite tuberosity, PLATE 39.* * The Muscles of the Perineum.. — 1. The accelleratores urinas muscles j Ihs figure rests upon the corpus spongiosum penis. 2. The corpus cavernosum of one side. 3. The erector penis of one side. 4. The transversus perinei of one side. .5. The triangular space ihrougli Mhich the deep perineal fascia is seen. 6- The spliincter ani ; its anterior extremity is cut off. 7. The levator ani of the left side ; the large space between the tuberosity of the iscliium (8) and the anus, is the ischio-rectal fossa; the same fossa is seen upon the oppo- site side. 9. The spine of the ischium. 10. The left cocygeus muscle. T!i€ boundaries of the perineum are well seen in this engraving. 354 THE THOMSONIAN and ramus of the ischium, and ramus of the pubis, to the op- posite side of the scrotum, where the two extremities may be connected by a transv^erse incision. This incision will com- pletely surround the perineum, following very nearly the out- line of its boundaries. Now let the student dissect off the in- tegument carefully from the whole of the included space, and he will expose the fatty cellular structure of the common su- perficial fascia, which exactly resembles the superficial fascia in every other situation. The common superficial fascia is then to be rmoved to the same extent, exposing the superficial perineal fascia. This layer is also to be turned aside, when the muscles of the genital region of the perineum will be brought into view. Part of the levator ani majr be seen during the dissection of the anal portion of the perineum by removing the fat which surrounds the termination of the rectum. But to study the en- tire muscle, a lateral section of the pelvis must be made by saw- ing througii the pubis a little to one side of the symphysis, se- parating the bones behind at the sacro iliac symphysis, and turning down the bladder and rectum. The pelvic fascia is then to be carefully raised, beginning at the base of the bladder and proceeding upwards, until the whole extent of the muscle is exposed. In the female this muscle is inserted into the coccyx and fi- brous raphe — extremity of the rectum and vagina. The muscles of the perineum in the female are the same as in the male, and have received analagous names. They are smaller in size, and are modified lo suit the different form of the organs. Actions. — The acceleratores urinse being continuous at the middle line, and attached on each side to the bone, by means of their posterior fibres will support the bulbous portion of the urethra, and acting suddenly will propel the semen or the last drops of urine from the canal. The middle and posterior fi- bres, according to Krause, contribute towards the erection of the corpus spongiosum, by producing compression upon the venous structure of the bulb, and the anterior fibres, according to Tyr- rell, assist in the erection of the entire organ, by compressing the vena dorsalis, by means of their insertion into the fascia pe- nis. The erector penis becomes entitled to its name from spreading out upon the dorsum of theoro-an into a membranous expansion (fascia penis) which, according to Krause, compress- es the dorsal vein during the action of the muscle, and espe- cially after the erection of the orsan has commenced. The transverse muscles serve to steady the tendinous center, that the muscles attached to it may obtain a firm point of support. Ac- cording to Cruveilhier, they draw the anus backwards during MATERIA MEDICA. 355 the expulsion of the faeces, and antagonise the levatores ani which carry the anus forwards. The compressor urethrse tak- ing its fixed point from the ramus of the ischium at each side, can, says Mr. Guthrie, " compress the urethra so as to close it; I conceiv^e completely, after the manner of a sphincter." The transverse portion will also have a tendency to dra\y the ure- thra downwards, whilst the perpendicular portion will draw it upwards towards the pubis. The inferior fasciculus of the transverse muscle, enclosing Cowper's glands, will assist those bodies in evacuating their secretion. The external sphincter being a cutaneous muscle contracts the integument aiound the anus, and by its attachment to the tendinous centre, and to the point of the coccyx, assists the levator am in giving support to the opening din-ing expulsive eflbrts. the internal sphincter contracts the extremity of the cylinder of the intestine. The use of the levator ani is expressed in its name. It is the antag- onist of the diaphragm and the rest of the expulsory muscles, and serves to support the rectum and vagina during their ex- pulsive efforts. The levator ani acts in unison with the dia- phragm, and rises and falls like that muscle in forcible respira- tion. Yielding to the propulsive action of the abdominal mus- cles, it enables the outlet of the pelvis to bear a greater force than a resisting structure, and on the remission of such actions, it restores the perineum to its original form. The coccygei muscles restore the coccyx to its natural position, after it has been pressed backwards during defecation or during parturition. MUSCLES OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY. Dissection. — Make an incision along the line of the clavicle- from the upper part of the sternum to the acromion process ; a second along the lower border of the s^reat pectoral muscle, from the lower end of the sternum to the insertion of its ten- don into the humerus ; and connect the two by a third, carried longitudinally along the middle of the sternum. The inte- gument and superficial fascia are to be dissected together from off the fibres of the muscle, and always in the direction of their course. For this purpose the dissector, if he have the right arm, will commence with the lower angle of the flap; if the left, with the upper angle. He will thus expose the pectoralis major mascle in its whole extent. Actions. — The pectoralis major draws the arm against the thorax, while its upper fibres assist the upper part of the trap- ezius in raising the shoulder, as in supporting weight. The lower fibres depress the shoulder with the aid of the latissimus dorsi. Taking its fixed point from the shoulder, the pectoralis major assists the pectoralis minor, subclavius, aud serratus mag* 356 THE THOMSONIAN nus, in drawins: up and expanding the chest. The pectoralia minor, in addition to this action, draws upon the coracoid pro- cess, and assists in rotating- the scapula upon the chest. The subclavins draws the clavicle downwards and lorwards, and thereby assists in steadying the shoulder. All the muscles of this group are agents in forced respiration, but are unable to act until the shoulders be fixed. The serratus magnus is the great external inspiratory mus- cle, raising the ribs when the shoulders are fixed, and thereby increasing the cavity of the chest. Acting upon the scapula, it draws the shoulder forwards, as we see to be the case in diseas- ed lungs, where the chest has become almost fixed from appre- hension of the expanding action of the respiratory muscles. The subscapularis rotates the head of the humerus inwards, and is a powerful defence to the joint. When the arm is rais- ed, it draws the Immeris downwards. PLATE 40.* Dissection (for plate 40). — The co- raco-brachialis, biceps, and brachialis anticus are exposed on the removal of the integument and fascia from the an- terior half of the upper arm, and clear- ing away the cellular tissue. Actions. — The coraco-brachialis draws the humeris inwards, and assists in flex- ing it upon the scapula. The biceps and brachialis anticus are flexors of the fore arm, and the former a supinator. The brachialis anticus is a powerful protec- tion to the elbow joint. * Thp. Muscles of the anterior aspect of the Upper Jrm. — 1. The coracoid process of the scapula. 2. tlie coraco-clavicular ligament (trapeziod) passing upwards to the scapular end of the clavicle. 3. The coraco-acromial ligament passing outwards to the acromion. 4. The subscapularis muscle. 5. The teres major. 6. The coraco-brachialis. 7. The biceps. 8. The upper end of the radius. 9. The brachialis anticus. 10. The internal head of the triceps. n. Its external head. 12. A part of the third, or middle head. 13. The su- pinator longus muscle cut off. MATERIA MEDICA. 357 Difisection (for plate 41). — Remove the integument and fas cia from the posterior aspect of the upper arm. Actio7i. — The triceps is an extensor of the fore arm. Dissection (for plate 42). — These muscles are seen by ma- kinjr an incision throuoh the integument alonjr the middle line PLATE 41. PLATE 42.t * A Posterior View of the Upper Arm, showing the Triceps Muscle. — 1. Its external head. 2. Its long, oi- scapular liead. 3. Its internal, or short head. 4. The olecranon process of the ulna. 5. the radius. 6. The capsular liga- ment of the shoulder joint. t A Superficial Layer of Muscles of the Fore Arm. — 1. Tlie lower part ot' the biceps, with its tendon. 2. A part of the brachialis amicus, seen beneath the biceps. 3. A part of the triceps. 4. The pronator radii teres. 5. The flexor carpi radialis. G. The palmaris longns. 7. One cf the fasciculi of the flexor sublimis digitorum ; the rest of the mnsde is seen beneath the tendons of the palmaris longus and flexor carpi radialis. 8. The flexor carpi ulnaris- 9. The palmar fascia. 10. The palmaris breris muscle. 11. The abductor pollicis muscle. 12. One portion of the flexor brevis pollicis. 13. The supi- nator longus muscle. 14. The extensor ossis metacarpi, and primi iaternodii pollicis, curving around the lower border of the fore arm. 358 THE THOMSONIAN. of the fore arm, crossinof each extremity by a transverse incision, and turning aside the tiaps. The superficial and deep fascia are then to be removed. Dissection Jfor plaie 43). — This group is brought into view by removing the flexor subhmis, and drawing aside the prona- tor radii teres. Actions. — The pronator radii teres and pronator quadratus PLATE 43.* PLATE 44.t * The Deep Layer of Muscles of the ForeJlrm. — 1. Internal lateral ligament t)f the elbow joint. 2. The anterior ligament. 3. The orbicular ligament of the head of the radius. 4. The flexor profundus digitorum muscle. 5. The flexor lonsus polUcis. 6. The pronator quadratus. 7. The abductor poUicis muscle. 8. The dorsal interosseous muscle of the middle finger, and palmar interosseous of the ring finger. 9. The dorsal interosseous muscle of the rin^ finger, and palmer interosseous of the little finger. t The Superficiai Layer of Muscles on the Posterior Aspect of the Fore ^rm. — 1. The lower part of the biceps. 2. Part of the brachialis anticus. 3. The lower part of the triceps, inserted into the olecranon. 4. The supinator lon- gus. 5. The extensor carpi radialis longius. 6. The extensor carpi radialis brevior. 7. The tendons of insertion of these two muscles. 8. The extensor communis digitorum. 9. The extensor minimi digiti. 10. The extensor carpi ulnaris. 11. The anconeus. 12. Part of the flexor carpi ulnaris. 13. The MATERIA MEDICA. 359 PLATE 45. muscles rotate the radius upon the ulna, and render the hand prone. The remaining muscles are flexors : — two flexors of the wrist, flexor carpi radialis and uhiaris ; two of the fingers, flexor sublimis and profundus, the former flexing the second phalanges, the latter the last; one flexor of the last phalanx of the thumb, flexor longus pollicis. The palmaris longus is a tensor of the palmar fascia. Dissection (for plate 44). — The inte- gument is to be divided and turned aside, and the fasciae removed in the same manner as for the anterior brachi- al region. This muscle must be divided through the middle, and the two ends turned to either side, to expose the next muscle. Dissection (for plate 45). — The mus- cles of the superficial layer should be re- moved, in order to bring the deep group completely into view. Actions. — The anconeus is associa- ted in its action with the triceps exten- sor cnbiti: it assists in extending the fore arm upon the arm. The supinator longus and brevis effect the supination of the fore arm, and antagonize the two pronators. The extensor carpi radialis longior, and brevior, and ulnaris extend the wrist in opposition to the two flexors of the carpus. The extensor communis digitorum restores the fingers to the straight position, after being flexed by the two flexors, sublimis and profundus. The extensor ossis mftacarpi, primi in- ternodii. and secundi intornodii pollicis, are the especial extensors of the thumb, and serve to balance the actions of the extensor ossis metacarpi and primi internodii muscles lying to<^ether. 14, The extensor secundi internodii ; its tendon is seen crossing the two tendons of the extensor carpi radialis longior and brevior. 15. The posterior annular ligament. The tendons of the common extensor are seen upon the back of the hand, and theii- distribution on the dorsum of the fingers. ♦ The Deep Layer of Muscles on the Posterior Aspect of the Fore Arm —1 The lower part of the humerus. 2. The olecranon. 3. The ulna. 4. The anconeus muscle. 5. The spinator brevis muscle, 6. The extensor ossis me- tacarpi pollicis. 7. The extensor primi internodii pollicis. 8. The extensor secundi internodii pollicis. 9. The extensor indicis. 10. The first dorsal inter- osseous muscle. The other three dorsal interossei are seen between the me- tacarpal bones of the other fingers. 360 THE THOMSONIAN I flexor ossis metacarpi, flexor brevis, and flexor longus pollicis. The extensor indicis gives the character of extension to the in- dex finger, and is hence named indicator, and the extensor mi- nimi digiti suppUes that fing-er with the power of exercismg a distiuct extension. PLATE 46.* DissBction (for plate 46.) — The hand is best dissected by* making an incision along tlie middle of the palm, from the wrist to the base of the fingers, and crossing it at each extremi- ly bf a transverse incision, then tnrning aside the flaps of inte- gument. For exposing tlie muscles of the radial region, the re- moval of the integument and fascia on the radial side will be suflicient. The flexor ossis metacarpi may now be divided from its ori' gin and turned aside, in order to show the next muscle. • The Muscles of the Hand.-^l. The annular ligament. 2, 2. The origid end insertion of Ihe abductor pollicis muscle ; the middle portion has been re* moved. 3. The flexor ossis metacarpi, or oppouens pollicis. 4. One portion of the flexor brevis pollicis. 5. The deep portion of the flexor brevis pollicis. 6. The adductor pollicis. 7. 7. The lumbricales muscles, arising from the ra- iHal side of the deep flexor tendons, upon which the numbe-s are placed. The lendons of the flexor suhlimis have been removed from the palm of the Jiand. 8. The tendon of the deep flexor, passing between the two terminal slips of the tehdon of the flexor sublimis to reach the last phalanx. 9. The lendoft of the flexor longus pollicis, passing bctweeu the two portions of the fiexor brevis to the last phalanx. 10. The abductor minimi digiti. 11. The tiexor brevis minimi digiti. The edge of the flexor ossis metacarpi, or abduc- tor minimi digiti, is seen projecting beyond the inner border of the flexor brevis. 12. The prominence of the pisiform bone. 13. The first dorsal in- terosseous mwscle. MATERIA MEDICA. 361 Tarn aside the ulnar flap of integument in the palm of the hand ; in doing this a small subcutaneous muscle, the palmaris brevis, will be exposed. After examining this muscle, remove it with the deep fascia, in order to bring into view the muscles of the little finger. Actions. — The actions of the muscles of the hand are ex- pressed in their names. Those of the radial region belong to the thumb, and provide for three of its m%;vements, abduction, adduction^ q.i\(\ flexion. The ulnar group, in like manner, is subservient to the same motions of the little finger, and the in- terossei are abductors and adductors of the several fingers. The lumbricales are accessory in their actions to the deep flex- ors: they were called by the earlier anatomists, ftducincB; i. e. fiddler's muscles, from an idea that they might eflect the frac- tional movements by which the performer is enabled to produce the various notes on that instrument. In relation to the axis of the hand, the four dorsal interossei are abductors, and the three palmar, adductors. It will there- fore be seen that each finger is provided with its proper adduc- tor and abductor, tv.'O flexors and (with the exception of the middle and ring fingers) two extensors. The thumb has more- over a flexor and extensor of the metacarpal bone; and the lit- tle finger a flexor of the metacarpal bone without an extensor. MUSCLES OF THE LOWER EXTREMITY. Dissection (for plate 47). — The subject being turned on its face, and a block placed beneath the pubis to support the pel- vis, the student commences the dissection of this region, by carrying an incision from the apex of the coccyx along the crest of the ileum to its anterior superior spinous process; or vice versa if he be on the left side. He then makes an incision from the posterior fifth of the crest of the ileum, to the apex of the trochanter major — this marks the upper border of the gluteous maximus ; and a third inci- sion from the apex of the coccyx along the fleshy margin of the lower border of the gluteus maximus, to the outer side of the thigh, about four inches below the apex of the trochanter major. He then reflects the integument, superficial fascia, and deep fascia, which latter is very tliin over this muscle, from the gluteus maximus, following rigidly the course of its fibres ; and having exposed the muscle in its entire extent, he dissects the integument and superficial fascia from off the deep fascia which binds down the gluteus medius — the other portion of this re- gion. The gluteus maximus must be turned down from its origin, in order to bring the next muscles into view. 24 362 THE THOMSONIAN The glutens medius should now be removed from its origin and turned down, so as to expose the next which is situated be- neath it. In this region the tendon only of the obturator extenus can be seen, situated deeply between tlie gemellus inferior and the upper border of the quadratus femoris. To expose this muscle fully, it is necessary to dissect it Irom the anterior part of the thigh, after the removal of the pectineus and adductor longus and brevis muscles. Actions. — The glutei muscles are -abductors of the thigh, when they take their fixed point from the pelvis. Taking their fixed point from the tliigh, they steady the pelvis on the head of the femur— this action is peculiarly obvious in standing on one leg; they assist also in carrying the leg forward, in pro- gression. The gluteus minimus being attached to the anterior border of the trochanter major, rotates the limb slightly in- wards. The gluteus medius and maxiraus, from their inser- lion into the posterior aspect of the bone, rotate the limb out- PLATE 47.* * The Deep Muscles of the Gluteal Region.— 1. The external surface of the ilium. 2. The posterior surface of the sacrum. 3, The posterior sacro-iliac ligaments. 4. The tuberosit)^ of the ischium. .5. The sjreat or posterior sa- cro-ischiatic liijament. 6. The lesser or anterior sacro-ischiatic lisjament. 7. The trochanter major. 8. The gluteus minimus. 9. The pyrilormis. 10. The gemellus superior. 11. The obturator internus muscle, passing out of the lesser sacro-ischiatic foramen. 12. The gemellus inferior.' 13. The quad- ratus femoris. 14. The upper part of the adductor magnus. 15. The vastus externus. 1(3. The biceps. 17. The gracilis. 18. The' semi-tendinosus. MATERIA MEDICA. 363 wards ; the latter is, moreover, a tensor of the fascia of the thigh. The other muscles rotate the Hmb outwards, everting the knee and foot ; hence they are named external rotators. Dissecthm (for plate 48). — Make an incision along the hne of Poupart's ligament, from the anterior superior spmous pro- cess of the ileum to the spine of the pubis ; and a second, from the middle of the precediu"^ down the inner side of the this;h, and across the inner condyle of the femur, to the head of the tibia, where it may be bounded by a transverse incision. Turn back the integument from the whole of this region, and exam- ine the superficial fascia, which is next to be removed in the same manner. After the deep fascia has been well considered, it is likewise to be removed, by dissecting it off in the course of the fibres of the muscles. As it might not be convenient to the junior student to expose so large a surface at once as ordered in this dissection, tfie vertical incision may be crossed by one or two transverse incisions, as may be deemed most proper. The rectus must now be divided through its middle, and the two ends turned aside, to bring clearly into view the next mus- cles. The muscles of the internal femoral region are exposed by the removal of the inner flap of integument recommended in the dissection of the anterior femoral region. The iliacus and psoas arising from within the abdomen can only be seen in their entire extent after the removal of the viscera from that ca- vity. The pectineus must be divided near its origin and turned outwards, and the adductor longus through its middle, turning its ends to either side, to bring into view the adductor brevis. The adductor brevis may now be divided from its origin and turned outwards, or its inner two thirds may be cut away en- tirely, when the adductor magnus muscle will be exposed in its entire extent. Actions. — The tensor vagina femoris renders the fascia lata tense, and slightly inverts the limb. The sartorius flexes the leg upon the thigh; and, continuing to act, the thigh upon the pelvis, at the same time carrying the leg across that of the op- posite side, into the position in which tailors sit ; hence its name. Taking its fixed point from below, it assists tlie extensor mus- cles in steadying the leg, for the support of the trunk. The other four muscles have been collectively named quadriceps extensor^ from their similarity of action. They extend the leg upon the thigh, and obtain a great increase of power by their attachment to the patella, which acts as a fulcrum. Takino- their fixed point from the tibia, they steady the femur upon the leg and the rectus, by being attached to the pelvis, serves to balance the trunk upon the lower extremity. 364 THE THOMSONIAK The iliac'ds, psoas, pectiiiciis, and adductor loncfus miiscfes, bend the thigh upon the pelvis, and, at tlie same time, from the obliquity of their insertion into the lesser trochanter and linea aspera, rotate the entire limb outwards: the pectineus and adductors adduct the thigh powerhilly ; and, from the PLATE 4S.* PLATE 49.1" • The Muscles of the Anterior Femoral Region. — 1. The crest of the ilium- 2. Its anterior superior spinous process. 3. The gluteus medius. 4. The ten- sor vaginae femoris ; its insertion into the fascia lata is shown inferiorly. 5. The sartorius. 6. The rectus. 7. The vastus externus. 8. The vastus inter- nus. 9. The patella. 10. The iliacus internus. 11. The psoas magnus. 12. The pectineus. 13. The adductor longus. 14. Part of the abductor magnus. 15. The gracilis. t The Muscles of the Posterior Femoral and Gluteal Region. — 1. The glu- teus medius. 2. The gluteus maximus. 3. The vastus externus covered in by fascia lata. 4. The long head of the biceps. 5. Its short head. 6. The semi-tendinosus. 7. Semi-merabranos«s. 8. The gracilis. 9. A part of the inner border of the adductor magnus. 10. The edge of the sartorius. 11. The popliteal space. 12. The gnstrocaemius muscle ; its two heads. The tendon of the biceps forms the outer hamstring ; and the sartorius, with the tendons of the gracilis; semi-tendinosus, and semi-membranosus, the inner hamsli-ing. MATERIA MEDICA. 365 manner of the insertion into the linea aspera, they assist in ro- tating the limb outwards. The gracilis is likewise an adductor of the thigh ; but contributes also to the flexion of the leg, by- its attachment to the inner tuberosity of the tibia. Dissection (for plate 49). — Remove the integument and fas- cia on the posterior part of the thigh by two flaps, as on the anterior rejrion, and turn aside the orluteus maximus from the upper part ; the muscles may then be examuied. The biceps, and semi-tendinosus muscles, must be dissected from the tuberosity of the ischium, to bring iuto view the ori- gin of the semi-membranosus. The tendons of the semi-tendinosus and semi-membranosus, with those of the gracilis and sartorius, form the inner ham- string. If the semi-membranosus muscle be turned down from its origin, the student will bring into view the broad and radiated expanse of the adductor niagnus, upon which the three flexor .muscles above described rest. Actions. — These three hamstring muscles are the direct flex- ors of the leg upon the thigh ; and, by taking their origin from below, they balance the pelvis on the lower extremities. The biceps, from the obliquity of its direction, everts the leg when partly flexed, and the semi-tendinosus turns the leg inwards, when in the same state of flexion. Dissection (for plate 50.) — The dissection of the anterior ti- bial region is to be commenced by carrying an incision along the middle of the leg, midway between the tibia and the fibula, from the knee to the ankle, and bounding it inferiorly by a transverse incision, extending from one malleolus to the other. And to expose the tendons on the dorsum of the foot, the longi- tudinal mcision may be carried onwards to the outer side of the base of the great toe, and be terminated by another incision di- rected across the heads of the metatarsal bones. Actions. — The tibialis anticus and peroneus tertius are direct dexors of the tarsus upon the leg; acting in conjunction with the tibialis posticus they direct the foot inwards, and with the peroneus longus and brevis outwards. They assist also in pre- serving the flatness of the foot during progression. The ex- tensor longus dio;itorum, and extensor proprius pollicis, are direct extensors of the phalanges; but continuing their action, they assist the tibialis anticus and peroneus tertius, in flexing the entire foot upon the leg. Taking their origin from below, they increase the stability of the ankle joint. Dissection (for plate 51). — Make an incision from the mid- dle of the popliteal space down the middle of the posterior part 366 THE THOMSONIAN of the leg" to the heel, bounding it inferiorly by a transverse in^ cision passing between the two malleoli, 1'nrn aside tbe flaps of integument and remove the foscice from the whole of this re- gion ; the gastrocnemius muscle will then be exposed. Actions. — The three muscles of the calf draw powerfully on the OS calcis, and lift the heel ; continuing their action, they raise PLATE 50. PLATE 51.t * The Muscles of the .interior Tibial Region. — 1. The extensor muscles ia- serted into the patella. 2. The subcutaneous surface of the tibia. 3. The ti- bialis amicus. 4. The extensor communis digitorum. 5. The extensor pro- prius pollicis. 6. The pcroneus terlius. 7. Tlie pcroneus longus. 8. The peroneus brevis. 9, 9. Tlie borders of the soleus muscle. 10. A part of the inner belly of the gastrocnemius. 1 1 . The extensor brevis digilorum ; the tenr don in front of this number is that of the peroneus tertius: and that behind it. the tendon of the peroneus brevis. t The S\iperficial Muscles of the Posterior Aspect of the Leg.—I. The biceps muscle forming the outer hamstring. 2. The tendons forming the inner ham- string. 3. the popliteal space. 4. The gastrocnemius muscle. .3, 5. The so- leus. 6. The tendo Achillis. 7. The os calcis. 8. The tendons of the pero- neus longus and brevis muscles, passing behind the outer ankle. 9. The tea- dons of the deep layer, passing into the foot behind the inner ankle. MATERIA MEDICA. 367 the entire bod}'-. This action is attained by means of a lever of the second power, the fnlcrnm (the toes) being atone end, the weight (the body supported on the tibia) in the middle, and tlie power (these muscles) at the other extremity. They are. therefore, the walking muscles, and perform all movements that require the support of the whole body from the ground, as dancino;, leaping, &c. Taking their fixed point from below, they steady the leg upon the foot. Dissection (for plate 52).— After the removal of the soleus the deep layer will be found bound down by an intermuscular fas- cia, which beitig dissected away the muscles may be examined. The flexor longns poUicis must now be re- plate 52.* moved from its ori^rin, and the flexor longns digitorum drawn aside, to brinij: into view the entire extent of the tibialis posticus. The student will observe that the two latter muscles chansfe their relative position to each other in their course. Thus, in the leg, the position of the three muscles from within out- wards, is flexor longns digitorum, tibialis pos- ticus, flexor longus pollicis. At the inner mal- leolus, the relation of the tendons is tibialis posticus, flexor longus digitorum, both in the same sheath ; then a broad groove, which lodges the posterior tibial artery, vena3 comi- tes, and nerve ; and lastly, the flexor longus pollicis. Actions. — Tlie popliteus is a flexor of the tibia upon the thigh, carrying it at the same time inwards, so as to invert the leg. The flexor longus pollicis, and flexor longus digito- rum are the long flexors of the toes ; their ten- dons are connected in the foot by a short ten- dinous band, hence they necessarily act toge- ther. The tibialis posticus is an extensor of the tarsus upon the leg, and an antagonist to the tibialis anticus. It combines with the tibi- alis anticus in adduction of the foot. * The Dee]) Layer of Muscles of the Posterior Tibial Region. — 1. The lower extremity of the femur, 2. The lignmentum posticum Winslowii. 3. The tendon of the semi-membranous muscle, (livid in? into its three slips. 4. The internal lateral ligament of the knee joint. 5. The external lateral ligament. 6. The popliteus muscle. 7. The flc-xor longus digitorum. 8. The tibialis posticus, i). The flexor lonsrus pollicis. 10. The peroneus longus muscle. 11. The peroneus brevis. 12. The lendo Ac.hillis, divided at its insertion into the OS ealcis. 1.3. The tendons of the tibialis posticus and flexor longus digi- torum muscles, just as they are about to pass beneath the internal annular li- gament of the ankle; the interval between the latter tendon and the tendon of the flexor longus pollicis is occupied by the posterior tibial vessels and nerve. 368 THE THOMSONIAN PLATE 53. PLATE 54.t Dissection (for plate 53). The sole of the foot is best dissected by an incision a- roimd the heel, and along the inner and outer bor- ders of the foot, to the great and little toes. This inci- sion should divide the in- tegument and superficial fascia, and both together should be dissected from the deep fascia, as far for- ward as the base of the pha- langes, where they may be removed from the foot alto- gether. The deep fascia should then be removed, and the first layer of mus- cles will be brought into view. The three preceding muscles (3, 4 and 5, on plate,) must be divided from their origin, and anteriorly through their tendons, and removed, in order to bring into view the second layer. Dissecton (for plate 54). — The tendons of the long flexors and the muscles connected with them must be removed, to see clearly the attachments of the third layer. Actions. — All the preceding muscles act upon the toes ; and the movements which they are capable of executing, may be referred to four heads, viz., flexion, extension, adduction, and abduction. * First Layer of Muscles in the Sole of the Foot. — This la3'er is exposed by the removal of the plantar fascia. 1. The os cnlcis. 2. The posterior part of the plantar fascia, divided transversely. 3. The abductor pollicis. 4. The abductor minimi digiti. 5. The flexor brevis digitorum. 6. The tendon of the flexor longus pollicis muscle. 7, 7. The lumbricales. On the second and third toes, the tendons of the flexor longus digitorum are seen passing through the bifurcation of the tendons of the flexor brevis digitorum. t The Third and a part of the Second Layer of Muscles of the Sole of the Foot. — 1. The divided edge of the plantar fascia. 2. The musculur accesso- rius. 3. The tendon of the flexor longus digitorum, previously to its division. 4. The tendon of the flexor longus pollicis. 5. The flexor brevis pollicis. 6. The adductor pollicis. 7. The flexor brevis minimi digiti. 8. The transver. sus pedis. 9. Interossei muscles, plantar and dorsal. 10. A convex ridge, formed by the tendon of the peroneus longus muscls in its oblique course across the foot. MATERIA MEDICA. 369 ON THE FASCIiE. FASCIA (fascia a bandage) is the iiaiiie assig;ned to laminae of various extent and thickness, which are distributed through the different regions of the body, for the purpose of investing or protecting the softer and more dehcate organs. From a consideration of their structure, these fasciae may be arranged into three classes : — ceUular fascia;, cellulo-fibrous fasciae and tendino-fibrous fasciae. The cellular fascia is best illustrated in the common sub- cutaneous investment of the entire body, the superficial lascia. This structure is situated immediatly beneath the integument over every part of the frame, and is the medium of connection between that layer and the deeper parts. It is composed of cel- lular tissue containing in its areolae a considerable abundance of adipose vesicles. The fat, being a bad conductor of caloric, serves to retain the warmth of the body ; while it forms at the same time a yielding tissue, through which the minute vessels and nerves may pass to the papillary layer of the skin, without incurring the risk of obstruction from injury or pressure upon the surface. By dissection, the superficial fascia may be separa- ted into two layers, between which are found the superficial or cutaenous vessels, and nerves; as, the superficial epigastric ar- tery, the saphenous veins, the radial and uhiar veins, the su- perficial lymphatic vessels, also the cutaneous muscles, as tho platysma myoides, orbicularis palpebrarum, sphincter ani, (fcc. In some situations where the depositions of fat would have been injurious to the functions of the part, the cells of the cellular fascia are moistened by a serous exhalation, analogous to the secretion of serous membranes, as in the eyelids and scrotum.. The cellulo-fibrous fascia appears to result from a simple condensation of cellular tissue deprived of its fat, and intermin- gled with strong fibres disposed in various directions, so as to constitute an inelastic membrane of considerable strength. Of this structure is the deep fascia of the neck, some of the fascia3 of the cavities of the trunk, as the thoracic and transversalis fasciae, and the sheaths of vessels. The tendino-fibrous fascia is the strongest of the three kinds of investing membrane ; it is composed of strong tendinous fi- bres, running parallel with each other, and connected by other fibres of the same kind passing in different directions. When freshly exposed, it is brilliant and nacreous, and is tough, ine- lastic, and unyielding. In the limbs it forms the deep fascia, enclosing and forming distinct sheaths to all the muscles and tendons. It is thick upon the outer and least protected side of the limb, and thinner upon its inner side. It is firmly connec- ted to the bones and to the prominent points of each region, as to the pelvis, knee, and ankle, in the lower, and to the claTiclej 370 THE THOMSONIAN scapula, elbow, and wrist in the upper extremity. It assists the muscles in their action, by keeping up a tonic pressure on their surface; and aids materially in the circulation of the flu- ids in opposition to the laws of gravity; and in the palm of the hand and sole of the foot is a powerful protection to the struc- tures of which these organs are composed. In some situations its tension is regulated by muscular action, as by the tensor vaginae femoris and glutens inaximus in the thigh, and by the biceps and palmaris longus in the arm ; and in other situations it affords an extensive surface for the origin of the fibres of mus- cles. The fasciae maybe arranged like the other textures of the body into — 1. Those of the head and neck. 2. Those of the trunk. 3. Those of the upper extremity. 4. Those of the lower extremity. FASCIA OF THE HEAD AND NECK. The temporal fascia is a strong tendino-fibrous membrane which covers in the temporal muscle at each side of the head, and gives origin by its internal surface to the superior muscu- lar fibres. PLATE 55.* * A Transverse Section of the Neck — showing the deep cervical fascia and its numerous prolongations, forming sheaths for the dillerent muscles. As the figure is symmetrical, the figures of reference are placed only on one side. — ■!. The platisma myoides. 2. The trapezius. 3. The ligamentum nuchse, from which the fascia may be traced forwards beneath the trapezius, enclos- ing the other muscles of the neck. 4. The point at which the fascia divides, to form a sheath for the sterno-mastoid muscle (o). 6. The point of rcunicn of the two layers of the sterno mastoid sheath. 7. The point of union of the deep cervical fa«cia of opposite sides of the neck. 8. Section of the sterno- MATERIA MEDICA. 371 The superficial cervical fascia contains between its layers the platysma myoides muscle. The deep cervical fascia is a stron.o: cellnlo-fibrons layer which invests the muscles of the neck, and retains and supports the vessels and nerves. FASCI-E OF THE TRUNK. The thoracic fascia is a dense layer of cellulo-fibroiis mem- brane stretched horizontally across the superior opening of the thorax. It is firmly attached to the concave margin of the first rib, and to the inner surface of the sternum. The tlioracic fascia peribrms three important offices, viz. 1. It forms the upper boundary of the chest, as tiie diaphragm does the lower. 2. It steadily preserves the relative situation of the parts which enter and quit the thoracic openinsf. 3. It attaches and supports the heart in its situation, through the medium of its connection with the aorta and large vessels which are placed at its curvature. ABDOMINAL FASCIA. The lower part of the parietes of the abdomen, and the cavi- ty of the pelvis, are strengthened by a layer of fascia which lines their internal surface, and at the bottom of the latter cav- ity is reflected inwards to the sides of the bladder. This fascia is continuous throughout the whole of the surface. The fascia transversalis is a cellulo-fibrous lamella, which lines the inner surface of the transversalis muscle. The internal abdominal ring is situated in this fascia, at about midway between the spine of the pubis, and the anterior superior spine of the ilium, and half an inch above Poupart's ligament; it is bounded upon its inner side by a well-marked falciform border, but is ill defined around its outer margin. From the circumference of this ring is given ofl!"an infundibili- form process which surrounds the testicle and spermatic cord, constituting the fascia propria of the latter, and forms the first investment to the sac of oblique inguinal hernia. It is the strength of this fascia, in the interval between the edge of the hj^oid. 9. Omo-hyoid. 10. Sterno-thjToid. 11. The lateral lobe of the thy- roid gland. 12. The trachea. 13. The ctsophagus. 14. The sheath contain- ing the common carotid artery, internal jugular vein, and pnenmogastric nerve. 1.3. The longus colli. The nerve in front of the sheath of this muscle is the sympathetic. 16. The rectus anticus major. 17. Scalenus amicus. IS. Scalenus posticus. 19. The splenius capitis. 20. Splenius colli. 21. Levator anguli scapulae. 22. Complexus. 23. Trachelo-mastoid. 24. Transversalis colli. 2.5. Cervicalis ascendens. 26. The semi-spinalis colli. 27. The multi- fidus spina;. 2S. A cervical vertebra. The transverse processes are seen to be traversed by the vertebral artery and vein. 372 THE THOMSOiMAN rectus and the internal abdominal ring, that defends this portion of the parietes from the frequent occurrence of direct ins^uinal hernia. inguinaV. hernia. Inguinal hernia is of two kinds, oblique, and direct. In oblique inguinal hernia, the intestine escapes from the cavity of the abdomen into the spermatic canal, through the internal abdominal ring, pressing before it a pouch of perito- neum which constitutes the hernial sac, and distending the in- fundibiliform process of the transversalis fascia. After emerg- ing through the internal abdominal ring, it passes ^/vv^ beneath the lower and arched border of the transversalis muscle ; then beneath the lower border of the internal oblique muscle ; and finally, through the external abdominal ring in the aponeurosis of the external oblique. From the transversalis muscle it re- ceives no investment ; while passing beneath the lower border of the internal oblique, it obtains the cremaster muscle ; and, upon escaping at the external abdominal rmg, receives the in- tercolumnar fascia. The spermatic canal, which, in the normal condition of the abdominal parietes serves for the passage of the spermatic cord in the male, and the round ligament with its vessels in the fe- male, is about one inch and a half in length. It is bounded in front by the aponeurosis of the external oblique muscle ; behind, by the transversalis fascia, and by the conjoined tendon of the internal oblique and transversalis muscle ; above, by the arched borders of the internal oblique and transversalis; below, by the grooved border of Poupart's ligament ; and at each extremity, by one of the abdominal rings, the internal ring at the inner termination, the external ring at the outer extremity. There are three varieties of oblique inguinal hernia — com- mon, congenital, and encysted. Common oblique hernia, is that which has been described above. Congenital hernia results from the nonclosure of the pouch of peritoneum carried downwards into the scrotum by the tes- ticle, during its descent in the foetus. The intestine at some period of life is forced into this canal, and descends through it into the tunica vaginalis, where it lies in contact with the testicle; so that congenital hernia has no proper sac, but is contained within the tunica vaginalis. The other coverings are the same as those of common inguinal her- nia. Encysted hernia is that form of protrusion in which the pouch of peritoneum forming the tunica vaginalis, being only partially closed, and remaining open externally to the abdomen, MATERIA MEDICA. 373 admits of the hernia passing into the scrotum, behind the tuni- ca vaginahs. Direct ingidnal hernia has receiveid its name from passing directly through the external abdpminal ring, and forcing be- lore it the opposing parietes, jf Direct inguinal hernia diif^re from obhque in never attaining the same bulk. All the forms of inguinal hernia are designated scrotal, when they have descended into that cavity. The fascia iliaca is the tendino-fibrous investment of the psoas and ihacus muscles; and, like the fascia transversalis, is thick below, and becomes gradually thinner as it ascends. The fascia pelvica is attached to the inner surface of the pubis and along the margin of the brim of the pelvis, where it is continuous with the iliac fascia. From this extensive origin it descends into the pelvis and divides into two layers the pelvic and obturator. In the perinemn there are two fascise of much importance, the superficial and deep perineal fascia. The superficial j^erineal fascia is a thin tendino-fibrous lay- PLATE 56*. * j1 transverse Section of the Pelvis — showing the distribution of the pelvic fascia. — 1. The bladder 2. The vesiculGe seminales, divided across. 3. The rectum. 4. The iliac fascia covering in the iliacus and psoas muscles (5); and forming a sheath for the external iliac vessels, 6. 7. The anteriorcrural nerve excluded from the sheath. 8. The pelvic fascia. 9. Its ascending lay- er, forming the lateral ligament of the bladder of one side, and a sheath to thi? vesical plexus of veins. 10. The recto-vesical fascia of Mr. Tyrrell, formed by the middle layer. 11. The inferior layer, surrounding the rectum and meeting at the middle line with the fascia of the opposite side. 12. The le- vator ani muscle. 13. The obturator internus muscle, covered in by the ob- turator fascia, which also forms a sheath for the internal pudic vessels and nerve, 14. 15. The layer of fascia which invests the under surtace of the le- vator ani muscle^ the anal fascia. 374 THE THOMSONIAN er, which covers the muscles of the genital portion of the peri- neum and the root of the penis. The deep perinial fascia (Camper's hgament, triangular li- gament,) is situated behind the root of the penis, and is firmly stretclied across between the ramus of the pubis and ischium of each side, so as to constitute a strong septum of defence to the outlet of the pelvis. FASCI.E OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY. The superficial fascia of the upper extremity contains be- tween its layers the superficial veins and lymphatics, and the superficial nerves. The deep fascia is thin over the deltoid and pectoralis ma- jor muscles, and in the axillary space, but thick npon the dor- sum of the scapula, where it binds down tlie infra-spinatus mus- cle. It is attached to the clavicle, acromion process and spine of the scapula. The tendons, as they pass beneath the annular ligaments, are surrounded by synovial bursee. The dorsum of the hand is invested by a thin iascia, which is continuous with the pos- terior annular ligament. The j)almar fascia is divided into three portions. A cen- PLATE 57.* * The Pubic Arch, with the Attachments of the Perineal Fascia. — 1, 1, 1. The superficial perineal fascia divided by a ^ sliaped incision into three flaps; the lateral flaps are turned over the ramus of the pubis and the ischium at each side, to which they are firmly attached ; the posterior flap is continuous with the deep perineal fascia. 2. The deep perineal fascia. 3. The opening for the passage of the membranous portion of the urethra, previously to en. tering tiie bulb. 4. Two projections of the anterior layer of the deep perineal facia^ corresponding with Cowper's glands. MATERIA MEDICA. 375 tral portion, which occupies the middle of the palm, and two lateral portions, which spread out over the sides of the hand, and are continuous with tlie dorsal fascia. FASCIA OF THE LOWER EXTREMITY. The superficial fascia contains between its two layers the superficial vessels and nerves of the lower extremity. At the groin these two layers are separated from each other by the su- perficial lymphatic glands and the deeper layer is attached to Poupart's ligament, while the superficial layer is continued in- to the superficial fascia of the abdomen. The deep fascia of the thigh is named, from its great extent, PLATE 58.* * A Side View of the Viscera of the Pelvis — showing the distribution of the perineal and pelvic fasciae. — 1. The symphysis pubis. 2. The bladder. 3. The recto-vesical fold of peritoneum, passinj^; from the anterior surface of the rectum to the posterior part cf the bladder; from the upper part of the fun- dus of the bladder it is reflected upon the abdominal parietes. 4. The ureter. 5. The vas deferens crossing the direction of the ureter. 6. The vesicula se- minalis of the right side. 7, 7. The prostrate gland divided by a longitudinal section. 8, 8. The section of a ring of elastic tissue encircling the prostatic portion of the urethra at its commencement. 9. The prostatic portion of the urethra. 10. The membranous portion, enclosed by the compressor urethrse muscle. IL The commencement of tlie corpus spongiosum penis, the bulb. 12. The anterior ligaments of the bladder, formed by the reflection of the pel- vic fascia, from the internal surface of the os pubis to the neck of the bladder. 13. The edge of the pelvic fascia at the point where it is reflected upon the rectum. 14. An interval between the pelvic fascia and the deep perineal fas- cia, occupied by a plexus of veins. 15. The deep perineal fascia; its two layers. 16. Cowper's gland of the right side, situated between the two layers below the membranous portion of the urethra. 17. The superficial perineal fascia ascending in front of the root of the penis to become continuous with the dartos of the scrotum (18). 19. The layer of the deep fascia, which is prolonged to the rectum. 20. The lower part of the levator ani; its fibres are concealed by the anal fascia. 21. The inferior segment of the funnel-shaped process given off from the posterior layer of the deep perineal fascia, which is continuous with the recto-vesical fascia of Tyrrell. The attachment of this fascia to the recto-vesical fold of peritoneum is seen at 22. 376 THE TIIOMSONIAN tha fascia lata ; it is thick and strong upon the outer side of the Hmb, and thinner upon its inner and posterior side. The iliac portion of the upper fascia lata, is situated upon the JUac side of the sapheonus opening. It is attached to the crest of the iUum and along Poupart's ligament, to the spine of the pubis, from which point it is reflected downwards and out- wards, and forms a falciform border, which constitutes the out- er boundary of the saphenous opening. The edge of this bor- der immediately overlays and is reflected upon the sheath of the femoral vessels, and the lower extremity of the curve is continuous with the pubic portion. The pubic portion is attached to the spine of the pubis and pectineal line, and passing outwards behind the sheath of the femoral vessels divides into two layers; the anterior layer is continuous with that portion of the iliac fascia which forms the sheath of the iliacus and psoas muscles, and the posterior layer is lost upon the capsule of the hip joint. PLATE 59.* * A Section of the Structures u-hich pass beneath the Femoral Arch. 1. Pou- part's ligament. 2, 2. The iliac portion of the fascia lata, attaclied along the margin of the crest of the ilium, and along Poupart's ligament, to the spine of the pubis (3). 4. The pubic portion of the fascia lata, continuous at 3 with the iliac portion, and passing outwards behind the sheath of the femoral vessels to its outer border at 5, Avhere it divides into two layers ; one is continuous with the sheath of the psoas (fi) and iliacus (7), and the other (S) is lost up- on the capsule of the hip joint (9). 10. The femoral nerve, enclosed in the sheath of the psoas and iliacus. 11. Gimbernat's ligament. 12. The femoral ring, within the femoral sheath. 13. The femoral vein. 14. The femoral artery. The two vessels and the ring are surrounded by the femoral sheath, and tl-.eir septa are sent between the anterior and posterior walls of the sheath, dividing the artery from the vein, and the vein from the femoral ring. MATERIA MEDICA. 377 ON THE ARTERIES. The arteries are the cyUndrical tubes which convey the blood from the ventricles of the heart to every part of the body. They are dense in structure, and preserve for the most part the cyhndrical form when emptied of their blood, which is their condition after death: hence they were considered by the an- cietits, as the vessels for the transmission of the vital spirits, and were therefoje named arteries. The artery proceeding from the left ventricle of the heart contains the pure or arterial blood, which is distributed through- out the entire system, and constitutes with its returning veins, the greater or systemic circulatiofi. That which emanates from the right ventricle, conveys the impure blood to the lungs ; and with its corresponding veins establishes the lesser or pul- T^ionary circulation. The whole of the arteries of the systemic circulation proceed from a single trunk, named the aorta, from which they are giv- en off as branches, and divide and subdivide to their ultimate ramifications, constituting the great arterial tree which per- vades by its minute subdivisions, every part of the animal frame. The mode in which the division into branches takes place is deserving of remark. From the aorta the branches for the most part pass off at right angles, as if for the purpose of check- ing the impetus, with which the blood would otherwise rush along their cylinders from the main trunk; but. in the hmbs a very different arrangement is adopted ; the branches are given off from the principal artery at an acute angle, so that no impe- diment may be offered to the free circulation of the vital fluid. The division of arteries is usually dicliotomous, as of the aorta into the two common iliacs, common carotid into the external and internal, &c. ; but in some few instances a short trunk divides suddenly into several branches which proceed in differ- ent directions ; this mode of division is termed an axis, as the thyroid and coeliac axis. The arteries do not terminate directly in veins ; but in an intermediate system of vessels, which from their minute size, are termed capillaries. The capillaries constitute a microsco- pic network, which is distributed through every part of the body, so as to render it impossible to introduce the smallest nee- dle point beneath the skin without wounding several of these fine vessels. It is through the medium of the capillaries, that all the phenomena of nutrition and secretion are performed. They are remarkable for their uniformity of diameter, and for the constant divisions and communications which take place between them without any alteration of size. They inosculate on otie hand with the terminal ramusculi of the arteries ; and on the other with the minute radicles of the veins. 25 378 THE TH0M30NIAN Arteries are composed of three coats, external, niiddle, and internal. The external or cellular coat is firm and strong, and serves at the same time as the chief means of resistance of the vessel, and of connection to surrounding parts. It consists of condensed cellular tissue, strengthened by an interlacement of glistening fibres which partially encircle the cylinder of the tube in an oblique direction. Upon the surface the cellular tissue is loose, to permit of the movements of the artery in distension and contraction. The middle or Jibrous coat is composed of yellowish fibres of elastic tissue, which are disposed in an oblique direction around the cylinder of the vessel, and cross each other in their course. This coat is elastic and fragile, and thicker than the external coat. Its elasticity enables the vessel to accommodate itself to the quantity of blood which it may contain ; and its fra- gility is exhibited in some cases of aneurism, and in the division of the two internal coats in ligature of an artery. The internal coat is a thin serous membrane which lines the interior of the artery, and gives it tlie smooth polish which that surface presents. It is continuous with the lining membrane of the heart, and through the medium of the capillaries with the venous system. The internal is connected to the fibrous coat by a close cellular tissue which is very liable to disease and de- positions of various kinds; and is the seat of the first changes which precede aneurism. The n searches of Hcnle have de- monstrated an epithelium, composed of vesicles and scales, with central nuclei, upon thesurl'ace of this internal coat, analagous to the epithelium of serous and mucous membranes. The arteries in their distribution through the body are inclu- ded in a loose cellular investment which separates them from the surrounding tissues, and is called a sheath. Around the principal vessels the sheath is an important structure ; it is com- posed of cellulo-fibrous tissue, intermingled with tendinous fi- bers, and is continuous with the fascios of the region in which the arteries are situated, as v^^ith the thoracic and cervical fascial in the neck, transversalis and iliac fasciee, and fascia lata in the thigh, &c. The sheath of the arteries contains also their ac- companyinsf veins, and sometimes a nerve. The coats of arteries are supplied with blood like other or- gans of the body, and the vessels which are distributed to them are named vasa vasoriim. They are also provided with nerves ; but the mode of distribution of these nerves is at present undiscovered. In the consideration of the arteries, we shall first describe the aorta, and the branches of that trunk, with their subdivisions, which together constitute the efferent portion of the systemic MATERIA MEDICA. 379 circulation, and then the pulmonary artery as the efferent trunk of the pulmonary circulation. AORTA. The aorta arises from the left ventricle, at the middle of the root of the heart, opposite the articulation of the fourth costal cartilage with the sternum. It ascends at first to the right, then curves backwards and to the left, and descends on the left side of the vertebral column to the fourth lumbar vertebra. Hence It is divided into — ascending arch — and descending aorta. PLATE 60.* * The Large Vessels which proceed from the root of the heart, with their Re- lations. — The heart has been removed. 1. The ascendins: aorta. 2. The arch. 3. Tlie thoracic portion of the descending aorta. 4. The arteria inno- mjaata dividing into 5, the right carotid, which again divides at 6, into the ex- ternal and internal carotids ; and 7, the right subclavian artery. 8. The axil- lary artery ; its extent is designated by a dotted line. 9. The brachial artery. 10. The riglit pneumogastric nerve, running by the side of the common caro- tid, in front of the right subclavian artery, and behind the root of the right lung. 11. The left common carotid, having to its outer side the left pneumo- gastric nerve, which crosses the arch of the aorta, and as it reaches its lower border is seen to give ofi'the left recurrent nerve. 12. The left subclavian ar- tery becoming axillary, and brachial in its course, like the artery of the oppo- site side. 13. The trunk of the pulmonary artery connected to the concavity of the arch of the aorta by a fibrous cord, the remains of the ductus arterio- sus. 14. The left pulmonary artery. 15. The right pulmonary artery. 16. 380 THE TH0M90NIAN Relations. — The ascendmg aorta has in relation with it, in front, the trunk of the puhnonary artery, thoracic fascia, and pericardium; behind, the right pulmonary veins and artery^ to the right side, the right auricle and superior cava; and Xo the left, the left auricle and the trunk of the pulmonary artery. Arch. — The upper border of the arch is parallel with the up- per border of the second sterno-costal articulation of the right side in front, and the second dorsal vertebra behind, and termi- nates opposite the lower border of the third. The anterior surface of the arch is crossed by the left pneu- mogastric nerve, and by the cardiac branches of that nerve, and of the sympathetic. The posterior surface of the arch is in relation with the bi- furcation of the trachia and great cardiac plexus, the cardiac nerves, left recurrent nerve, and the thoracic duet. The superior border gives off the three great arteries, viz. the innominata, left carotid, and left subclavian. The inferior border, or concavity of the arch, is in relation with the remains of the ductus arteriosus, the cardiac ganglion and the left recurrent nerve, and has passing beneath it, the right pulmonary artery and left bronchus. The descending aorta is subdivided in correspondence with the two great cavities of the trunk, into the thoracic and abdo- minal aorta. The thoracic aorta is situated to the left side of the vertebral column, but approaches the middle line as it descends, and at the aortic opening of the diaphragm is altogether in front of the column. After entering the abdomen, it again falls back to the lelt side. Relations. — It is in relation, behind, with the vertebral co- lumn and lesser vena azygos ; in front, with the oesophagus and right pneumogastric nerve ; (o the left side with the pleu- ra, and to the right with the thoracic duct. The abdominal aorta enters the abdomen through the aortic opening of the diaphragm, and descends, lying rather to the left side of the vertebral column, to the fourth lumbar vertebra, where it divides into the two common iliac arteries. Relations. — It is crossed in front, by the left renal vein, pan- creas, transverse duodenum, and mesentery, and is embraced byjtlie aortic plexus; and behind is in relation with the thorac- ic duct, receptaculum chili, and left lumbar veins. The trachea. 17. The right bronchus. 18. The left bronchus. 19, 19. The pulmonary veins. 17, J5 and 19, on the right side, and 14, IS and 19, on the left, constitute the roots of the corresponding lungs, and the relative position of these vessels is carefully preserved. 2(1. Bronchial arteries. 21, 21. In- tercostal arteries ; the branches from the front of the aorta above and below the number 3 are pericardiac and oesophageal branches. MATERIA MEDICA. 381 On its left side is the left semilunar ganglion and sympathet- ic nerve ; and on the right, the vena cava, right semilunar gan- glion, and the commencement of the vena azygos. The coro- nary arteries arise from tlie aortic sinuses at the commence- ment of the ascending aorta, immediately above the free margin of the semilunar valves. The left, or anterior coronary, pass- es forwards, between the puhnonary artery and left appendix auriculge, and divides into two branches, one of which winds around the base of the left ventricle in the auriculo-ventricular groove, and inosculates with the right coronary, forming an arterial circle around the base of the heart, while the other passes along the line of union of the two ventricles, upon the anterior aspect of the heart, to its apex, where it anastomoses with the descending branch of the right coronary. It supplies the left auricle and the adjoining sides of both ventricles. The right, or posterior coronary, passes forwards, between the root of the pulmonary artery and the right auricle, and winds along the auriculo-ventricular groove, to the posterior median furrow, where it descends upon the posterior aspect of the heart to its apex, and inosculates with the left coronary. It is distributed to the right auricle and to the posterior surface of both ventricles, and sends a large branch along the sharp mar- gin of the right ventricle to the apex of the heart. ARTERIA INNOMINATA. The arteria innominata (plate 60, No. 4,) is the first artery given off by the arch of the aorta. It is an inch and a half in length, and ascends obliquely to the right sterno-clavicular ar- ticulation, where it divides into the right carotid and right sub- clavian arteries. Relations. — It is in relation, in front, with the left vena in- nominata, and the origins of the sterno-thyroid and sterno hy- oid muscles. Behind, with the trachea, pneumogastric nerve, and cardiac nerves ; externally, with the right vena innomina- ta and pleura; and internally, with the origin of the left caro- tid. The arteria innominata occasionally gives off a small branch which ascends along the middle of the trachea to the thyroid gland. This branch has been described as the middle thyroid artery, and a knowledge of its existence is extremely important in. performing the operation of tracheotomy. COM MON CAROTID ARTERIES. The common corotid arteries arise, the right from the bifur- cation of the arteria innominata opposite the right sterno-clavi- cular articulation, the left from the arch of the aorta. It follows, therefore, that the right carotid is shorter than the left; it is al- 382 THE THOMSONIAN SO more anterior ; and, in consequence of proceeding from a branch instead of from the main trunk, it is larger than its fel- low. The right common carotid artery (plate 60, No. 5,) ascends the neck perpendicularly, from the riijht sterno-clavicnlar arti- culation to a level with the upper border of the thyroid carti- lage, where it divides into the external and internal carotid. The left common carotid (pi. 60, No. 11.) passes somewhat obliquely outwards from the arch of the aorta to the side of the neck, and thence upwards to a level with the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, where it divides like the right common ca- rotid into the external and internal carotid. Relations. — The right common carotid rests, first, upon the longns colli muscle, then upon the rectus anticus major, the sympathetic nerve being interposed. The inferior thyroid ar- tery and recurrent laryngeal nerve pass behind it at its lower part. To its inner side is the trachea, recurrent laryngeal nerve, and larynx ; to its outer side, and enclosed in the same sheath, the jugular vein and pneumogastric nerve ; and in front the sterno-thyroid, sterno-hyoid, sterno-mastoid, omo-hy- oid and platisma muscles, and the descendens noni nerve. The left common carotid, in addition to the relations just enumerat- ed, which are common to both, is crossed near its commence- ment by the left vena innominata; it lies upon the trachea ; then gets to its side, and is in relation with the oesophagus and thoracic duct. EXTERNAL CAROTID ARTERY. The external carotid artery ascends perpendicularly from opposite the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, to the space between the neck of the lower jaw and the meatus auditorius. Relations. — In front it is crossed by the posterior belly of the digastricus, stylo-hyoideus and platysma myoides muscles ; by the lingual nerve near its origin •, higher up it is situated in the substance of the parotid gland, and is crossed by the facial nerve. Behind, it is separated from the internal carotid by the stylo- pharyngeus and stylo-glossns muscles, glosso-pharyngeal nerve, and part of the parotid gland. Branches. — The branches of the external carotid are ten ia number, and may be arranged into three groups, viz. — Anteri- or, superior thyroid, lingual, fascial ; posterior, mastoid, occi- pital, posterior auricular; superior, ascending pharyngial, transverse fascial, temporal, internal maxillary. The Sifpcrior thyroid artery curves downwards to the thy- roid gland to which it is distributed, anastomosing with its fel- low of the opposite side, and with the inferior thyroid arteries. The Lingual artery crosses obliquely the great cornu of the MATERIA MEDICA. 383 OS hyoid;;?; secondly, it passes forwards parallel with the os hyoides ; thirdly, it ascends to the under surfoce of the tongue ; and fourthly, runs forward in a serpentine direction to its tip under the name of the ranine artery. Relations. — The first part of its course rests upon the great cornu of the os hyoides, and the origin of the middle constrictor muscle of the pharynx ; the second is situated between the mid- dle constrictor and hyo-glossus muscles, the latter separating it from the lingual nerve ; in the third part of its course, it lies be- tween the hyo-glossus and genio-hyo glossus; and in the fourth ranine rests upon the lingulis to the tip of the tongue. Facial artery. — The facial artery ascends obhquely to the submaxillary gland, in which it lies embedded. It then curves around the body of the lower jaw, close to the anterior inferior angle of the raasseter muscle, ascends to the angle of the mouth, and thence to the angle of the eye, where it is named the angu- lar artery. The facial artery is very tortuous in its course over PLATE 61.* • The Carotid Arteries, with the Branches of the External Carotid.—!. The common carotid. 2. The external carotid. 3. The internal carotid. 4. The carotid foramen in the petrous portion of the temporal bone. 5. The superior thyroid artery. 6. The lingual artery. 7. The fascial artery. 8, The mas- toid artery. 9. The occipital. 10. The posterior auricular. 11. The trans- verse fascial artery. 12. The internal maxillary. 13. The temporal. 14. The ascending pharyngeal artery. 384 THE THOMSONIAN the buccinator muscle to accommodate itself to the movements of the jaws. Relations. — Below the jaw it passes beneath the digastricus and stylo-hyoid muscles ; on the body of the lower jaw it is co- vered by the platysma myoides, and at the anjrle of the mouth by the depressor anguH oris and zygomatic muscles. The Mastoid artery turns downwards, to be distributed to the sterno-mastoid muscle, and the lymphatic glands of the neck; sometimes it is replaced by two small branches. The Occipital artery passes backwards beneath the posteri- or belly of the digastricus, the trachelo-mastoid, and sterno-mas- toid muscles, to the occipital jjroove in the mastoid portion of the temporal bone. It then ascends between the splenius and complexus muscles, and is distributed upon the occiput, anas- tomosing with the opposite occipital, the posterior auricular, and temporal arteries. The lingiud nerve curves around this arte- ry, near its origin from the external carotid. The Posterior auricular artery arises from the external ca- rotid, above the digastric and stylo-hyoid muscles, and ascends beneath the lower border of the parotid gland, and behind the concha, to be distributed to the external ear and side of the head, anastomosing with the occipital and temporal arteries; some of its branches pass through fissures in the fibro-cartilage, to be distributed to the anterior surface of the pinna. The an- terior auricular arteries are branches of the temporal. The Ascending pharyngeal artery arises from the external carotid near to its bilurcation, and ascends between tlie internal carotid and the side of the pharynx to the base of the skull, where it divides into branches whicfi enter the foramina in that region, to be distributed to the dura mater. It supplies the pharynx, tonsils, and Eustachi.m tube. The Transversalis fascei arises from the external carotid, whilst that trunk is lodged within the parotid gland ; it crosses the masseter muscle, lying parallel with and a little above Ste- non'sdnct; and is distributed to the muscles and integument on the side of the face, inosculating with the infra-orbital and fascial arteries. The Temporal artery is one of the two terminal branches of the external carotid. It ascends over the root of the zygo- ma ; and at about an inch and a half above the zygomatic arch divides into an anterior and a posterior temporal l)ranch. The anterior temporal is distributed over the front of the temple and arch of the skull, and anastomoses with the opposite ante- rior temporal, and with the supra-orbital and frontal arteries. The posterior temporal curves upwards and backwards, and inosculates with its fellow of the opposite side, with the posteri- or auricular and occipital arteries. MATERIA MEDICA. 385 The trunk of the temporal artery is covered in by the parotid gland and attrahens aurem muscles, and rests upon the tempo- ral facia. The Internal maxillary artery (pi. 6l, No. 12,) is one of the two terminal branches of the external carotid. Commencing in the substance of the parotid gland, opposite the meatus audi- torius externus, it passes in the first instance horizontally for- wards behind the neck of the lower jaw ; it next ascends ob- liquely between the two pterygoid muscles to the upper part of the tuberosity of the superior maxillary bone ; and between the two heads of the external pterygoid muscle bends into thesphe- no-maxillary fossa. The artery may, therefore, in considera- tion of its course, be divided into three portions — maxillary, pterygoid, and spheno-maxillary. Relations. — The maxillary portion is situated between the ramus of the jaw and internal lateral ligament, lying parallel with the auricular nerve ; the jyierygoid portion between the two pterygoid muscles, and between the gustatory and dental nerves. The pterygo-maxillary portion lies between the two heads of the external pterygoid muscle, and in the spheno-max- illary fossa is in relation with Meckel's ganglion. When the artery passes externally to the external pterygoid muscle, it lies between that muscle and the temporal, and passes between the two heads of the external pterygoid. INTERNAL CAROTID ARTERY. The Internal carotid artery curves slightly outwards from the bifurcation of the common carotid, and then ascends nearly perpendicularly to the carotid foramen in the petrous bone. It next passes inwards along the carotid canal, forwards by the side of the sella turcia, and upwards by the anterior clinoid process, where it pierces the dura mater and divides into three terminal branches. Relations. — In the consideration of its connections, the artery isdivisible into cervical, petrous, cavernous and cerebral portions. The cervical portion is in relation posteriorly with tlie rectus anticus major, sympathetic nerve, pharyngeal and laryngeal nerves, which cross behind it, and near the carotid foramen with the glosso-pharyngeal, pneumogastric and lingual nerves, and partly with the internal jugular vein. Internally, it is in relation with the side of the pharynx, the tonsil, and the as- cending pharyngeal artery. Externally, with the internal ju- gular vein, glosso-pharyngeal, pneumogastric, and lingual nerves ; and in front, with the stylo-glossus and stylopharyn- geus muscles, glosso-pharyngeal nerve, and parotid gland. The petrous portion is in relation with the carotid plexus, and is covered in by the Casserian ganglion. 386 THE THOMSONIAN The cavernous portion is situated in the inner wall of the cavernous sinus, and is in relation by its outer side with the lining membrano. of the sinus, the sixth nerve, and the ascend- ing branches of the carotid plexus. The third, fourth, and ophthalmic nerves are placed in the outer wall of the cavernous sinus, and are separated from the artery by the Iming mem- brane of the sinus. The cerebral portion of the artery is lodged in the fissure of Sylvius. SUBCLAVIAN ARTERY. The Subclavian artery, on the right side, arises from the ar- teria innominata, opposite the sterno-clavicular articulation, and on the left I'rom the arch of the aorta. The course of the subclavian artery is divisible into three portions. The first portion, on the right side, ascends obliquely out- wards to the inner border of the scalenus anticus. On the left side it ascends perpendicularly to the inner border of that mus- cle. The second portion curves outwards behind the scalenus anticus ; and the third portion passes downwards and out- wards, beneath the clavicle, to the lower border of the first rib, where it becomes the axillary artery. Relations. — The first portion, on the right side, is in rela- PLATE 62.* • The Branches of the right Subclavian Artery .—I. The arteria innominata. 2. The rUht carotid. 3. The first portion of the subclavian artery. 4. The second portion. 5. The third portion. 6. The vertebral artery. 7. The in- ferior thyroid. 8. The ihyroid axis. 9- The superficialis cervicis. 10. The profunda cervicis. 11 The posterior scapular or transversalis colli. 12. The 6upra-scapular. 13. The internal mammary artery. 14. The superior inter- costal. MATERIA MEDICA. 387 tion in front with the internal jucrular and subclavian veins, and is crossed by the pneumogastric nerve, cardiac nerves, and phre- nic nerve. Behind and beneath it is invested by the pleura, and is crossed by the right recurrent laryngeal nerve and ver- tebral vein. The first portion on the left side is in relation in front with the pleura, the vena innoniinata, the pneumogastric and phrenic nerves (which lit» parallel to it), and the left carotid artery. To its inner side, is the oesophagus ; and behind, the thoracic duct, longus colli, and vertebral column. Branches. — The branches of the subclavian are given off from the artery before it arrives at the margin of the first rib. The profunda cervicis and superior intercostal frequently en- croach upon the second portion, and in varieties of origin a branch or branches may be found proceeding from the third portion. The primary branches are five in number, the three first be- ing ascending, and the two latter descending. They are — the vertebral; the thyroid axis (inferior thyroid, supra-scapular, pos- terior scapular, superficialis cervicis), the prol'unda cervicis, su- perior intercostal, and internal mammary. The Vertebral artery is the largest of the branches of the subclavian artery; it ascends through the foramina in the trans- verse processes of all the cervical vertebreB, excepting the last ; then winds backwards around the articulating process of the atlas; and piercing the dura mater, enters the skull through the foramen masrnum. The two arteries unite at the lower border of the pons Varolii, to form the basilar artery. The Basilar artery, so named from its position at the base of the skull, runs forwards to the upper border of the pons Va- rolii, where it divides into four ultimate branches, two to either side. Branches. — The branches of the vertebral and basilar arte- ries are the following : Vertebral — lateral spinal, anterior spinal, posterior spinal, posterior meningeal, inferior cerebellar; basilar — transverse, superior cerebeller, posterior cerebral. The lateral spinal branches enter the intervertebral forami- na, and are distributed to the dura mater of the spinal cord. The anterior spinal is a small branch which unites with its fellow of the opposite side, on the front of the medulla oblongata. The artery formed by the union of these two vessels descends along the anterior aspect of the spinal cord, lo which it distri- butes branches as far as the cauda equina. The posterior spinal winds around the medulla oblongata, to the posterior aspect of the cord, and descends on either side nearly as far as the cauda equina, communicating very freely with the spinal branches of the intercostal and lumbar arteries. 388 ' THE THOMSONIAN The posterior meningeal, often a branch of the inferior ce- rebellar, is a small branch to the dura mater, hning the inferior occipital fossae. The inferior cerebellar arteries wind around the upper part of the medulla oblongata to the under surface of the cerebel- lum, to which they are distributed. The transverse branches of the basilar artery supply the pons Varolii, and adjacent parts of the brain. The siiperior cerebellar arteries, two of the terminal branch- es of the basilar, are distributed to the upper surface of the ce- rebellum, inosculating^ with the inferior cerebellar. This ar- tery gives off a small branch, which accompanies the seventh pair of nerves into the meatus auditorius internus. The posterior cerebral arteries, the other terminal branches of the basilar, pass off on each side to the posterior lobes of the cerebrum, and communicate on the corpus collosum with the anterior cerebral arteries. They are separated from the supe- rior cerebellar artery, near their origin, by the third pair of nerves, and are in close relation with- the fourth pair, in their course around the crura cerebri. Anteriorly, near their origin, they give off a tufft of small vessels, which enter the locus per- foratus, and they receive the posterior communicating arteries from the internal carotid. The Circle of Willis. — The communications established be- tween the anterior cerebral arteries in front, and the internal carotids and posterior cerebral arteries behind, by the commu- nicating arteries, constitute the Circle of Willis. This re- markable communication at the base of the brain is formed by the anterior communicating branch, anterior cerebrals, and in- ternal carotid arteries in front, and by the posterior communi- cating, posterior cerebrals, and basilar artery behind. The Thyroid axis is a short trunk, which divides almost immediately after its origin into four branches, some of which are occasionally branches of the subclavian artery itself The Iiferior thyroid artery ascends obliquely behind the sheath of the carotid vessels, to the inferior part of the thyroid gland, to which it is distributed, and sends branches to the tra- chea, lower part of the larynx, and oesophagus. It is in rela- tion with the middle cervical ganglion of the sympathetic, which rests upon it. The Supra-scapular artery passes obliquely backwards be- hind the clavicle, and over the lie:ament of the notch, to the su- pra-spinatus fossa. It crosses in its course the scalenus anticus muscle, phrenic nerve and subclavian artery, is distributed to the muscles on the dorsum of the scapula, and inosculates with the posterior scapular, and beneath the acromion process with the dorsal branch of the subscapular artery. MATERIA MEDICA. 389 The Posterior scapular artery passes transversely across the subclavian triangle at the root of the neck, to the superior angle of the scapula. It then descends along the posterior bor- der to its inferior angle, where it inosculates with the subsca- pular artery, a branch of the axillary. In its course across the neck it passes in front of the scalenus anticus, and across the brachial plexus; in the rest of its course, it is covered in by the trapezius, levator anguli scapulae, rhomboideus minor, and rhomboideus major muscles. Sometimes it passes behind the scalenus anticus, and between the nerves which constitute the brachial plexus. The postersor scapular gives branches to the neck, and op- PLATE .63.* * The Circle of Willis. — The branches of the arteries have references only on one side, on account of their symmetrical distribution. 1. The vertebral arteries. 2. The two anterior spinal branches uniting to form a single vessel. 3. One of the posterior spinal arteries. 4. The posterior meningeal. 5. The inferior cerebellar. 6. The basilar artery giving ofl'its transverse branches to either side. 7. The superior cerebellor artery. 8. The posterior cerebral. 9. The posterior communicating branch of the internal carotid. 10. The inter- •nal carotid artery, showing the curvatures it makes within the skull. 11. The ophthalmic artery divided across. 12. The middle cerebral artery. 13. The anterior cerebral arteries, connected by 14. The anterior communicating ar- tery. 390 THE THOMSONIAN. posite the angle of the scapula inosculates with the profunda cervicis. It supplies the muscles of the posterior border of the scapula, and establishes an important anastomotic communica- tion between the branches of ihe external carotid, subclavian, and axillary arteries. The Saperjicialis cervicis artery (cervicalis anterior) is a small vessel, which ascends upon the anterior tubercles of the transverse processes of the cervical vertebrae, and distributes branches to the deep muscles and glands of the neck. The Profunda cervicis (cervicalis posterior) passes back- wards between the transverse processes of the seventh cervical and first dorsal vertebra, tind then ascends the back part of the neck, between the complexus and senii-spinalis colli muscles. It inosculates above with the princeps cervicis of the occipital artery, and below with the posterior scapular. The Superior intercostal artery descends behind the pleura upon the neck of the first two ribs, and inosculates with the first aortic intercostals. It gives ofi:' two branches which supply the two first intercostal spaces. The Interjial mammary artery descends by the side of the sternum, resting upon the costal cartilages, to the diaphragm: it then pierces the anterior fibres of the diaphragm, and enters the sheath of the rectus, where it inosculates with the epigastric artery, a branch of the external iliac. In the upper part of its course it is crossed by the phrenic nerve, and lower down lies between the triangularis sterni and internal intercostal muscles. AXILLARY ARTERY. The axillary artery forms a gentle curve through the mid- dle of the axillary space from the lower border of the first rib to the lower border of the latissimus dorsi, where it becomes th# brachial. Relations. — After emerging from beneath the margin of the costo-coracoid membrane, it is in relation with the axillary vein, which lies at first to the inner side, and then in front of the ar- tery. Near the middle of the axilla it is embraced by the two heads of the median nerve, and is covered in by the pectoral muscles. Upon the inner or thoracic side it is in relation, first with the first intercostal muscle ; it next rests upon the first ser- ration of the serratus magjuis ; and is then separated from the chest by the brachial plexus of nerves. By its outer or Iiume- ral side it is at first separated from the brachial plexus by a tri- angular cellular interval ; it next rests against the tendon of the subscapularis muscle; and thirdly, upon the coraco-brachi- alis muscle. Branches. — The branches of the axilliary artery are — the thoracico-acromialis, superior thoracic, inferior thoracic, thora- MATERIA MEDICA. 391 cio-axillaris, subscapular, circumflex anterior, circumflex pos- terior. The thoracico-acromialis and superior thoracic are found in the triangular space above the pectoralis minor. The inferior thoracic and thoracio-axillaris, below the pecto- ralis minor. And the three remaining branches below the lower border of the sub- scapularis. The thoracio-acromialis is a short trunk, which ascends to the space above the pectoralis minor muscle, and divides into three branches — thoracic^ which is distributed to the pectoral muscle and mammary gland; acromial, which passes outwards to the acromion, and inosculates with the branches of the supra-scapular ar- tery; and descending^ which follows the interspace between the deltoid and pectoralis major muscles, and is in relation with tlie cephalic vein. The sAiperior thoracic (short) runs along the upper border of the pec- otralis minor, and is distributed to the pectoral muscles and mammary gland, inosculating with the inter- costal and mammary arteries. The infer or thoracic (long) runs along the lower border of the pecto- ralis minor and is distributed to the pectoral and serratus muscles, and PLATE 64.* • The Axillary and Brachial Arteries, with their Branches. — 1. The deltoid muscle. 2. The biceps. 3. The tendinous process given off from the tendon of the biceps, to the deep fascia of the fore-arm. It is this process which se- parates the median basilic vein from the brachial artery. 4. The cuter bor- der of the brachialis anticus muscle. 5. The supinator longus. G. Tlie coraco- brachialis. 7. The middle portion of the triceps muscle. 8. Its inner head. 9. The axillary artery. 10. The brachial artery; a dark line marks the limit between these two vessels. 11. The thoracio-acromialis artcr}' dividing into its three branches; the number rests upon the coracoid process. 12. The su- perior and inferior thoracic arteries. 13. The serratus magnus muscle. 14. The subscapular artery. The posterior circumflex and thoracio-axillaris branches are seen in the figure between the inferior thoracic and subscapular. The anterior circumflex is observed crossing the ncek of the humerus between the two heads of the biceps. 15. The superior profunda artery. 16. The in- ferior profunda. 17. The anastoraotica magna, inosculating inferiorly with the anterior ulnar recurrent. IS. The termination of the superior profnndn, inosculatmg with the radial recurrent in the interspace between the brachia- lis anticus and supinator longus. 392 THE THOMSONIAN mammary gland, inosculating with the superior thoracic, intei- costal, and mammary arteries. The thoracio-axillaris is a small branch distributed to the plexus of nerves and glands in the axilla. It is frequently de- rived from one of the other thoracic branches. The subscapular artery^ the largest of the branches of the axillary, runs along the lower border of the subscapularis mus- cle, to the inferior angle of the scapula, where it inosculates with the posterior scapular, a branch of the subclavian. It sup- plies, in its course, the muscles on the under surface, and infe- rior border of the scapula, and side of the chest. At about an inch and a half from the axillary, it gives oif a large branch, the dorsalis scapiUcB, which passes backwards through the triangu- lar space bounded by the teres minor, teres major, and scapular head of the triceps, and beneath the infra-spinatus to the dor- sum of the scapula, where it is distributed, inosculating with the suprascapular and posterior scapular arteries. The dorsalis scapulas is often larger than the trunk from which it arises. The circumflex arteries wind around the neck of the hume- rus. The anterior^ very small, passes beneath the coraco-bra- chialis and short head of the biceps, and sends a branch up- wards along the bicipital groove to supply the shoulder-joint. The jjosterior circumflex, of larger size, passes backwards through the quadrangular space bounded by the teres minor and major, the scapular head of the triceps and the humerus, and is distributed to the deltoid muscle and joint. Sometimes this artery is a branch of the superior profunda of the brachial. It then ascends behind the tendon of the teres major, and is dis- tributed to the deltoid without passing through the quadrangu- lar space. BRACHIAL ARTERY. The brachial artery passes down the inner side of the arm, from the lower border of the latissimus dorsi, to the bend of the elbow, where it divides into the radial and ulnar arteries. Relations. — In its course downwards, it rests upon the cora- co-brachialis muscle, internal head of the triceps, and brachialis anticus. To its inner side is the ulnar nerve ; to the outer side the coraco-brachialis and biceps muscles ; and in front, it has the basilic vein, and is crossed by the median nerve. Its rela- tions within its sheath are the vena3 comites. The branches of the brachial artery are — the superior pro- funda, inferior profunda, and anastomotica magna. The superior profunda arises opposite the lower border' of the latissimus dorsi, and winds around the humerus, between the triceps and the bone, to the space between the brachialis anticus and supinator longus, where it inosculates with the ra- MATERIA MEDICA. 393 dial recurrent branch. It accompanies the musculo-spiral nerve. In its course it js^ives off the posterior articular artery, which descends to the elbow-joint, and a more superficial branch which inosculates with the interosseous articular artery. The inferior profunda arises from about the Iftiddle third of the braciiial artery, and descends to the space between the inner condyle and olecranon in company with the ulnar nerve, where it inosculates with the posterior ulnar recurrent. The anastomotica magna is given oif nearly at right angles from the brachial, at about two inches above the joint. It pass- es directly inwards, and divides into two branches which inos- culate with the anterior and posterior ulnar recurrent arteries and inferior profunda. Varieties of the brachial artery. — The most frequent pecu- liarity in the distribution oi branches from this artery is the high division of the radial, which arises generally from about the upper third of the brachial artery, and descends to its normal position at the bend of the elbow. The ulnar artery sometimes arises from the brachial at about two inches above the elbow, and pursues either a superficial or deep course to the wrist: and in more than one instance I have seen the interosseous artery arise from the brachial a little above the bend of the elbow. RADIAL ARTERY. The radial artery., one of the divisions of the brachial, ap- pears from its direction to be almost the continuation of that trunk. It runs along the radial side of the fore-arm, from the bend of the elbow to the wrist; it there turns around the base of the thumb, beneath its extensor tendons, and passes between the two heads of the first dorsal interosseous muscle, into the palm of the hand. It then crosses the metacarpal bones to the ulnar side of the hand, forming the deep palmar arch, and ter- minates by inosculating with the superficial palmar arch. Ill the upper half of its course, the radial artery is situated between the supinator longus muscle, and pronator radii teres ; in the lower half, between the tendons of the supinator longus and flexor carpi radialis. It rests in its course downwards, up- on the tendon of the biceps, supinator brevis, pronator radii teres, radial origin of the flexor sublimis, flexor longus pollicis, and pronator quadratus; and is covered in by the integument and fiiscite. At the wrist it is situated beneath the extensor tendons of the thumb; and in the palm of the hand, beneath the flexor tendons. It is accompanied by venae comites throughout its course, and for its middle third is in close relation with the ra- dial nerve. The branches of the radial artery may be arranged in three groups, corresponding with the three regions, the fore-arm, the 26 394 THE THOMSONIAN the wrist, and the hand : they ar^i— fore- arm, recurrent radial, muscular; ?^ri5^, superficialis vola;, carpalis anterior, carpalis posterior, metacarpalis, dorsales poilicis ; /ia?id, princeps polli- cis, radialis indicis, interossese, perforantes. ULNAR ARTERY, The ulnar artery, the other divis- ion of the brachial artery, crosses the arm obliquely to the commencement of its middle third ; it then runs down the ulnar side of the fore-arm to the wrist, crosses the annular ligament, and forms the superficial palmar arch, which terminates by inosculating with the superficial is vola3. Relations. — In the upper or ob- lique portion of its course, it lies be- tween the superficial and deep layers of muscles of the fore-arm. In the second part of its course, it is placed between the flexor carpi ulnaris and flexor sublimis digitorum. While crossing the annular ligament, it is protected from injury by a strong tendinous arch, thrown over it from the pisiform bone; and in the palm it rests upon the tendons of the flexor sublimis, being covered in by the palmaris brevis muscle and palmar fliscia. It is accompanied in its^course by the vence comites, and is in rela- tion with the ulnar nerve for the low- er two thirds of its extent. PLATE OO. • The .Arteries of the Fore-^rm. — 1. The lower part of the biceps muscle. 2. The inner condyle of" the humerus, with the humeral origin of the pronator radii teres and flexor carpi radialis rii^'idcd across. 3. The deep portion of the pronator radii teres. 4. The supinator longus muscle. 5. The flexor lon- gus poUicis. 6. The pronator quadratus. 7. The flexor profundus digito- rum. 8. The flexor carpi ulnaris. 9. The annular lis;ament, with the ten- dons passing beneath it into the palm of the hand ; the figure is placed on tl:e tendon of the palmaris longus muscle, divided close to its insertion. 10. The brachial artery. 11. The anastomotica magna, inosculating superiorly with the inferior profunda, and inferiorly with the anterior ulnar recurrent. 12. The radial artery. 13. The radial recurrent artery, inosculating with the termination of the superior profunda. 14. The superficialis volae. 15. The ulnar artery. 16. Its superficial palmar arch, giving oil' digital branches to three fingers and a half. 17. Branches of the radial artery, supplying one fin- MATERIA MEDICA. 395 The branches of the uhiar artery may be arranged like those of the radial, into three groups: those of the /ore-tf;w, anterior and posterior ulnar recurrent, interosseous (anterior and poste- rior), muscular; icrist^ carpalis (anterior and posterior); hand, digit ales. The ninsailar branches supply the muscles situated along the uhiar border of the fore-arm. l^'he snperjicial palmar arch receives the terminntion of the deep palmar arch from between the abductor minimi digiti and flexor brevis minimi digiti near their origins, and terminates by inosculating with the superficiaHs volas upon the ball of the thumb. The communication between the superficial and deep arch is generally described as the communicating branch of the ulnar artery. The mode of distribution of the arteries to the hand is sub- ject to great variety. Branches of the Thoracic Aorta. — Bronchial, oesophageal, and intercostal. The bronchial arteries are four in number, and vary both in size and origin. They are distributed to the bronchial glands and tubes, and send branches to the O2sophao:us, pericardium, and left auricle of the heart. These are the nutritious vessels of the lungs. The cesophafreal arteries are numerous small branches, which are distrbuted to the oeosphagus, and establish a chain of anastomosis along that tube: the superior inosculate with oesophageal branches of the inferior thyroid arteries, and the inferior with similar branches of the phrenic and gastric arteries. The intercostal, or posterior intercostal arteries, are ten in number on each side, the two superior spaces being supplied by the superior intercostal artery, a branch of the subclavian. The ri^ht intercostals are longer than the left, on account of the position of the aorta. They ascend somewhat obliquely from their origin, and cross the vertebral column behind the thoracic duct, vena azygos major, and sympathetic nerve, to the inter- costal spaces, the left passing beneath the vena nzj-gos minor and sympathetic. In the intercostal spaces, or rather, upon the external intercostal muscles, each artery gives off a dorsal branch for the supply of the spinal cord and muscles of the back. It then comes into relation with its vein and nerve, (he former being above, and the latter below, and divides into two branch- es which run along the borders of the contiguous ribs between ger and a half. IS. The posterior ulnar recurrent. 19. The anterior inter- osseous artery. 20. The posterior interosseus, as it is passing through the interosseous membrane. 396 THE THOMSONIAN the two planes of intercostal muscles, and anastomose with the anterior intercostal arteries, branches of the internal mammary. The branch corresponding with the lower border of each rib, is the larger of the two. They are protected from pressure du- ring the action of the intercostal muscles, by little tendinous arches thrown across and attached by each extremity to the bone. BRANCHES OF THE ABDOMINAL AORTA. Phrenic, cogliac axis (gastric, hepatic and splenic), superior mesenteric, spermatic, inferior mesenteric, supra-renal, renal, lumbar, and sacra-media. PLATE 66*. * The Abdominal Aorta with its Branches. — 1. The phrenic arteries. 2. The coeliac axis. 3. The gastric artery. 4. The hepatic artery, dividing into the right and left hepatic branches. 5. The splenic artery, passing outwards to the spleen. 6. The supra-renal artery of the right side. 7. The right renal artery, which is longer than the left, passing outwards to the right kidney. 8. MATERIA MEDICA. 397 The phrenic arteries are given off from the anterior part of the aorta as soon as that trunk has passed through the aortic opening. They are distributed to the under surface of the di- aphragm, inosculating with branches of the internal mammary, inferior intercostal, epigastric, oesophageal, gastric, hepatic, and supra-renal arteries. They are frequently derived from the coeliac axis, or from one of its divisions, and sometimes they give off tlie supra-renal arteries. The coeliac axis is the first single trunk given off from the PLATE 67.* The lumbar arteries. 9. The superior mesenteric artery. 10. the two sper. matic arteries. 11. The inferior mesenteric artery. 12. The sacra media. 13. The common iliacs. 14. The internal iliac of the right side. 15. The external iliac artery. 16. The epigastric artery. 17. The circumilexa ilii ar- tery. 18. The femoral artery. * The Distribution of the Branches of the Celiac Axis. — 1. The liver. 2. Its transverse fissure. .3. The gall bladder. 4. The stomach. 5. The en- trance of the (Esophagus. 6. The pylorus. 7. The duodenum, its descending portion. 8. The transverse portion of the duodenum. 9. The pancreas. 10. The spleen. 11. The aorta. 12. The ca-liac axis. 13. The gastric artery. 14. The licpatic artery. 15. Its pyloric branch. 16. The gastro-duodena- lis. 17. Tlie gastro-epiploica dextra. 18. The pancreatico-duodenalis, inos- •culating with a branch from the superior mesenteric artery. 19. The division of the hepatic artery into its right and left branches; the right giving oft' the cystic branch. 20. The splenic artery, traced by dotted lines behind the sto- mach to the spleen. 21. The gastro-epiploica sinistra, inosculating along the great curvature of the stomach with the gastro-epiploica dextra. 22. The paucreatiea magna. 23. The vasa brevia to the great end of the stomach, in- osculating with the branches of the gastric artery. 24. The superior mesen- teric artery, emerging from between the pancreas and the transverse portion of the duodenum. 398 THE THOMSONIAN abdominal aorta. It arises opposite the upper border of the first lumbar vertebra, is about half an inch in length, and divides into three large branches — gastric, hepatic, and splenic. Relations. — The trunk of the coehac axis is in relation on each side with the semihnmr ganglion, and is surrounded by the solar plexus. It is covered in and concealed in the exam- ination of the abdomen by the lesser omentum. The gastric artery^ the smallest of the three branches of the cceliac axis, ascends between the two layers of lesser omentum to the cardiac orifice of the stomach, then runs along the lesser curvature to the pylorus and inosculates with the pyloric branch of the hepatic. It is distributed to the lower extremity of the oesophagus and lesser curve of the stonach, anastomoses with this oesophageal arteries and vasa brevia of the splenic artery. The hepatic artery curves forwards, and ascends along the right border of the lesser omentum to the liver, where it divides into two branches (right and left), which enter the transverse fissure, and are distributed along the portal canals to the right and left lobes. It is in relation in the right border of the lesser omentum, with the ductus communis choledochus and portal vein, and is surrounded by the hepatic plexus of nerves and numerous lymphatics. The branches are — the pyloric, gastro-duodenalis (gastro-ep- iploica dextra, pancreatico-duodenalis), and cystic. The splenic artery, the largest of the three branches of the coeliac axis, passes horizontally to the left along the upper bor- der of the pancreas, and divides into five or six large branches which are distributed to the spleen. In its course it is tortuous and serpentine, and frequently makes several complete turns upon itself. It is accompanied by the splenic vein, and by the splenic plexus of nerves. The branches of the splenic artery are — pancreaticae parvse, pancreatica magna, vasa brevia, and gastro-epiploica sanistra. The siij)erior mesenteric artery, the second of the single trunks, and the largest of the branches of the abdominal aorta, arises immediately below the coeliac axis, and behind the pan- creas. It then passes forwards between the pancreas and trans- verse duodenum, and descends within the layers of the mesente- ry to the right iliac fossa, where it terminates, very much dimi- nished in size. It forms a curve in its course, the convexity being directed towards the left, and the concavity to the right; it is in relation near its commencement with the portal vein ; and is accompanied by two veins, and the superior mesenteric plexus of nerves. The brajiches of the superior mesenteric artery are — the va- sa intestini tenuis, ilio-colica, colica dextra, and colica media. The spermatic arteries are two small vessels which arise MATERIA MEDICA. 399 from the front of the aorta below the superior mesenteric ; from this origin each artery passes obUquely outwards, and accom- panies the correspoadiiio- ureter along the front of the psoas muscle to the border of the pelvis, where it is in relation with the external iliac. It is then directed outwards to the internal abdominal riiis:, and follows the course of the spermatic cord along the spermatic canal and through the scrotum to the testi- cle, to which it is distributed. The right spermatic artery lies in front of the vena cava, and both vessels are accompanied by their corresponduig veins, and spermatic plexuses of nerves. The sperm itic arteries in the female descend into the pelvis, and pass between the two layers of the broad ligaments of the PLATE 68.* * The Coun. ,,nl Distribution of the Superior Mesenteric Artery. — 1. The dcsceudingpoiiiiMi of the duodenum. 2. The transverse portion. 3. The pan- creas. 4. The ) ■junum. 5. The ileum. 6. The caGcum. 7. The ascending colon. 8. TIm; ti-.insverse colon. 9. The commencement of the descending colon. lU. Tiie -uperior mesenteric artery. 11. The colica media. 12 The branch which i:M.-..-ulates with the colica sinistra- 13. The branch of the me- senteric artery 'v Inch inosculotes Avith the pancreatico-duodenalis. 14. The colica dextra. I'). The ilio-colica. 16, 16. The branches from the convexity of the superior mesenteric to the small imtestines. 400 THE THOMSONIAN Uterus, to be distributed to the ovaries, Fallopean tubes, and round ligaments, along which they are continued to the ingui- nal canal and labia at each side. The inferior mesenteric artery, smaller than the superior, arises from the abdominal aorta about two inches 1 ckw the ori- gin of that vessel, and descends between the layers of the left mesocolon, to the left iliac fossa, where it divides nito three branches, viz : — the colica sinistra, the sigmoidesB, nrid superior hsemorroidal. The supra-renal are two small vessels, sometimes branches, PLATE 69.* • The Distribution and Branches of the Ivfcrior Mesii:t(ric Jfrtery. — 1, I. The superior mesenteric artery, witli its lirnnclies and lie FriKill intestines turned over to the right side. 2. The ca'ciuii and np^undi.x (mri. 3. Aseend- ing colon. 4. Transverse colon. 5. Descending colcn. r. lis- sigmoid fle:x- ure. 7. The rectum. 8 The aorta. 9. The inferior mesenteric ai w ry. 10. The colica sinistra, inosculating with 11, the colica media, a I )pr di ( f l^e superior mesenteric artery. 12, 12. Sigmoid branches. 13. Thesrifrirr harmorahei- dal artery. 14. The pancreas. 15. The descending porticu cf lie ducdeBura. MATERIA MEDICA. 401 of the phrenic or renal arteries, distributed to the supra-renal capsules. The renal arteries (emulgent) are two large trunks given off from the sides of the aorta, immediately below the superior me- senteric artery ; the right is longer than the left, on account of the position of the aorta, and passes behind the vena cava to the kidney of that side. The left is somewhat higher than the right. They divide into several large branches previously to entering the kidney, and ramify minutely in its vascular portion. The lumbar arteries correspond with the intercosta'.s in the chest; they are five in number on each side, and curve around the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae beneath the psoas muscles, and divide into two branches, one of which passes backwards between the transverse processes and is distributed to the mus- cles of the back, whilst the other supplies the abdominal mus- cles. The sacra media arises from the posterior part of the aorta, at its bifurcation, and descends along the middle of the anterior surface of the sacrum to the coccyx. It distributes branches to the rectum and anterior sacral nerves, and inosculates with the lateral sacral arteries. Varieties in the branches of the abdominal aorta. — The phrenic arteries are very rarely both derived from the aorta. One or both may be branches of the caeliac axis ; one may pro- ceed from the gastric artery, from the renal, or from the upper lumbar artery. There are occasionally three or more phrenic arteries. The coeliac axis is very variable in length, and gives off its branches irregularly. There are sometimes two or even three hepatic arteries, one of which may be derived from the gastric or even from the superior mesenteric. The colica me- dia is sometimes derived from the hepatic artery. The sper- matic arteries are very variable both in origin and number. The right spermatic may be a branch of the renal artery, and the left a branch of the inferior mesenteric. The ?upra-renal arteries may be derived from the phrenic or renal arteries. The renal arteries present several varieties in number; there may be three or even four arteries on one side, and one only on the other. When there are several renal arteries on one side, one may arise from the common iliac artery. COMMON ILIAC ARTERIES. The abdominal aorta divides opposite the fourth lumbar ver- tebra into the two common iliac arteries. Sometimes the bifur- cation takes place as high as the third, and occasionally as low as the fifth lumbar vertebra. The common iliac arteries are about two inches and a half in length ; they diverge from the termination of the aorta, and pass downwards and outwards to 402 THE THOMSONIAN the margin of the pelvis opposite the sacro-iliac symphyses, where tliey divide into the internal and external iliac arteries. The lafl common iliac is somewhat longer than the right and forms a more ohtiise angle with the termination of the aorta : the angle of bifurcation is greater in the female than in the male. Relations. — The relations of the two arteries are different on the two sides of the body. The right common iliac is in relation in front with the peritoneum, and is crossed near its bifurcation by the ureter. It is in relation posteriorly with the two common iliac veins, and externally with the psoas magnus. The left is in relation in front with the peritoneum, and is crossed by the rectum and inferior mesenteric artery, and at its bifurcation by the ureter. It is in relation behind with the left common iliac vein, and externally with the psoas magnus. INTERNAL ILIAC ARTERY. The internal iliac artery is a short trunk, which descends obliquely to the upper margin of the great sacro ischiatic fora- men, and divides into an anterior and posterior trunk. PLATE 70.* * The Distribution and Branches of the Iliac Arteries. — 1. The aorta. 2. The left common iliac arterj'. 3. the external iliac. 4. The epigastric arte- ry. 5. The circumflexa ilii. 6. The internal iliac artery. 7. Its anterior trunk. 8. Its posterior trunk. 9. The umbilical artery giving ofl' 10, the su- perior vesical artery. After the origin of this branch, the umbilical artery becomes converted into a fibrous cord — the umbilical ligament. 11. The in- ternal pudic artery passing behind t!ie spine of the ischium (12) and lesser sacro-iscliiatic ligament. 13. The middle hremorrhoidal a-tery. 14. The is- chiatic artery, also passing behind the anterior sacro ischiatic ligament to es- cape from the pelvis. 15. Its inferior vesical branch. 16. The illo lumbar, the first branch of the posterior trunk (8) ascending to inosculate with the circumflexf ilii artery (5) and form an arch along the crest of the ilium. 17. The obturator artery. 18. The lateral sacral. 19. The gluteal artery escap- ing from the pelvis through the upper part of the great sacro-ischiatic fora- men. 20. The sacra ^j^jedia. 21. The right common iliac artery cut off. 22. The femoral artery. MATERIA MEDICA. 403 Relations. — This artery rests externally upon the sacral plex- us and origin of the pyriformis mnscle ; posteriorly it is in rela- tion with the internal iliac vein, and anteriorly with tiie ureter. Branches. — The brandies of the anterior trunk are — the umbilical, middle vesical, middle htemorrhoidal, ischiatic, and internal piidic. And of the posterior trunk, the ilio lumbar, obturator, lateral sacra), and gluteal. The isclualic artery is one of the terminal branches of the anterior division of the internal iliac. It passes downwards between the posterior border of the levator ani, and the pyri- formis, to the lower border of the great ischiatic notch, and es- capes from the pelvis below the pyriformis muscle. It then descends in the space between the trochanter major and the tu- berosity of the ischium in company with the ischi;uic nerves and divides into branches. Its branches within the pelvis are haemorrhoidal, which sup- ply the rectum conjointly with the middle haemorrhoidal and sometimes take the place of that artery, and inferior vesical, which are distributed to the base of the bladder, vesiculee sem- inales, and prostate gland. The branches external to the pel- vis, are four in number — coccygeal, inferior gluteal, comes nervi ischlatici, and muscular branches. The internal pudic artery, the other terminal branch of the anterior trunk of the internal iliac, descends with the ischiatic artery to the lower border of the great ischiatic foramen. It emerges from the pelvis through the great sacroischiatic fora- men, below the pyriformis muscle, crosses the spine of the is- chium, and re enters the pelvis through the lesser sacro ischiat- ic foramen ; it then crosses the internal obturator muscle to the ramus of the ischium, being situated at about an inch from the margin of the tuberosity, and bound down by the obturator fas- cia; it next ascends the ramus ol the ischium, enters between the two layers of the deep perineal fascia lying along the bor- der of the ramus of the pubis, and at the symphysis pierces the anterior layer of the deep perineal fascia, and, very much di- minished in size, reaches the dorsum of the penis, along which it runs, supplyins^ that organ under the name of dorsalis penis. Branches. — The branches of the internal pudic aitery with- in the pelvis, are the hasmorrhoidal, which supplies the middle of the rectum, and frequently takes the place of the middle has- morroidai branch of the internal iliac. The branches external to the pelvis, are, the external haemor- rhoidal, snperficialis perinei, transversalis perinei, arteria bul- bosi, arteria corporis cavernosi, and arteria dorsalis p( nis. The internal pudic artery is smaller in the female tlian in the male; its branches, with their distribution, are the same. The 404 THE THOMSONIAN artery of the bulb supplies the vestibule and the meatus urina- rius. The obturator artery passes forwards a little below the brim of the pelvis, to the upper border of the obturator foramen. It there escapes from the pelvis tlirough a tendinous arch formed by the obturator membrane, and divides into two branches; anterior, which rests upon the adductor brevis, supplying that muscle, tor^ether with the pectineus and adductor longns ; and posterior, which follows the direction of the obturator externus muscle to the space between the gemellus inferior and quadra- tus femoris, where it inosculates with the ischiatic artery. It sends a branch through the notch in the acetabulum to the hip- joint. The lateral sacral is a small artery which descends along the side of the sacrum, and sends branches through the anterior sacral foramina to supply the sacral nerves. It inosculates with the sacra media and with its fellow of the opposite side. There are generally two lateral sacral arteries at each side. PLATE 71.* * Tlic Arteries of the Perineum. — On tlie right side the superficial arteries are seen, and on the left the deep. 1. The penis, consisting of corpus spongi- osum and corpus cavernosum. The crus penis on the left side is cut through- 2. The acceleratores urinie muscles, enclosing the bulbous portion of the cor- pus spongiosum. 3. The erector penis, spread out upon the crus penis of the right side. 4. The anus, surrounded by tbe sphincter ani muscle, o. The ra- mus of the ischium and pubis. 6. The tuberosity of the ischium. 7. The less- er sacro-ischiatic ligament, attached by its small extremity to the spine of the ischium. 8. The coccyx. 9. The internal pudic artery, crossing the spine of the ischium, and enteiing the perineum. 10. External hsemorrlioida branch- es. 11. The superlicialis perinei artery, giving off a small branch, transversa- lis perinei, upon the transversus perinei muscle. 12. The same artery on the left side cut off. 13. The artery of the bulb. 14. The two terminal branches of the internal ptidic artery; one is seen entering the divided extremity of the crus penis, liie artery of the corpus cavernosum ; the other, the dorsalis penis, ascends upou the dorsum of the organ. MATERIA MEDICA. 405 *' The g-luteal artery is the continuation of the posterior trunk of the internal ihac; it passes backwards through the upper part of the great sacro-ischiatic foramen, above the pyriformis muscle, and divides into three branches — superficial, deep su- rior, and deep inferior. The uterine and vaginal arteries of the female are derived either from the internal iliac, or from the umbilical, internal pudic, or ischiatic arteries. The former are very tortuous in their course, and ascend between the layers of the broad liga- ment, to be distributed to the uterus. The latter ramify upon the exterior of the vagina, and supply its mucous membrane. Varieties in the branches of the internal iliac. — The most important of the varieties occurring among the branches is the origin of the dorsal artery of the penis from the internal iliac or ischiatic. The artery in this case passes forwards by the side of the prostrate gland, and through the upper part of the deep perineal fascia. It would be endangered in the operation for hthotomy. The dorsal artery of the penis is semetimes derived from the obturator, and sometimes from one of the external pudic arteries. The ariery of the bulb, in its normal course, passes almost transversely inwards to the corpus spongiosum. Occasionally, however, it is so oblique in its direction as to ren- der its division in lithotomy unavoidable. The obturator ar- tery may be very small or altogether wanting, its place being supplied by a branch from the external iliac or epigastric. EXTERNAL ILIAC ARTERY. The external iliac artery of each side passes obliquely down- wards, along the iimer border of the psoas muscle, from oppo- site the sacro-iliac symphysis to the femoral arch, where it be- comes the femoral artery. Relations.— \i is in relation, in front, v/ith the peritoneum and a thin layer of fascia, derived from the iliac fascia which surrounds the artery and vein. At its commencement it is crossed by the ureter, and near its termination by the crural branch of the genito-crural nerve. Externally, it lies against the psoas muscle, from which it is separated by the iliac fascia ; and posteriorly it is in relation with the external iliac vein, which at the femoral arch becomes placed to its inner side. The artery is surrounded throughout the whole of its course by lympliatic vessels and glands. Branches. — Besides several small branches which supply the glands surrounding the artery, the external iliac gives off two branches — the epigastric and circumflexa iiii. FEMORAL ARTERY. Emerging from beneath Poupart's ligament, the external iliac artery enters the thigh and becomes the femoral. The femorat 406 THE THOMSOiNIAN artery passes down the inner side of the thigh, from Poupart's ligament, at a point midway between the anterior superior spi- nous process of the ihum and symphysis pubis, to the hole in the adductor magnus, at the junction of the middle with the in- ferior third of the thigh, where it becomes the pophteal artery. The femoral artery and vein are enclosed in a firm sheath, femoral or crural canal, which is formed for the greater part of its extent by fi- brous and cellular tissue, and by a process of fascia sent inwards from the fascia lata. Near Poupart's liga- ment this sheath is much larger than the vessels it contains, and is conti- nuous with the fascia transversalis, and iliac fascia. If the sheath be opened at this point, the artery will be seen to be situated in contact with the outer wall of the sheath. The vein lies next to the artery, being se- parated from it by a fibrous septum, and between the vein and the inner wall of the sheath, and divided from the vein by another thin fibrous sep- tum, is a triangular interval, into which the sac is protruded in femo- ral hernia. This space is occupied in the normal state of the parts by loose cellular tissue, and lymphatic vessels which pierce the inner wall of the sheath to make their way to a gland, situated in the femoral ring. Relations. — The upper third of the femoral artery is superficial, be- ing covered only by the integument PLATE 72.* * View of the interior and Inner Aspect of the Thigh — showing the Courts and Branches of the Femoral Artery. — 1. The lower part of the aponeurosis of the external oblique muscle ; its inferior margin is Poupart's ligament. 2. The external abdominal ring. 3,3. The sartorius muscle ; its middle portion lias been removed. 4. The rectus. 5. The vastus internus. 6. The patella. 7. The iliacus and psoas, the latter being nearest the artery. 8. The pectine- us. 9. the adductor longus. 10. Tiie tendinous canal for the femoral artery, formed by the adductor magnus, and vastus internus muscles. 11. The ad- ductor magnus. 12. The gracilis. 13. The tendon of the semi-tcndinosus. 14. The femoral artery, 15. The superficial circumfiexa ilii, taking its course along the line of Poupart's ligament, to the crest of the ilium. 2. The super- ficial epigastric artery. 16. The two external pudic arteries, superficial and deep. 17. The profunda artery, giving ofl" 18, its external circumflex branch ; MATERIA MEDICA. 407 and superficial and deep fasciae. The lower two thirds are covered by the sartoriiis muscle. To its outer side the artery is first ill relation with the psoas, next with the rectus, and then with the vastus internus. Behind, it rests upon the inner bor- der of the psoas muscle ; it is next separated from the pectineus vein, profunda vein and artery, and then lies on the adductor by the femoral longus to its termination. Near the lower bor- der of the adductor longus, it is placed in an aponeurotic canal, formed by an arch of tendinous fibres, thrown from the border of the adductor longus, and the border in the opening of the adductor magnus, to the side of the vastus internus. The immediate relations of the artery, are the femoral vein and two saphenous nerves. The vein at Pou part's ligament lies to the inner side of the artery, but lower down gets altoge- ther behind it. The short saphenous nerve lies to the outer side, and somewhat upon the sheath for the lower two thirds of its extent, and the long saphenous is situated within the sheath for the same extent. Branches. — The branches of the femoral artery are — the su- perficial circumflexa ilii, superficial epigastric, superficial ex- ternal and deep external pudic, profunda, muscular, and anas- tomotica magna. The profunda femoris arises from the femoral artery at two inches below Poupart's ligament; it passes downwards and backwards, and a little outwards, behind the adductor longus muscle, pierces the adductor magnus, and is distributed to the flexor muscles of the leg. Relations. — In its course downwards, it rests successively upon the conjoined tendon of the psoas and iliacus, the pecti- neus, adductor brevis, and adductor magnus muscles. To its outer side, the tendinous insertion of the vastus internus mus- cle intervenes between it and the femur, and in front it is sepa- rated from the femoral artery above by the profunda vein and femoral vein, and below by the adductor longus muscle. Tiie brandies of the profunda artery are the external and in- teinal circumflex, and three perforating arteries. POPLITEAL ARTERY. The popliteal artery commences from the termination of the femoral, at the opening in the adductor magnus muscle, and passes obliquely outwards through the middle of the popliteal space to the lower border of the popliteus muscle, where it di- vides into the anterior and posterior tibial arteries. And lower down, the three perforantes. A small bend of the internal circum- flex artery (S) is seen behind the inner margin of the femoral, just below the deep external pudic artery. 19, The anastomotica magna, descending to the knee upon which it ramiiies. 408 THE THOMSONIAN \ Relations. — In its course downwards, it rests first on the fe- mur, then on the posterior ligament of the knee joint, then on the fascia covering the popliteus muscle; superficial and exter- nal to it is the popliteal vein, and still more superficial and ex- ternal, the popliteal nerve. The branches of the popliteal artery are — the superior exter- nal and internal articular, the azygos articular, the inferior ex- ternal and internal articular, and the sural. ANTERIOR TIBIAL ARTERY. The anterior tibial artery passes forwards between the two heads of the tibialis posticus muscle, and through the opening in the upper part of the interosseous membrane, to the anterior tibial region. It then runs down the anterior aspect of the leg to the ankle joint, where it becomes the dorsalis pedis. Relations. — In its course downwards, it plate 73.* rests upon the interosseous membrane, the IVT'T/'Z/Ji/ tibia, and the anterior ligament of the joint. ^ ' ' '■■^ ' In the upper third of its course it is situated between the tibialis anticus and extensor longus digitorum; lower down, between the tibialis anticus and extensor proprius polli- cis ; and just before it reaches the ankle it is crossed by the tendon of the extensor pro- prius pollicis, and becomes placed between that tendon and the tendons of the extensor longus digitorum. Its immediate relations are the venae comites and the anterior tibial nerve, which lies at first to its outer side, and at about the middle of the leg becomes placed superficially to the artery. The branches of the anterior tibial artery are — the recurrent, muscular, and external and internal malleolar. The dorsalis pedis artery is continued forwards along the tibial side of the dorsum of the foot, from the ankle to the base of the metatarsal bone of the great toe, where it di- vides into two branches, the dorsalis hallu- cis and communicating. Relations.— The dorsalis pedis is situated along the outer border of the tendon of the extensor proprius pollicis; on its fibular side is the innermost tendon of the extensor lon- gus digitorum, and near to its termination it ,»i' ' «f '/ // 'M * The Anterior .Aspect of the Leg and Foot—showing the anterior tibial and dorsalis pedis arteries, with their branches.— 1. The tendon of insertion of the MATERIA MEDICA. 409 i-s crossed by the inner tendon of the extensor brevis digitorum. It is accompanied by venae comites, and has the continuation of the anterior tibial nerve to its outer side. The branches of this artery are— the tarsea, the metatarsea, (interossce) the dorsalis hallucis (collateral digital), and the communicating. POSTERIOR TIBIAL ARTERY. PLATE 74.* The posterior tibial artery passes iHHf/iMilll I obliquely downwards along the tibial side of the leg, from the lower border of the popliteus muscle to the inner ankle, where it divides into the inter- nal and external plantar arteries. Relations. — In its course down- wards it lies first upon the tibialis posticus, next upon the flexor longus digitorum, and then upon the tibia, and is covered in by the intermuscu- lar fascia. It is accompanied by its ^ / ^i^ venae comites, and by the posterior tibial nerve, which lies at first to its vW/Zi outer side, then superficially to it, asd again to its outer side. The branches of the posterior ti- bial artery are — the peroneal, muscu- lar, and internal and external plantar. The peroneal artery is given off" from the posterior tibial at about two inches below the lower border of the poplite- us muscle, and passes obliquely out- wards to the fibula. It then runs downwards along the inner border of the fibula to its lower third, where it divides into the anterior and posteri- or peroneal artery. quadriceps extensor muscle. 2. The patella. 3. The tibia. 4. The extensor proprius poUicis muscle. 5. The extensor longus digitorum. 6. The peronei muscles. 7. The inner belly of thelgastrocnemius and soleus. 8. The annular ligament, beneath which the tendons and anterior tibial artery pass into the dor- sum of tiie foot. 9. Anterior tibial artery. 10. Its recurrent branch, inoscu- lating with (2) the inferior articular, and (1) the superior articular arteries, branches of the popliteal. 11. The internal malleolar artery. 17. The exter- nal malleolar, inosculating wdth the anterior peroneal artery, 12. 13. The dorsalis pedis artery. 14. The tarsea and metatarsea arteries ; the tarsea is nearest the ankle, the metatarsea is seen giving off interossas. 15. The dor- salis hallucis artery. 16. The communicating branch. * ./? Posterior View of the icg— showing the popliteal and posterior tibial arteries. 1. The tendons forming the inner hamstring. 2. The tendon of the 27 410 THE THOMSONIAN PLATE 75.* Relations — The peroneal artery rests upon the tibialis pos- ticus muscle, and is covered in by the flexor longus pollicis, having the fibula to its outer side. The branches of the peroneal artery are muscular to the neighboring muscles, and the two terminal branches anterior and posterior peroneal. The anterior 'peroneal pierces the interosseous membrane at the lower third of the leg, and is distributed on the front of the outer malleolus, an- astomosing with the internal malleo- lar and tarsal arteries. The posterior peroneal continues onwards to the posterior aspect of the outer malleolus, anastomosing with the anterior peroneal, tarsal, external plantar, and posterior tibial arteries. The muscular branches of the posterior tibial artery are distributed to the muscles on the posterior aspect of the leg. PLANTAR ARTERIES. The internal jjlantar artery pro- ceeds from the bifurcation of the pos- terior tibial at the inner malleolus, and passes along the inner border of biceps forming the outer hamstring. 3. The popliteus muscle. 4. The flex- or longus digitorum. 5. The tibialis posticus. 6. The fibula ; immediately below the figure is the origin of the flexor longus pollicis ; the muscle has been removed in order to expose the peroneal artery. 7. Peronei muscles. 8. .The lower part of the flexor longus pollicis muscle, with its tendon. 9. The popliteal artery, giving off its articular and muscular branches ; the two superior articular are seen in the upper part of the popliteal space, passing above the two heads of the gastrocnemius muscle, which are cut through near to their origin. The two inferior are in relation with the poplitfus muscle. 10. The anterior tibial artery, passing through the angular interspace between the two heads of the tibialis posticus muscle. 11. The posterior tibial artery. 12. The relative position of the tendons and artery at the inner ankle, from within outwards, previously to their passing beneath the internal annular li- gament. 13. The peroneal artery, dividing into two branches ; the anterior peroneal is seen piercing the interosseous membrane. 14. The posterior pe- roneal. • The Arteries of the Sole of the Foot. — The first and a part of the second layer of muscles has been removed. 1. The under and posterior part of the OS calcis, to which the origins of the first layer of muscles remain attached. 2. The musculus accessorius. 3. The long flexor tendons. 4. The tendon of the peroneus longus. 5. The termination of the posterior tibial artery. 6. The internal plantar. 7. The external plantar artery. 8. The plantar arch, giving off four digital branches, which pass forwards on the interosfiei mus - cles to divide iato collateral branches. MATERIA MEDICA. 411 the foot, between the abductor pollicis and flexor brevis digito- rum muscles, supplying the inner border of the foot and great toe. The external plantar artery, much larger than the internal, passes obliquely outwards between the first and second layers of the plantar muscles, to the fifth metatarsal space. It then turns horizontally inwards, between the second and third lay- ers, to the first metatarsal space, where it inosculates with the communicating branch from the dorsalis pedis. The horizon- tal portion ofthe artery describes a slight curve, having the convexity forwards ; this is the plantar arch. The branches of the external plantar artery are— the mus- cular, digital, and posterior perforating. The muscular branches are distributed to the muscles in the sole of the foot. The digital branches are four in number : the first is distri- buted to the outer side of the little toe ; the three others pass fowards to the cleft between the toes, and divide into collateral branches, which supply the adjacent sides of the three external toes, and the outer side of the second. The posterior perforating are three small branches, which pass upwards between the heads of the three external dorsal in- terossei muscles, to inosculate with the arch formed by the me- tatarsea artery. PULMONARY ARTERY. The j)ulmonary artery arises from the left side of the base ©f the right ventricle in front of the origin of the aorta, and aseends obliquely to the under surface of the arch of the aorta, where it divides into the right and left pulmonary arteries. In its course upwards and backwards it inclines to the left side, crossing the commencement of the aorta, and is connected to the under sur- face of the arch by a ligamentous cord, the remains of the duc- tus arteriosus. Relations. — It is enclosed for one half of its extent by the pericardium, and receives the attachment of the fibrous portion of the pericardium by its upper portion. Behind it rests against the ascending aorta; on either side is the appendix of the cor- responding auricle and a coronary artery ; and above, the card- iac ganglion and the remains of the ductus arteriosus. The right jnilmonary artery passes beneath the arch and behind the ascendina: aoita and in the root of the lungs divides into three branches for the three lobes. The left pulmonary o-xXery rather larger than the right, passes in front of the descending aorta, to the root of the left lung to which It is distributed. These arteries divide and subdivide in the structure of the lungs, and terminate in capillary vessels 412 THE THOMSONIAN which form a network around the bronchial cells, and termi- nate in the radicles of the puhnonary veins. Relations. — In the root of the right lung examined from above downwards, the pulmonary artery is situated between the bronchus, and pulmonary veins ; the former being above, the latter below; while in the left lung the artery is the highest, next the bronchus, and then the veins. On both sides, from before backwards, the artery is situated between the veins and bronchus, the former being in front, and the latter behind. OF THE VEINS. The veins are the vessels which return the blood to the aur- icles of the heart, after it has been circulated by the arteries through the various tissues of the body. They are much thin- ner in structure than the arteries, so tliat when emptied of their blood they become flattened and collapsed. The veins of the systemic circulation convey the dark-coloured and impure or venous blood, from the capillary syslem to the right auricle of the heart, and are found aft^r death to be more or less distended with that fluid. The veins of the puhnonary circulation resem- ble the arteries in containing uuring life the pure or arterial blood, which they transmit from the capillaries of the lungs to the left auricle. The veins commence by minute radicles in the capillaries which are everywhere distributed through the texti res of the body, and converge to constitute larger and larger branches, till they terminate in the large trunks which convey the venous blood directly to the heart. In diameter they are much larger than the arteries, and like those vessels their combined arese would constitute a cone, whereof the apex would be placed at the heart, and the base at the surface of the body. It follows from this arrangement, that the blood in returning to the heart is passing from a larger to a smaller channel, and therefore in- creases in rapidity during its course. Veins admit of a threefold division, into superficial, deep and sinuses. The superficial veins return the blood from the integument and superficial structures, and take their course between th^ layers of the superficial fascia; they then pierce the deep fascia in the most convenient and protected situation, and terminate in the deep veins. They are unaccompanied by arteries, and are the vessels usually selected for venesection. The deep veins are situated among the deeper structures of the body and generally in relation with the arteries; in the limbs they are enclosed in the same sheath with those vessels, and they return the venous blood from the capillaries of the deep tissues. In company with all the smaller, and also with MATERIA MEDICA. 415 the secondary arteries, as the brachial, radial, and ulnar in the upper, and tibial and peroneal in the lower extremity, there are two veins, placed one on each side of the artery, and named veticB comites. The larger arteries, as the axillary, subclavian, carotid, popliteal femoral, &c., are accompanied by a single venous trunk. Sinuses difler from veins in their structure, and also in their mode of distribution, being confined to especial organs, and situated within their substance. The principal venous sinuses are those of the dura mater, of the diploe, of the cancellous structure of bones, and of the uterus. The communications between veins are even more frequent than those of arteries, and they take place between the larger, as well as among the smaller vessels ; the venaj comites com- municate with each other very frequently in their course, by means of short transverse branches which pass from one to the other. These communications are strikingly exhibited in the frequent inosculations of the spinal veins, and in the various venous plexuses, as the spermatic plexus, vesical plexus, &c. The office of these inosculations is very apparent, as tending to obviate the obstructions to which the veins are particularly lia- ble, from the thinness of their coats, and from their inability to overcome much impediment by the force of their current. Veins are composed of three tunics, external, middle and ia- ternal. The external, or cellular coat, is dense and resisting, and re- sembles the cellular tunic of arteries. The middle coat is fi- brous, like that of arteries, but extremely thin, so that its exist- ence is questioned by some anatomists. The internal coat is serous, and also similar to that of arteries ; it is continuous with the lining membrane of the heart at one extremity, and with the lining of the capillaries at the other. At certain intervals, the internal coat forms folds or duplica- tures, which constitute valves. The valves of veins are gene- rally composed of two semilunar folds, one on each side of the cylinder of the vessel, occasionally of a single duplicature, hav- ing a spiral direction, and in rare instances of three. The free extremity of the valvular folds is concave, and directed for- wards, so that while the current of blood would be permitted to flow freely towards the heart, the valves would become dis- tended and the current intercepted, if the stream became retro- grade in its course. Upon the cardiac side of each valve, the vein is expanded into two pouches (sinuses), corresponding with the segments of the valves, which give to the distended or injected vein a knotted appearance. The valves are most nu- merous in the veins of the extremities, particularly in the deep- er veins, and they are generally absent in the smaller veins and in the veins of the viscera, as in the portal and cerebral veins ; 414 THE THOMSONIAN they are also absent in the large trunks, as in the venae cavse, venae azygos, innominatsB and iliac veins. iSi7i7ises are venous channels, excavated in the structure of an organ, and lined by the internal coat of the veins : of this structure are the sinuses of the dura mater, whose external co- vering is the fibrous membrane, and the internal, the serous layer of the veins. The external investment of the sinuses of the uterus is the tissue of that organ ; and that of the bones, the lining membrane of the cells and canals. Veins, like arteries, are supplied with nutritious vessels, the vasa vasorum ; and it is to be presumed that nervous filaments are distributed to their coats. We shall describe the veins according to the primary divi- sion of the body; taking first those of the head and neck, next those of the upper extremity, then those of the lower extremity, and lastly the veins of the trunk. VEINS OF THE HEAD AND NECK. The vems of the head and neck may be arranged into three groups, viz. 1. Veins of the exterior of the head. 2. Veins of the diploe and interior of the cranium. 3. Veins of the neck. The veins of the exterior of the head are — the facial, inter- nal maxillary, temporal, temporo-maxillary, posterior auricular, and occipital. VEINS OF THE DIPLOE. The diploe of the bones of the head is furnished in the adult with irregular sinuses, which are formed by a continuation of the serous membrane of the veins into the osseous canals in which they are lodged. At the middle period of life these si- nuses are confined to the particular bones ; but in old age, after the ossification of the sutures, they may be traced from one bone to the next. They receive their blood from the capilla- ries supplying the cellular structure of the diploe, and termi- nate externally in the veins of the pericranium, and internally in the veins and sinuses of the dura mater. These veins are separated from the bony walls of the canals by a thin layer of marrow. CEREBRAL AND CEREBELLAR VEINS. The cerebral veins are remarkable for the absence of valves, and for the extreme tenuity of their coats. They may be di- vided into the superficial, and deep or ventricular veins. The vena Galeni pass backwards in the structure of the ve- lum interpositum ; and escaping through the fissure of Bichat, terminate in the straight sinus. The cerebellar veitis are disposed, like those of the cere- MATERIA MEDICA. 415 brum, on the surface of the lobes of the cerebellum ; they are situated, some upon the superior and some upon the inferior surface, while others occupy the borders of the organ. They terminate in the lateral and petrosal sinuses. SINUSES OF THE DURA MATER. The sinuses of the dura mater are irregular channels formed by the splitting of the layers of that membrane, and lined upon their inner surface by a continuation of the serous layer of the veins. They may be divided into two groups: — 1. Those si- tuated at the upper and back part of the skull. 2. The sinuses at the base of the skuU. The former are — the superior and inferior longitudinal si- nuses, the straight sinus, and the occipital and lateral sinuses. The termination of the superior longitudinal sinus in the two lateral sinuses, forms a considerable dilatation, into which the straight sinus opens from the front, and the occipital sinuses from below. This dilation is named the torcular Herophili, and is the point of communication of six sinuses — the superior longitudinal, two lateral, two occipital, and the straight. The sinuses of the base of the skull are — the cavernous, in- ferior petrosal, circular^ superior petrosal, and transverse. PLATE 76.* * The Sinuses of the Upper and Back part of the Skull.—l. The superior longitudinal sinus. 2, 2. The cerebral veins opening into the sinus. 3. The falx cerebri. 4. The inferior longitudinal sinus. 5. The straight or fourth sinus. 6. The vense Galeni. 7. the torcular Herophili. 8. The two lateral sinuses, with the occipital sinuses between them. 9. The termination of the inferior petrosal sinus of one side. 10. The dilatations corresponding with the jugular fossae. 11. The internal jugular veins. 416 THE THOMSONIAN VEINS OF THE NECK. The veins of the neck which return the blood from the hea'^ are — the external, anterior and internal jugular, and the verte- bral. VEINS OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY. The veins of the upper extremity are the deep and superfi- cial. The deep veins accompany the branches and trunks of the arteries, and constitute their veiice. coniites. The venae: comites of the radial and ulnar arteries are enclosed in the same sheath with those vessels, and terminate at the bend of the elbow in the brachial veins. The brachial vense comites are situated one on each side of the artery, and open into the axillary vein; the axillary becomes the subclavian, and the subclavian unites with the internal jugular to form the vena innominata. The superficial veins of the fore-arm are — the anterior ulnar vein, posterior ulnar vein, basilic vein, radial vein, cephalic: vein, median vein, median basilic, median cephalic. PLATE 77* * The Sinuses of the Base of the Skull. — 1. The ophthalmic Teins. 2. The cavernous sinus of one side. 3. The circular sinus ; the figure occupies the positicm of the pituitary gland in the cella turcica. 4. The inferior petrosal sinus. 5. The transverse or anterior occipital sinus. 6. The superior petrosal' sinus. 7. The internal jugular vein. 8. The foramen magnum. 9. The o eipital sinuses. 10. The torcular Herophili. 11^ 11. The lateral sinases. MATERIA MEDICA. 417 AXILLARY VEIN. The axillary vein is formed by the union of the venae comi- tes of the brachial artery with the basilic vein. It lies in front of the artery, and receives numerous branches from the colla- teral veins of the branches of the axillary artery, and, at the lower border of the first rib, becomes the subclavian vein. SDBCLAVIAN VEIN. The subclavian vein crosses over the first rib and beneath the clavicle, and unites with the internal jugular vein to form the vena innominata. It lies at first in front of the subclavian artery, and then in front of the scalenus anticus, which sepa- rates it from that vessel. The phre- plate 78.* nic and pneumogastric nerves pass between the artery and vein. The veins opening into the subclavian are the cephalic below the clavicle, and the external and anterior jugulars a- bove ; occasionally some small veins from the neighboring parts also ter- minate in it. VEINS OF THE LOWER EXTRE- MITY. The veins of the lower extremity are the deep and superficial. The deep veins accompany the branches of the arteries in pairs, and form the vense comites of the anterior and pos- terior tibial and peroneal arteries. These veins unite in the popliteal re- gion to form a single vein of large size — the popliteal — which success- ively becomes in its course the femo- ral and the external iliac vein. • The Veins of the Fore-Ann, and Bend of the Elbow. — 1. The radial vein. 2. The cephalic vein. 3. The anterior ulnar vein. 4. The posterior ulnar. 5. The trunk formed by their union. 6. The basilic vein, piercing the deep fascia at 7. 8. The median vein. 9. A communicating branch between the deep veins of the fore-arm and the median vein. 10. The median cephalic vein. 11. The median basilic. 12. A slight convexity of the deep fascia, formed by the brachial artery. 13. The process of fascia, derived from tha tendon of the biceps, and separating the median basilic vein from the brachi- al artery. 14. The external cutaneous nerve_ piercing the deep fascia, and dividing into two branches, which pass behind the median cephalic vein. 15. The internal cutaneous nerve, dividing into branches, which pass in front of the median basilic vein. 16. The intercosto-humeral cutaneous nerve, 17. The spiral cutaneous nerve, a branch of the rausculo-spiral. 418 THE THOMSONIAN POPLITEAL VEIN. The popliteal vein ascends through the popliteal region, ly- ing, in the first instance, directly upon the artery, and then getting somewhat to its outer side. It receives several muscu- lar and articular veins, and the external saphenous vein. The valves in this vein are four or five in number. FEMORAL VEIN. The femoral vein, passing through the opening in the ad- ductor magnus muscle, ascends the thigh in the sheath of the femoral artery, and entering the pelvis beneath Poupart's liga- ment, becomes the external iliac vein. In the lower part of its course it is situated upon the outer side of the artery, it then becomes placed behind that vessel, and, at Poupart's ligament, lies to its inner side. It receives the muscular and profunda veins, and through the saphenous opening, the internal saphe- nous vein. The valves in this vein are four or five in number. VEINS OF THE TRUNK. The veins of the trunk may be divided into — 1. The supe- rior vena cava, with its formative branches. 2. The inferior vena cava, with its formative branches. 3. The azygos veins. 4. The vertebral and spinal veins. 5. The cardiac veins. 6. The portal vein. 7. The pulmonary veins. StJPEEIOR VENA CAVA. The superior cava is a short trunk about three inches in length, formed by the junction of the two venae innominatae. It descends perpendicularly on the right side of the mediastin- um, and entering the pericardium terminates in the upper part of the right auricle. It is in relation in front with the thoracic fascia^ which sepa- rates it from the thymus gland, and with the pericardium ; be- hind, with the right pulmonary artery, and right superior pul- monary vein ; internally, with the ascending aorta ; and exter- nally, with the right phrenic nerve, and right lung. Immedi- ately before entering the pericardium it receives the vena azygos major. INFERIOR VENA CAVA. The inferior vena cava is formed by the union of the two common iliac veins, upon the intervertebral substance between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebra?. It ascends along the front of the vertebral column, on the right side of the abdomi- nal aorta, and passing through the fissure in the posterior bor- der of the liver and the quadrilateral opening in the tendinous centre of the diaphragm, terminates in the inferior and poste- rior part of the right auricle. There are no valves in this vein. MATERIA MEDICA. 419 It is in relation, from below upwards, in front with the me- sentery transverse duodenum, portal vein, pancreas and liver, which nearly and sometimes completely surrounds it; behind, it rests upon the vertebral column and right crus of the dia- phragm, from which it is separated by the right renal and lum- bar arteries ; to the right it has the peritoneum and sympathetic nerve ; and to the left, the aorta. The branches which the inferior cava receives in its course, are the lumbar, right spermatic, renal, supra- renal, phrenic, hepatic. AZYGOS VEINS. The azygos veins form a system of communication between the supe- rior and inferior vena cava, and serve ^ to return the blood from that part of the trunk in which those vessels are deficient, on account of their connec- tion with the heart. This system consists of three vessels, the vena azygos major, vena azygos minor, superior intercostal vein. VERTEBRAL AND SPINAL VEINS. The numerous venous plexuses of the vertebral column and spinal cord may be arranged into three groups, the dorsi-spinal, meningo-rachidian, medulli-spinal. CARDIAC VEINS. The veins returning the blood from the substance of the heart, are the great cardiac vein, posterior car- diac veins, anterior^cardiac veins, ve- nas Thebesii. * The Veins of the Trunk and Neck. — 1. The superior vena cava. 2. The left vena innominata. 3. The right vena innominata. 4. the right subclavian vein. 5. The internal jugular vein. 6. The external jugular. 7. The ante- rior jugular. 8. The inferior vena cava. 9. The external iliac vein. 10. The internal iliac vein. 11. The common iliac veins ; the small vein between these is tlie vena sacra media. 12, 12. Lumbar vein. 13. The right spermatic vein. 14. The left spermatic, opening into the left renal vein. 15. The right renal vein. 16. The trunk of the hepatic veins. 17. The greater vena azy- gos, commencing inferiorly in the lumbar veins. 18. The lesser vena azj'gos, also commencing in the lumbar veins. 19. A branch of communication with the left renal vein. 20. The termination of the lesser in the greater vena azygos. 21. The superior intercostal vein, communicating inferiorly with the lesser vena azygos, and terminating superiorly in the left vena innominata. 420 THE THOMSONIAN PORTAL SYSTEM. The portal system is composed of four large veins, which re- turn the blood from the chylo-poietic viscera; they are — the inferior and superior mesenteric, the splenic, .and the gastric veins. The Vena Portm, formed by the union of the splenic and superior mesenteric veins behind the pancreas, ascends throuo-h the right border of the lesser omentum, to transverse the fissure of the liver, where it divides into two branches, one for each la- teral lobe. In the right border of the lesser omentum it is situ- ated behind and between the hepatic artery and ductus commu- nis choledochus, and is surrounded by the hepatic plexus of PLATE 80*. • The Portal Vein. — 1. The inferior mesenteric vein ; it is traced by means of dotted lines behind the pancreas (2), to terminate in the splenic vein (3). 4. The spleen. 5. Gastric veins, opening into the splenic vein. 6. The supe- rior mesenteric vein. 7. The descending portion of the duodenum. 8. Its transverse portion, which is crossed by the superior mesenteric vein snd part of the trunk of the superior mesenteric artery. 9. The portal vein. 10. The hepatic artery. 11. The ductus communis choledochus. 12. The division of the duct and vessels at the transverse fissure of tlie liver. 13. The cystic duct leading to the gall-bladder. MATERIA MEDICA. 421 nerves and lymphatics. At the transverse fissure, each prima- ry branch divides into numerous secondary branches, which ramify through the portal canals, and give off vaginal and in- terlobular veins, which terminate in the lobular venous plexus of the lobules of the liver. The portal vein within the liver receives the venous blood from the capillaries of the hepatic artery. PULMONARY VEINS. The pulmonary veins, four in number, return the arterial blood from the lungs to the left auricle of the heart ; they dif- fer from the veins in general, in the area of their cylmders, being very little larger than the corresponding arteries, and ia accompanying singly each branch of the pulmonary artery. They commence in the capillaries upon the parietes of the bronchial cells, and unite to form a single trunk for each lobe. The vein of the middle lobe of the right lung unites with the superior vein so as to form the two trunks which open into the left auricle. Sometimes they remain separate, and then there are three pulmonary veins on the right side. The right pul- monary veins pass behind the superior vena cava to the left auricle, and the left behind the pulmonary artery ; they both pierce the pericardium. Within the lung the branches of the pulmonary veins aie behind the bronchial tubes, and those of the pulmonary artery in front ; but at the root of the lungs the veins are in front, next the arteries, and then the bronchi. There are no valves in the pulmonary veins. OF THE LYMPHATICS. The lymphatic vessels, or absorbents, have received their double appellation from certain phenomena whicn they pre- sent ; the former name is derivable from the peculiar limpid fluid (lympha, water) which they convey; and the latter, from their supposed property of absorbing foreign substances into the system. They are minute and delicate vessels, having a knotted appearance, and are distributed through every part of the body. Their office is to collect the products of digestion. and the detrita of nutrition, and convey them into the venous circulation near to the heart. Lymphatic vessels commence in a delicate network which is distributed upon the cutaneous surface of the body, upon the various surfaces of organs and throughout their internal struc- ture ; and from this network the lymphatic vessels proceed, nearly in straight lines, in a direction towards the root of the neck. In their course they are intercepted by numerous small oval or rounded bodies — lymphatic glands — in which the en- tering or inferent vessels ramify to an extreme minuteness, 422 THE THOMSOINIAN and from which proceed the escaping or efferent vessels some- what larger in size and fewer in number, to be again and again subdivided in other glands, and a little more increased in size. Lymphatic vessels admit of a threefold division into super- ficial, deep, and lacteals. The superficial lymphatic vessels, apon the surface of the body, follow the course of the veins, and pierce the deep fascia inconvenient situations, to join the deep lymphatics. Upon the surface of organs they converge to the nearest lymphatic trunks. The superficial lymphatic glands are placed in the most protected situations of the superficial fascia, as in the hollow of the ham and groin in the lower extremity'', and upon the inner side of the arm in the upper extremity. The deej) lymphatics accompany the deeper veins ; those from the lower parts of the body converging to the numerous glands seated around the iliac veins and inferior vena cava, and terminating: in a larofe trunk situated upon the vertebral column — the thoracic duck From the upper part of the trunk on the left side, and from the left side of the head and neck, they also proceed to the thoracic duct. Those on the right side of the head and neck, right opper extremity, and right side of the thorax, form a distinct duct which terminates at the point of the junction of the subcla- vian with the internal jugular vein on the right side of the root of the neck. The lacteals are the lymphatics of the small intestines; they have received their distinctive appellation from conveying the milk-like product of digestion — the chyle — to the great centre of the lymphatic system — the thoracic duct. They are situated in the mesentery, and pass through the numerous mesenteric glands in their course. The communications between lymphatic vessels are less fre- quent than those of arteries or veins ; their anastomoses take place ijy means of branches of equal calibre that unite at acute nngles, and constitute a combined trunk which is scarcely larger than either of the single branches by which it is formed. Lymphatic vessels are composed of two coats ; an external or cellular, and an internal or serous. The external coat resembles the external tunic of veins and arteries, but is extremely thin and dense. The internal coat is continuous with the internal lining of the veins ; and, like that membrane, is most probably provided with an epithelium. At short intervals this coat forms semilunar folds which are disposed in pairs in the cylinder o( the vessel and constitute the valves. It is to these valves which are extremely nume- rous in lymphatics, that their peculiar knotted appearance is due, when filled with injection. The lymphatic glands are small oval and somewhat flattened MATERIA MEDICA. 423 or rounded bodies, composed of a plexus of minute lymphatic vessels, associated with a plexus of blood-vessels, and enclosed in a thin cellular capsule. The larger glands have a lobed or cellular appearance. The lymphatic vessels and glands are supplied with arteries, veins, and nerves, like other structures. I shall describe the lymphatic vessels and glands according to the arrangement adopted for the veins, commencing with those of the head and neck, and proceeding next to those of th** upper extremity, lower extremity, and trunk. LYMPHATICS OF THE HEAD AND NECK, The superficial lymphatic glands of the head and face are small and few m number ; they are the occipital, which are situated near the origin of the occipito-frontalis muscle ; poste- rior auricular, behind the ear ; parotid, in the parotid gland ; zygomatic, in the zygomatic fossa ; buccal, upon the buccinator muscle ; and submaxillary, beneath the margin of the lower jaw. There are no deep lymphatic glands within the cranium. The superficial cervical lymphatic glands are few in number; they are situated in the course of the external jugular vein, between the sterno mastoid and trapezius muscles, at the root of the neck and about the larynx. The deep cervical glands are very numerous and of large size ; they are situated around the internal jugular vein and sheath of the carotid arteries, by the side of the pharynx, cbso- phagus, and trachea, and extend from the base of the skull to the root of the neck, where they are continuous with the lym- phatic vessels and glands of the thorax. The superficial lymphatic vessels of the head and face are disposed in three groupes ; occipital, which takes the course of the occipital vein to the occipital and deep cervical glands ; temporal, which follows the branches of the temporal vein to the parotid and deep cervical glands ; and facial, which accom- panies the facial vein to the submaxillary lymphatic glands. The deep lymphatic vessels of the head are the meningeal and cerebral ; the former are situated in connection with the meningeal veins, and escape through foramina at the base of the scull, to join the deep cervical glands. The cerebral lym- phatics, accoiding to Fohmann, are situated upon the surface of the pia mater. They pass most probably through the fora- mina at the base of the skull, to terminate in the deep cervical glands. The deep lymphatic vessels of the face proceed from the nasa fosscc, mouth, and pharynx, and terminate in the submaxillary and deep cervical glands. The superficial and deep cervical lymphatic vessels of the 424 THE THOMSONIAN. neck accompany the jugular veins, passing from gland to gland, and at the root of the neck communicate with the thoracic lym- phatic vessels, and terminate, on the right side, in the ductus lymph aticus dexter, and, on the left, in the thoracic duct, near to its t«rmination. LYMPHATICS OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY. The superficial lymphatic glands of the arm are not more than four or five in number, and of very small size. One or two are situated near the median, basilic, and cephalic veins, at tlie bend of the elbow ; and one or two near to the basilic vein, on the inner side of the upper arm, immediately above the elbow. The deep glands in the fore-arm are excessively small and infrequent; two or three may generally be found in the course of theradial and ulnar vessel. In the upper arm there is a cliain of small glands, accompanying the brachial artery. The axillary glands are numerous and of large size. Some are closely adherent to the vessels, some are disposed in the loose cellular tissue of the axilla, and a small chain may \ie observed extending along the lower border of the pectoralis major to the mammary gland. Two or three subclavian glands are situated beneath the clavicle, and serve as the medium of communication between the axillary and deep carvical lym- phatic glands. The superficial lymphatic vessels of the upper extremity commence at the extremities of the fingers, and pass along the borders of the fingers to the dorsum of the hand ; they next ascend the fore-arm, some on its posterior and some on its ante- rior aspect, observins: particularly the direction of the veins. At the bend of the elbow they converge, to form two groups which accompany the basilic and cephalic veins. The lym- phatics of the basilic group communicate with the glands, situ- ated immediately above the elbow, and ascend to join the axil- lary glands. Those of the cephalic group for the most part cross the upper part of the biceps muscle, and also enter the axilary glands, while two or three are continued onwards along the cephalic vein, in the interspace between the pectoralis major and deltoid muscle, to communicate with the subclavian glands. The deep lymphatics accompany the vessels of the upper extremity, and communicate occasionally with the superficial lymphatics. They enter the axillary and subclavian glands and, at the root of the neck, terminate on the left side in the thoracic duct, and on the right side in the ductus lymphaticus dexter. MATERIA MEDICA. 425 LYMPHATICS OF THE LOWER EXTREMITY. The superficial lymphatic glands of the lower extremity are those of the groin, the inguinal, and one or two situated in the superficial fascia of the posterior aspect of the thigh, just above the popliteal region. The inguinal glands are divisible into two groups, a superior group of small size, situated along the course of Poupart's liga- ment, and receiving the lymphatic vessels from the parietes of the abdomen and genital organs ; and an inferior group of larger glands clustered around the internal saphenous vein near to its termination, and receiving the superficial lymphatic ves- sels from the lower extremity. The deep lymphatic glands are the anterior tibial, popliteal, deep inguinal, gluteal, and ischiatic. The anterior tibial is generally a single gland, placed on the interosseous membrane, by the side of the anterior tibial artery in the upper part of its course. The popliteal glands, four or five in number, are embedded in the loose cellular tissue and fat of the popliteal space. The deep inguinal glands, less ntmierous and smaller than the superficial, are situated near the femoral vessels in the groin, beneath the fascia lata. The gluteal and ischiatic glands are placed above and below the pyriformis muscle, at the great ischiatic foramen. The superficial lymphatic vessels are divisible into two groups, internal and external. The internal and principal group, commencing on the dorsum and inner side of the foot, ascend the leg by the side of the internal saphenous vein, and passing behind the inner condyle of the femr.r, follow the di- rection of that vein to the groin, Avhere they join the saphenous group of superficial inguinal glands. The greater part of the afferent vessels from these glands pierce the cribriform fascia of the saphenous opening and the sheath of the femoral vessels to join the lymphatic gland situated in the femoral ring, which serves to establish a communication between the lymphatics of the lower extremity and those of the trunk. The other effer- ent vessels pierce the fascia lata, to join the deep glands. The vessels which pass upwards from the outer side of the dorsum of the foot, ascend upon the outer side of the leg, and curve in- wards just below the knee, to unite with the lymphatics of the inner side of the thigh. The external group consists of a few lymphatic vessels which commence upon the outer side of the foot and posterior part of the ankle, and accompany the exter- nal saphenous vein to the popliteal region, where they enter the popliteal glands. The deep lymphatic vessels accompany the deep veins, and communicate with the various glands in their course. After 23 426 THE THOMSONIAN joining the deep inguinal glands, they pass beneath Ponpart's ligament, to communicate with the numerous glands situated around the iliac vessels. The deep lymphatics of the gUiteal region follow the course of the branches of the gluteal and is- chiatic arteries. The former join the glands situated upon the upper border of the pyriformis muscle, and the latter, after com- municating with the lymphatics of the thigh, enter the ischiat- ic glands. LYMPHATICS OF THE TRUNK. The lymphatics of the trunk may be arranged under three heads — superficial, deep, and visceral. The superficial lymphatic vessels of the upper half of the trunk pass upwards and outwards on each side, and converge, some to the axillary glands, and others to the glands at the root of the neck. The lymphatics from the mammary glands fol- low the lower border of the pectoralis major, communicating with a chain of lymphatic glands, to the axillary glands. The superficial lymphatic vessels of the lower half of the trunk, of the gluteal region, perineum, and external organs ol generation, converge to the superior group of superficial inguinal glands. Some small glands are situated on each side of the dorsal vein of the penis, from which, as from the superficial lymphatics, the efferent vessels pass into the superior group of superficial ingui- nal glands. The deep lymphatic glands of the thorax are the intercostal, internal, mammary, anterior mediastinal, aud posterior medi- astinal. The intercostal glands are of small size, and are situated on each side of the vertebral column, near the articulations of the heads of the ribs, and in the course of the intercostal arteries. The internal mammary glands, also very small, are placed in the intercostal spaces, by the side of the iternal mammary arteries. The anterior mediastinal glands occupy he loose cellular tissue of the anterior mediastinum, restinj.' some on the dia- phragm, but the greater number upon the irge vessels at the root of the heart. The posterior mediastinal glands are .stuated along the course of the aorta and oesophagus, in the posterior mediasti- num, and communicate above with the dc p cervical glands, on each side with the intercostal, and belo\ with the abdomi- nal glands. The deep lymphatic vessels of the thorax ore the intercostal, internal mammary, and diaphragmatic. The intercostal lymphatic vessels follow the course of the MATERIA MEDICA. 427 arteries of the same name ; and reaching the vertebral column, curve downwards, to terminate in the thoracic duct. The internal mammary lymphatics commence in the parietes of the abdomen communicating with the epigastric lymphatics. They ascend by the side of the internal mammary vessels, being joined in their course by the anterior intercostals, and terminate on the right side in the tributaries of the ductus lymphaticus dexter ; and on the left side m the thoracic duct. The diaphragmatic lymphatics pursue the direction of the corresponding veins, and terminate, some in front in the inter- nal mammary vessels, and some behind, in the posterior medi- astinal lymphatics. The deep lymphatic glands of the abdomen are the lumbar glands; they are very numerous, and are seated around the common iliac vessels, the aorta and vena cava. The deep lymphatic glands of the pelvis are the external iliac, internal iliac, and sacral. The external iliac are placed around the external iliac ves- sels, being in continuation by one extremity with the femoral lymphatics, and by the other with the lumbar glands. The internal iliac glands are situated in the course of the internal iliac vessels, and the sacral glands are supported by the concave surface of the sacrum. The deep lymphatic vessels are continued upwards from the thigh, beneath Poupart's ligament, and along the external iliac vessels to the lumbar glands, receivmg in their course the epi- gastric, circumflex ilii, and ilio-lumbar lymphatic vessels. Those from the parietes of the pelvis, and from the gluteal, is- chiatic, and obturator vessels, follow the course of the internal iliac arteries, and unite with the lumbar lymphatics. And the lumbar lymphatic vessels, after receiving all the lymphatics from the lower extremities, pelvis and loins, terminate by seve- ral large trunks in the receptaculum chyli. LYMPHATICS OF THE VISCERA. The lymphatic vessels of the lungs are distributed over eve- ry part of the surface, and through the texture of these organs, and converge to the numerous glands situated around the bi- furcation of the trachea and roots of the lungs — the bronchial glands. Some of these glands, of small size, may be traced in connection with the bronchial tubes, for some distance into the lunfjs. The efferent vessels from the bronchial glands unite with the tracheal and oesophageal glands, and terminate princi- pally in the thoracic duct at the root of the neck, and partly in the ductus lymphaticus dexter. The bronchial glands, in the adult, present a variable tint of brown, and in old age a deep black color. In infancy they have none of this pigment, and 428 THE THOMSONIAN are not to be distinguished from lymphatic glands in other situ- ations. The lymphatic vessels of the heart originate in the subse- rous cellular tissue of the surface, and in the deeper tissues of the organ, and follow the course of the vessels, principally, alon<^'" t1ie right border of the heart to the glands situated around the arch of the aorta and bronchial glands, whence they pro- ceed to the thoracic duct. The pericardiac and thymic lymphatic vessels proceed to join the anterior mediastinal and bronchial glands. The lymphatic vessels of the liver are divisible into the deep and superficial. The former take their course through the por- tal canals, and through the right border of the lesser omentum, to the lymphatic glands, situated in the course of the hepatic artery and along the lesser curve of the stomacfi. The super- ficial lymphatics are situated in the cellular structure of the proper capsule, over the whole surliice of the liver. Those of the convex surface are divided into two sets — 1. those which pass from before backwards ; 2. those which advance from be- hind forwards. The former unite to form trunks, which enter between the folds of the lateral ligaments at the right and left extremities of the organ, and of the coronary ligament in the middle. Some of these pierce the diaphragm and join the pos- terior mediastinal glands, others converge to the lymphatic glands situated around the inferior cava. Those which pass from behind forwards consist of two groups ; one ascends be- tween the folds of the broad ligament, and perforates the dia- phragm, to terminate in the anterior mediastinal glands ; the other curves around the anterior margin of the liver, to its con- cave surface, and from thence to the glands in the right border of the lesser omentum. The lymphatic vessels of the concave surface are variously distributed, according to their position ; those from the rio;ht lobe terminate in the lumbar glands ; those from the gall bladder, which are large and form a remarkable plexus, enter the glands in the right border of the lesser omen- tum; and those from the left lobe converge to the lymphatic o-lands situated along the lesser curve of the stomach. The lymphatic glands of the spleen are situated around its hilus, and those of the pancreas in the course of the splenic vein. The lymphatic vessels of these organs pass through their respective glands, and join the aortic glands, previously to terminating in the thoracic duct. The lymphatic glands of the stomach are of small size, and situated along the lesser and greater curves of that organ. The lymphatic vessels, as in other viscera, are superficial and deep; the former originating in the subserous, and the latter in the submucous tissue ; they pass from the stomach in four different MATERIA MEDICA. 429 directions : some ascend to the glands situated along the lesser curve, others descend to those occupying the greater curve, a third set passes outwards to the splenic glands, and a fourth to the glands situated near the pylorus and aortic glands. The lymphatic glands of the small intestine are situated be- tween the layers of the mesentery, in the meshes formed by the superior mesenteric artery, and thence named mesenteric glands. These glands are most numerous and largest, superi- orly, near the duodenum ; and inferiorly, near the termination of the ileum. The lymphatic vessels of the small intestines are of two kinds — those "of the structure of the intestines, which ramify upon its surface previously to entering the mesenteric glands, and those which commence in the villi, upon the surface of the mucous membrane, and are named lacteals. The lacteals, according to the most recent and best research- es, commence in the centre of each villus as a blind tubulus, which opens into a line network, situated in the submucous tis- sue. From this areolar network the lacteal vessels proceed to the mesenteric glands, and from thence to the thoracic duct, in which they terminate. The lymphatic glands of the large intestines are situated along the attached margin of the intestine, in the meshes form- ed by the arteries previously to their distribution. The lym- phatic vessels take their course in two different directions, those of the caecum, ascending and transverse colon, after traversing their proper trlands, proceed to the mesenteric, and those of the descending colon and rectum to the lumbar glands. The lymphatic vessels of the kidney follow the direction of the blood vessels to the lumbar ganglia situated around the aor- ta and inferior vena cava ; those of the supra-renal capsules, which are very large and numerous, terminate in the renal lymphatics. The lymphatic vessels of the viscera of the pelvis terminate in the sacral and lumbar ganglia. The lymphatic vessels of the testicle take the course of the spermatic cord, where they are of large size, and terminate in the lumbar ffanglia. THORACIC DUCT. The thoracic duct commences in the abdomen, by a conside- rable and somewhat triangular dilatation, the receptaculum chy- li, which is situated upon the front of the body of the second lumbar vertebra, behind and between the aorta and inferior ve- na cava, and close to the tendon of the right crus of the dia- phragm. From the upper part of the receptaculum chyli the thoracic duct ascends through the aortic opening in the dia- 430 THE THOMSOMAN PLATE SI. phragm, and along the front of the vertebral column, lying be- tween the thoracic aorta and vena azygos, to the fourth dorsal vertebra. It then inclines to the left side, passes behind the arch of the aorta, and ascends by the side of the ossophagus and behind the perpendicular portion of the left subclavian ar- tery to the root of the neck op- posite the seventh cervical ver- tebra, where it makes a sudden curve forwards and downwards, and terminates at the point of junction of the left subclavian with the left internal jugular vein. The thoracic duct is equal in size to the diameter of a goose- quill at its commencement from the receptaculum chyli, dimin- ishes considerably in diameter towards the middle of the poste- rior mediastinum, and again be- comes dilated near its termina- tion. At about the middle of its course it frequently divides into two branches of equal size, which reunite after a short course ; and sometimes it gives off several branches, which as- sume a plexiform arrangment in this situation. Occasionally the thoracic duct bifurcates at the upper part of the thorax into • The Course and Termination of the Thoracic Duct. — 1, The arch of the aorta. 2. The thoracic aorta. 3. The abdominal aorta, showing its principal branches divided near their origin. 4. The arleria innominata, dividing into the right carotid and right subclavian arteries. 5. The left carotid. 6. The left subclavian. 7. The superior cava, formed by the union of 8, the two ve- na innominatai ; and these by the junction 9, of the internal jugular and subclavian vein at each side. 10. The greater vena azygos. 11. The termi- nation of the lesser in the greater vena azygos. 12. The receptaculum chyli ; several lymphatic trunks are seen opening into it. 13. The thoracic duct, di- viding opposite the middle of the dorsal vertebra; into two branches, which 60on reunite. The course of the duct behind the arch of the aorta and left subclavian artery is shown by a dotted line. 14. The duct making its turn at the root of the neck, and receiving several lymphatic trunks previously to ter- minating in the posterior aspect of the junction of the internal jugular and subclavian vein. 15. The termination of the trunk of the ductus lymphaticus dexter. MATERIA MEDICA. 431 two branches, one of which opens into the point of junction be- tween the rii^ht subclavian and jugular veins, while the other proceeds to the normal termination of the duct on the left side. In rare instances the duct has been found to terminate in the vena azygos, which is the normal destination in some mamma- lia. The thoracic duct presents fewer valves in its course than lympliatic vessels generally?' ; at its termination it is provided with a pair of semilunar valves, which prevent the admission of venous blood into its cylinder. Branches. — The thoracic duct receives at its commencement four or five large lymphatic trunks which unite to form the re- ceptaculum chyli ; it next receives the trunks of the lacteal ves- sels. Within the thorax it is joined by a large lymphatic trunk from the liver, and in its course through the posterior medias- tinum receives the lymphatic vessels both from the viscera and from the parietes of the thorax. At its curve forwards in the neck it is joined by the lymphatic trunks from the left side of the head and neck, left upper extremity, and from the upper part of the thorax, and thoracic viscera. The ductus lymphaticus dexter is a short trunk, which re- ceives the lymphatic vessels from the right side of the head and neck, right upper extremity and right side of the thorax, and terminates at the junction of the right subclavian with the right internal jugular vein, at the point where these veins unite to form the right vena innominata. It is provided at its termina- tion with a jKiir of semilunar valves which prevent the entranee of blood from the veins. ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. The nervous system consists of a central organ, the cerebro- spinal centre or axis, and of numerous rounded and flattened white cords, the nerves, which are connected by one extremity with the cerebro-spinal centre, and by the other are distributed to all the textures of the body. The sympathetic system is an exception to this description ; for in place of one, it has many small centres, which are called ganglia, and which communi- cate very freely with the cerebro-spinal axis, and with its nerves. The cerebro-spinal axis consists of two portions — the brain, an organ of large size, situated within the skull, and the spinal cord, a lengthened portion of the nervous centre continuous with the brain, and occupying the canal of the vertebral co- lumn. The most superficial examination of the brain and spinal cord shows them to be composed of fibres, which in some situ- ations are ranged side by side or collected into bundles, and in 432 THE THOMSONIAN Other situations are interlaced at various angles by cross fibres. The fibres are collected and held together by a delicate cellular web, which forms the bond of support to the entire organ. It is also observed that the cerebro-spinal axis presents Two sub- stances difl'ering from each other in density and color — a grey or cineritious or cortical substance, and a white or medullary substance. The grey substance forms a thin lamella over the entire surface of the convolutions of the cerebrum, and the la- mina3 of the cerebellum: hence it has been named conical ; but it is likewise situated in the centre of the spinal cord its entire length, and may thence be traced through the medulla oblong- ata, crura cerebri, thalami optici, and corpora striata ; it enters also into the composition of the locus perforatus, tuber cinere- um, commissura mollis, pineal gland, and corpus rhomboide- iim. The fibres of the cerebro-spinal axis are arranged into two classes, diverging and converging. The diverging fibres pro- ceed from the medulla oblongata, and diverge to every part of the surface of the brain ; while the converging commence up- on the surfoce, and proceed inwards towards the centre, so as to connect the diverging fibres of opposite sides. In certain parts of then' course the diverging fibres are separated by the grey substance, and increase in number so as to form a body of considerable size, which is called a ganglion. The position and mutual relations of these fibres and ganglia may be best ex- plained by reference to the mode of developement of the cere- bro-spiral axis in animals and in man. The centre of the nervous system in the lowest animals pos- sessed of a lengthened axis, presents itself in the form of a dou- ble cord. A step higher in the animal scale, and knots or gan- glia are developed upon one extremity of this cord ; such is the most rudimentary condition of the brain in the lowest forms of vertebrata. In the lowest fishes, the anterior extremity of the double cord displays a succession of five pairs of ganglia. The higher fishes and amphibia appear to have a different disposi- tion of these primitive ganglia. The first two have become fused into a single ganglion, and then follow only three pairs of symmetrical ganglia. But if the larger pair be unfolded after being hardened in alcohol, it will then be seen that the whole number of ganglia exists, but that four have become concealed by a thin covering that has spread across them. This condi- tion of the brain carries us upwards in the animal scale even to mammalia ; i. e., in the dog or cat we find, first a single gan- glion, the cerebellum, then three pairs following each other in succession ; and if we unfold the middle pair, we shall be at once convinced that it is indeed composed of two pairs of pri- mitive ganglia concealed by an additional developement. Again MATERIA MEDICA. 433 it will be observed, that the primitive ganglia of opposite sides, at first separate and disjoined, become connected by means of transverse fibres of communication (commissures, commissura). The office of these commissures is the association in function of the two symmetrical portions. Hence we arrive at the ge- neral and important conclusion, that the brain among the lower animals consists of primitive cords, primitive ganglia upon those cords, and commissures which connect the substances of the adjoining ganglia, and associate their actions. In the deveiopement of the cerebro-spinal axis in man, the earliest indication of the spinal cord is presented under the form of a pair of minute longitudinal filaments placed side by side. Upon these, towards the anterior extrenity, five pairs of minute swellings are observed, not disposed in a straight line as in fish- es, but curved upon each other so as to correspond with the di- rection of the future cranium. The posterior pair soon becomes cemented upon the middle line, forming a single ganglion ; the second pair also unite with each other ; the third and fourth pairs, at first distinct, are speedily veiled by a lateral deveiope- ment, which arches backwards and conceals them ; the anteri- or pairs, at first very small, decrease in size and become almost lost in the increased deveiopement of the preceding pairs. We see here a chain of resemblances corresponding with the progressive deveiopement observed in the lower animals ; the human brain is passing through the phases of improving deve- iopement, which distinguishes the lowest from the lower crea- tures ; and we are naturally led to the same conclusion with regard to the architecture of the human brain, that we were led to establish as the principle of deveiopement in the inferior crea- tures — that it is composed of primitive cords, primitive ganglia upon those cords, commissures to connect those ganglia, and developements from those ganglia. In the adult, the primitive longitudinal cords have become cemented together, to form the spinal cord. But at the upper extremity they separate from each other, under the name of crura cerebri. The first pair of ganglia developed from the primitive cords, have grown into the cerebellum ; the second pair (the optic lobes of animals) have become the corpora quad- rigemina of man. The third pair (the optic thalami), and the fourth (the corpora striata), are the basis of the hemispheres, which, the merest lamina in the fish, has become the largest portion of the brain of man. And the fifth pair (olfactory lobes) so large in the lowest forms, has dwindled into the olfactory bulbs of man. The white substance of the brain and spinal cord, examined with the microscope, is found to consist of fibres varying in dia- meter from the 370th to the 184th of a line. These fibres aiQ S34 THE TH0M30NIAN composed of a thin and transparent neurilema, enclosing a soft homogenous nervous substance, and tliey possess a remarkable tendency, when compressed, to assume a varicose appearance. The nervous fibres of the olfactory, optic, and auditory nerves, have the same disposition to become varicose on pressure. The neurilema of the primitive fibre, according to Fontana, consisis of two layers, of which the internal is thin and transparent, and the external ceUular and less transparent. The grey substance of the brain, according to Valentin, is composed of globules of considerable size, havinsf a central nu- cleus, near the margin of which is another smaller nucleus, and frequently upon the surface of the globule, patches of pig- ment. The various shades of grey observed in different parts of the brain depend upon the greater or smaller number of glo- bules existing in those parts. Two kinds of grey substance are described as existing in the spinal cord ; the one is the or- dinary grey matter of the cord, and the other forms part of the posterior cornua. The former resembles the grey matter of the brain, consisting of globules, while the latter is composed of small bodies resembling the blood corpuscules of the frog. The nerves are divisible mto two great classes — those which proceed directly from the cerebro-spinal axis, the cranial and spinal nerv^es, and constitute the system of animal life ; and those which originate from a system of nervous centres, inde- pendent of the cerebro-spinal axis, but closely associated with that centre by numerous communications, the sympathetic sys- tem, or system of organic life. The division of nerves into cranial and spinal is purely arbi- trary, and depends upon the circumstance of the former pass- ing through the foramina of the cranium, and the latter through those of the vertebral columm. With respect to origin, all the cranial nerves, with the exception of the first (olfactory), pro- ceed from the spinal cord, or from its immediate continuation into the brain. The spinal nerves arise by two roots — anteri- or, which proceeds from the anterior segment of the spinal cord, and possesses a motor function — and posterior, which is connected with the posterior segment, and bestows the faculty of sensation. The motor nerves of the cranium are shown by dissection to be continuous with the motor portion of the cord, and form one system with the motor roots of the spinal cord ; while the nerves of sensation, always excepting the olfactory, are in like manner traced to the posterior segment of the cord, and form part of the system of sensation. To these two systems a third has been added by sir Charles Bell — the respiratory system — which consists of nerves associ- ated in the function of respiration, and arising from the side of the upper part of the spinal cord in one continuous line, which MATERIA MEDICA. 435 was thence named, by that distinguished physiologist, the re- spiratory tract. Recent researches have made an important addition to our knowledge of the mode of connection of the nerves with the spi- nal cord, and shown that both roots of the spinal nerves, as well as most of the cerebral, divide into two sets of filaments upon entering the cord, one set being connected to the grey substance, while the other is continuous with the white or fi- brous part of the cord. The connection of a nerve with the cerebro-spinal axis is called, for the convenience of description, its origin ; this terra must not, however, be received literally, for each nerve is de- veloped in the precise situation which it occupies in the body, and with the same relations that it possesses in after life. In- deed, we not unfrequently meet with instances in anencepha- lous foetuses, where the nerves are beautifully and completely formed, while the brain and spinal cord are wholly wanting. The word origin must, therefore, be considered as a relict of the darkness of preceding ages, when the cerebro-spinal axis was looked upon as the tree from which the nerves pushed forth as branches. In their distribution, the spinal nerves for the most part follow the course of the arteries, particularly in the limbs, where they lie almost constantly to the outer side and superficially to the vessels, as if for receiving the first inti- mation of danger, and communicating it to the muscles, that they may instantly remove the arteries from impending injury. A microscopic examination of a cerebro-spinal nerve shows it to be composed of minute fibres resembling those of the brain, and consisting of a neurilema enclosing a soft homogenous ner- vous substance. The chief difference between the fibres of the nerves and the cerebral fibres, is a somewhat greater opacity and more 2;ranular appearance of the contents of the minute cylinders of the former; a greater thichness of their neuri- lema, and an indisposition to the formation of varicose en- largements upon compression. The neurilema presents the same two layers which exist in the cerebral fibres. The pri- mitive fibres, or filaments, are assembled into small bundles and enclosed in a distinct sheath, constituting a funiculus; the fu- niculi are collected into larger bundles, or fosciculi, arid a sin- gle or a number of fasciculi connected by cellular tissue, and invested by a membranous sheath, constitute a nerve. The fu- niculi, when freshly exposed, present a peculiar zigzag line across their cylinder, which is most probably produced by the arrangement of the primitive fibres, or possibly by some condi- tion of the neurilema. This appearance is destroyed by mak- ing extension upon the nerve. Communications between nerves take place either by means 436 THE TIIOMSONIAN of the funiculi composing a single nerve, or of the fasciculi in a nervous plexus. In these communications, there is no fitsion of nervous substance, the cord formed by any two funiculi is constantly enlarged, and corresponds accurately with their com- bined bulk. A nervous plexus consists in a communication between the fasciculi and funiculi composing the nerves which are associat- ed in their supply of a limb or of a certain region of the body. During this communication there is an interchange of funiculi, aiid with the funiculi an interchange of fibres. The sympathetic system consists of numerous ganglia, of communicating branches passing between the ganglia, of others passing between the ganglia and the cerebro-spinal axis, and of branches of distribution which are remarkable for their frequent and plexiform communications. The sympathetic nerves also ditfer from other nerves in their color, which is of a greyish pearly tint. Examined with the microscope, the sympathetic nerves are seen to be composed of an admixture of grey and white fibres. The grey are much smaller than the white, less transparent, and the neurilema is less easily distinguishable from its contents. Some of the nerves are composed of grey fi- bres only, without any admixture of white. The sympathetic ganglia contain the globules observed in the grey substanqe of the brain ; they are firmer in structure and enclosed in a strong investing capsule. The fasciculi of fibres entering the gangli- on become divided and form a plexus around the globules, and then converge to constitute another fasciculus, by which they quit the ganglion. The nervous system may be divided, for convenience of de- scription, into — 1. The brain. 2. The spinal cord. 3. The cranial nerves. 4. The spinal nerves. 5, The sympathetic system. THE BRAIN. , The brain is a collective term, which signifies those parts of the nervous system exclusive of the nerves themselves which are contained within the cranium; they are the cerebrum, ce- rebellum, and medulla oblongata. These are invested and pro- tected by the membranes of the brain, and the whole together constitute the encephalon. Dissectioji. — To examine the ence-phalon with its meyn- branes, the upper part'of the skull must be removed by sawing through the external table, and breaking the internal table with the chisel and hammer. After the calvariuin has been loosen- ed all round it will require a considerable degree of force to tear tlie bone away from the dura mater. The adhesion is particu- MATERIA MEDICA. 437 larly firm at the sutures, where the dura mater is continuous with a membranous layer interposed between the edges of the bones; in other situations, the connection results from nume- rous vessels which permeate the inner table of the skull. The adhesion subsisting between the dura mater and bone is greater in the young subject than in the adult. Upon being torn away, the internal table will present the deeply grooved and ramified channels, corresponding with the branches of the arteria meniugea media. Along the middle line will be seen a groove corresponding with the superior lon- gitudinal sinus, and on either side may be frequently observed some depressed fossae, corresponding with the Pacchionian bo- dies. The membranes of the encephalon are, the dura mater, ar- achnoid membrane, and jna mater. DURA MATER. The dura mater (so named from a supposition that it was. the source of all the fibrous membranes of the body), is the firm, bluish, fibrous membrane, which is exposed on the removal of the calvarium. It lines the interior of the skull and spinal co- lumn, and sends processes inwards, for the support and protec- tion of the ditierent parts of the brain. It also sends processes externally, which form sheaths for the nerves as they quit the skull and spinal column. Its external surface is rough and fi- brous, and corresponds with the internal table of the skull. The internal surface is smooth, and lined by the thin varnish- like lamella of the arachnoid membrane. The latter is a se- rous membrane. Hence the dura mater becomes a fibro-serous membrane, being composed of its own proper fibrous structure. and the serous layer derived from the arachnoid. The glandular Pacchioni are small, round, whitish granu- lations, collected in clusters of variable size. They are found in three situations. 1. On the inner surface of the dura mater, near the superior longitudinal sinus; when of large size they produce absorption of the dura mater, and considerable indent- ations of the inner wall of the skull. 2. In the superior longi- tudinal sinus. 3. On the arachnoid membrane, investing the pia mater near to the margin of the hemispheres. If the student cut through one side of the dura mater, and turn it upwards towards the middle line, he will observe the smooth internal surface of the dura maier. He will perceive also the large cerebral veins filled with dark blood, passing from behind forwards to open into the superior longitudinal si- nus, and the firm connections by means of these veins and the Pacchionian bodies between the opposed surfaces of the arach- noid membraoe. 438 THE THOMSONIAN If he separate these with his scalpel, he will see a vertical layer of dura mater descending between the hemispheres, and if he draw one side of the brain a Uttle outwards, he will dis- tinctly perceive its extent. This is the falx cerebri. The processes of dura mater which are sent inwards towards the interior of the skull, are the falx cerebri, tentorium cerebel- li, and falx cerebelli. The arteries of the dura mater are — the Anterior meningeal, from the internal carotid. Middle meningeal and meningea parva, from the internal maxillary. Inferior meningeal, from the ascending pharyngeal and occi- pital arteries. Posterior meningeal, from the vertebral. The nerves are derived from the nervi moUes and vertebral plexus of the sympathetic, from the Casserian ganglion, the opthalmic nerve, and sometimes from the fourth. The branch- es from the two last are given off while the nerves are situated by the side of the sella turcea; they are recurrent, and pass backwards between the layers of the tentorium, to the lining membrane of the lateral sinus. Arachnoid Membrane. The arachnoid, so named from its extreme tenuity, is the se- rous membrane of the cerebro-spinal centre, and, like other se- rous membranes, a shut sac. It envelopes the vein and spinal cord, and is reflected upon the inner surface of the dura mater, giving to that membrane its serous investment. The arachnoid is attached to the surface of the pia mater by n loose cellular tissue, the sub-arachnoidean. This tissue is fi- lamentous at the base of the brain, between the hemispheres, and around the spinal cord, where the arachnoid is disposed very loosely. The sub-arachnoidean cellular tissue is the seat of an abun- dant serous secretion, the sub-arachnoidean fluid, which fills all the vacuities existing between the arachnoid and pia mater, and distends the arachnoid of the spinal cord so completely, as to enable it to occupy the whole of the space included in the sheath of dura mater. The arachnoid also secretes a serous fluid from its inner sur- face, which is small in quantity compared with the sub-arach- noidean liquid. Pia Mater. The pia mater is a vascular membrane, composed of Innu- merable vessels held together by a thin cellular layer. It in- vests the whole surface of the brain, dipping into its convolu- MATERIA MEDICA. 439 tions, and forming a fold in its interior, called velum interposi- tum. It also forms folds in other situations, as in the fourth ventricle, and in the longitudinal grooves of the spinal cord. The pia mater is the nutrient membrane of the brain, and derives its blood from the internal carotid and vertebral arteries. Its nerves are the minute filaments of the sympathetic, which accompany the branches of the arteries. CEREBRUM. The cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres by the great longitudinal fissure, which lodges the falx cerebri, and marks the original developement of the brain by two symmetrical halves. Each hemisphere, upon its under surface, admits of a divi- sion into three lobes, anterior, middle, and posterior. The an- terior lobe rests upon the roof of the orbit, and is separated from the middle by the fissure of Sylvius. The middle lobe is re- ceived into the middle fossa, in the base of the skull, and is se- parated from the posterior by a slight impression produced by the ridge of the petrous bone. The posterior lobe is supportsd by the tentorium. Separate carefully the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, and a broad band of white substance will be seen to connect them. Remove the upper part of each hemisphere, with a knife, to a level with this white layer, and the appearance resulting from this section is the centrum ovale majus. The centrum ovale majus is surrounded by a thin stratum of grey substance, which follows in a zigzag line all the convo- lutions and the fissures between them. In ihe middle of the centum ovale majus is the broad band which connects the two hemispheres to each other, the corpus callosum. If an incision be made through the corpus callosum on either side of the raphe, two irregular cavities will be opened, which extend from one extremity of the hemispheres to the other ; these are the lateral ventricles. To expose them completely, the upper boundary should be removed with the scissors. Each lateral ventricle is divided into a central cavity, and and three smaller cavities called cornua. The anterior cornu curves forwards and outwards in the anterior lobe ; the middle cornu descends into the middle lobe; and the posterior cornn passes backwards in the posterior lobe, converging towards its fellow of the opposite side. The central cavity is triangular in its form, bounded above by the corpus callosum ; internally by the septum lucidum, which separates it from the opposite ven- tricle ; and below by the following parts, taken in their order of position from before backwards: — Corpus striatum, tenia so- 440 THE THOMSONIAN micircularis, thalamus opticus, choroid plexus, corpus fimbria- tum, fornix. The foramen of Monro may be distinctly seen by pulling slightly on the choroid plexus, and pressing aside the septum lucidum with the handle of the knife. It is situated between the under surface of the fornix, and the anterior extremities of the thalami optici, and forms a transverse communication be- tween the lateral ventricles, and below with the third ventricle. The fornix is a white layer of medullary substance, of which a portion only is seen in this view of the ventricle. The anterior cornu is triangular in its form, sweeping out- wards, and terminating by a point in the anterior lobe of the brain, at a short distance only from its surface. PLATE 82*. • The Lateral Ventricles of the Cerebrum. — 1, 1. The two hemispheres, cut down to a level with the corpus callosum so as to constitute the centrum ovalu majus. The surface is seen to be studded with the small vascular points — puncta vasculosa — and surrounded by a narrow margin which represents the grey substance. 2. A small portion of the anterior extremity of the corpus callosum. 3. Its posterior boundary ; the intermediate portion Torming the roof of the lateral ventricles has been removed, so as to completely expose those cavities. 4. A part of the septum lucidum, showing an interspace be- tw'een its layers — the fifth ventricle. 5 The anterior cornu of one side. 6. The commencement of the middle cornu. 7. The posterior cornu. 8. The corpus striatum of one ventricle. 9. The tenia seinicircularis covered by the vena corporis striati and tenia Tarini. 10. A small part of the tlialamus opti- cus. 11. The choroid plexus. This plexus communicates with that of the opposite ventricle through the foramen of Monro ; a bristle is passed through this opening, and its extremities are seen res^ting on the corpus striatum at each side. 12. The fornix. 13. The commencement of the hippocampus ma- jor descending into the middle cornu. 14. The hippocampus minor. MATERIA MEDICA. 441 The posterior cornu, or digital cavity, curves inwards as it extends into the posterior lobe of the brain, and hkewise termi- nates near to the surface. An elevation corresponding with a deep sulcus between two convolutions, projects into the floor of this cornu, and is called hippocampus minor. The middle, or descending cornu, in descending into the middle lobe of the brain, forms a very considerable curve, and alters its direction several tunes as it proceeds. Hence it is de- scribed as passing backwards and outwards and downwards, and then turning forwards and inwards. It is the largest of the three cornua. The middle cornu should now be laid open, by inserting the little linger into its cavity, and making it serve as a director for the scalpel in cutting away the side of the hemisphere, so as to expose it completely. Its superior boundary is formed by the under surface of the thalamus opticus, upon whicli are the two projections called corpus geniculatum internum and externum, and the inferior wall, by the various parts which are often spoken of as the con- tents of the middle cornu : these are — the hippocampus major, pes hippocampi, pes accessojius, corpus fimbriatum, choroid plexus, fascia dentata, and transverse fissure. Beneath the corpus fimbriatum will be likewise seen the transverse fissure of the brain. It is through this fissure that the pia mater communicates with the choroid plexus, and the latter obtains its supply of blood. This fissure is bounded on one side by the corpus fimbriatum, and on the other by the un- der surface of the tiialamus opticus. The internal boundary of the lateral ventricle is the septum lucidum. This septum is thin and semi-transparent, and con- sists of two laminae of cerebral substance, attached above to the under surface of the corpus callosum at its anterior part, and below to the fornix. Between the two layers is a narrow space, the fifth ventricle, which is lined by a proper membrane. Beneath the fornix, is the velum interpositum, a reflection of the pia mater introduced into the interior of the brain through the transverse fissure. The velum is connected at each side with the choroid plexus, and contains within its two layers two large veins, the venae Galeni, which receive the blood from the ventricles, and terminate posteriorly in the straight sinus. Up- on the under surface of the velum interpositum are two fringe- like bodies, which project into the third ventricle. These are the choroid plexuses of the third ventricle. If the velum interpositum be raised and turned back — an ope- ration which must be conducted with eare, particularly at its posterior part, where it invests the pineal gland — the thalami optici and the cavity of the third ventricle will be exposed. 29 442 THE THOMSONIAN The third ventricle is the fissure between the thalami optici and corpora striata. It is crossed by three commissures, the anterior, middle, and posterior; and between these are two spaces, called foramen commune anterius and foramen commune posterius. Behind the third ventricle is placed the quadrifid ganghon called optic lobes in the inferior animals, and corpora quadrige- mina in man. The two anterior of these bodies are the larger, and are named nates ; the two posterior, testes. Behind the corpora quadrigemina is the cerebellum, and be- neath the cerebellum, the fourth ventricle, The student must therefore divide the cerebellum down to the fourth ventricle, and turn its lobes aside to examine that cavity. The fourth ventricle is the ventricle of the medulla oblonga- ta, upon the posterior surface of which it is placed. It is an PLATE 83.* • The Mesial Surface of a Longitudinal Section of the Brain. — The incision has been carried along the middle line ; between the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, and through the middle of the cerebellum and medulla oblongata. 1. The inner surface of the left hemisphere. 2. The divided surface of the cerebellum, showing the arbor vitae. 3. The medulla oblongata. 4. The cor- pus callosum, rounded before to terminate in the base of the brain, and be- hind, to become continuous with 5, the fornix. G. One of the crura of the for- nix descendin'i to 7, one of the corpora albicantia. 8. The septum lucidum. 9. The velum interpositum, communicating with the pia mater of the convo- lutions through the fissure of Bichat. 10. Section of the middle ccmmissure situated in the third ventricle. 11. Section of the anterior commissure. 12. Section of the posterior commissure. The interspace between 10 and 11 is the foramen commune anterius, in which the crus of the fornix (6) is situat- ed. The interspace between 10 and 12 is the foramen commune posterius. 13. The corpora quadrigemina, upon which is seen resting the pineal gland, 14. 15. The iter a tertio ad quartnm ventriculum. 16. The fourth ventricle. 17. The pons Varolii, through which are seen passing the diverging fibres of the corpora pyramidalia. 18. The crus cerebri of the left side, with the third nerve arising from it. 19. The tuber cinerum, from which projects the infun- dibulum, having the pituitary gland appended to its extremity. 20. One of the optic nerves. 21. The left olfactory nerve, terminating anteriorly in a rounded bulb. MATERIA MEDICA. 443 oblong quadrilateral cavity, bounded on each side by a thick cord passing between the cerebellum and corpora quadrigemi- na, called the processus e cerebello ad testes, and by the corpus restilbrme. It is covered in behind by the arch of the cerebel- lum, which forms three remarkable projections in its cavity, named, from their resemblance, uvula and tonsils; and by a thin lamella of white substance, stretched between the two pro- cesses e cerebello ad testes, termed the valve of Vieussens. We observe within the fourth ventricle, the choroid plexuses, the calamus scriptorius, and linese transversas. LINING MEMBRANE OF THE VENTRICLES. The lining membrane of the ventricles is a serous layer, quite distinct from the arachnoid, and having no communica- tion with it. This membrane lines the whole of the interior of the lateral ventricles, and is connected above and below to the attached border of the choroid plexus, so as to exclude com- pletely all communication between the ventricles and the exte- rior of the brain. It is reflected through the foramen of Monro on each side into the third ventricle, which it invests through- out. From the third it is conducted into the fourth ventricle, through the iter a tertio ad quartum ventriculum, and lines its interior, together with the layer of pia mater which forms its inferior boundary. In this manner a perfect communication is established between all the ventricles, with the exception of the fifth, which has its own proper membrane. It is this mem- brane which gives them their polished surface, and transudes the secretion which moistens their interior. CEREBELLUM. The cerebellum, according to Cruveilheir, is seven times smaller than the cerebrum. Like that organ, it is composed of white and grey substance, whereof the grey is larger in propor- tion than the white. Its surface is formed by parallel lamellae, separated by fissures ; and at intervals deeper fissures exist, which divide it into larger segments, termed lobules. The ce- rebellum is divided into two lateral hemispheres, or lobes, two minor lobes, called superior and inferior vermiform processes, and some small lobules. When cut into vertically, the cerebellum presents the appear- ance termed arbor vitae. If the incision be made through the outer third of the organ, a grey body, surrounded by a yellow zigzag line of horny structure, will be seen in the centre of the white substance ; this is the corpus rhomboideum, or ganglion of the cerebellum. The cerebellum is associated with the spinal cord and cere- 444 THE THOMSONIAN brum by three pairs of peduncles — the corpora resliformia. pro- cessus e cerebello ad testes, and crura cerebelli. BASE OF THE BRAIN. The student should now prepare to study the base of the brain. For this purpose, the organ should be turned upon its incised surface ; and if the dissection has hitherto been con- ducted with care, he will find the base perfectly uninjured. The arachnoid membrane, some parts of the pia mater, and the PLATE 84.* * The Under Surface or Base of the Brain. — 1. The anterior lobe of one he- misphere of the cerebrum. 2. The middle lobe. 3. Tbe posterior lobe, al- most concealed by 4, the lateral lobe of the cerebellum. 5. The inferior ver- miform process of tlie cerebellum. 6. The pneumogastric lobule. 7. The longitudinal fissure. 8. The olfactory nerves, forming their bulbous expan- sions. 9. The substantia perforata at the inner termination of the fissure of Sylvius ; the three roots of the olfactory nerve are seen upon the substantia perforata. The commencement of the ti-ansverse fissure on each side is con- cealed by the inner border of the middle lobe 10, The commissure of the optic nerves. 11. The tuber cinerum, from M'hich the iufundibulum is seen projecting. 12 The corpora albicantia. 13. The locus perforatus, bounded on each side by the crura cerebri, and by the third nerve. 14. The pons Va- rolii. 15. The crus cerebelli of one side. 16. The fifth nerve emerging from the anterior border of the crus cerebelli ; the small nerve by its side is the fourth. 17. The sixth pair of nerves. 18» The seventh pair of nerves, con- sisting of the auditory and facial. 19. The corpora pyramidalia of the medul- la oblongata ; the corpus olivare and part of the corpus restiforme is seen at each side. Just below the number is the decussation of the fibres of the cor- pora pyramidalia. 20. The eighth pair of nerves. 21. The ninth or lingual nerve. 22. The anterior root of the first cervical spinal nerve. MATERIA MEDICA. 445 circle of Willis, must be carefully cleared away, in order to ex- pose all the structures. These he will find arranged in the fol- lowing order, from before backwards : Lonoritudinal fissure, olfactory nerves, fissure of Sylvius, substantia perforata, commencement of the transverse fis- sure, optic commissure, tuber cinereum, infundibulum, corpora albicantia, locus perforatus, crura cerebri, pons varolii, crura cerebelli, medulla oblongata. On each side of the longitudinal fissure, upon the under sur- face of eacfi anterior lobe,"is the olfactory nerve, with its bulb. Passing backwards on each side beneath the edge of the mid- dle lobe, is the commencement of the great transverse fissure, PLATE 85.* * The Base of the Brain — upon which several sections have been made, showing the distribution of the diverging fibres. — 1. The medulla oblongata. 2. One half of the pons Varolii. 3. The crus cerebri, crossed by the optic nerve, (4), and spreading out into the substance of the middle lobe. 5. The two roots of the optic nerve ; the nerves about the crus cerebri and cerebelli are the same as in the preceding ligure. 6. The olfactory nerve. 7. The cor- pora albicantia. On the right side a portion of the brain has been removed, to show the distribution of the diverging fibres. 8. The fibres of the corpus pyramidale passing through the substance of the pons Varolii. 9. The fibres passing through the thalamus opticus. 10. The fibres passing through the corpus striatum. 11. Their distribution to the hemispheres. 12. The fifth nerve ; its two roots may be traced, the one forwards to the fibres of the cor- pus pyramidale, the other backwards to the corpus restiforme. 13. The fibres of the corpus pyramidale which pass outwards with the corpus restiforme in- to the substance of the coebellum; these are the arciform fibres of Solly. 14. A section through one of the lateral lobes of the cerebellum, showing the corpus rhomboideum in the centre of its white substance ; the arbor vitse is also beautifully seen. 15. The opposite lobe of the cerebeUura. 446 THE THOMSONIAN. which extends beneath the hemispheres to the same point on the opposite side. The po7is Yarolii is the commissure of the cerebeUnm, and associates the two lateral lobes in their common function. Resting upon the pons, near its posterior border, is the sixth pair of nerves. On the anterior border of the crus cerebelU, at each side, is the thick bundle of filaments belonging to the fifth nerve, and, lying on its posterior border, the seventh pair of nerves. Externally to the corpora pyramidalia, are two oblong and rounded bodies, supposed to resemble olives in their form, and hence called corpora olivaria. This is the ganglion of the cor- pus olivare. Behind the corpus olivare is a narrow white band which de- scends along the side of the medulla oblongata to the bottom of the lateral sulcus. This is the situation of the respiratory tract of sir Charles Bell. In addition to the diverging fibres which constitute both the cerebrum and cerebellum, by their increase and developement, another set of fibres are found to exist, which have for their of- fice the association of the symmetrical halves, and distant parts of the same hemisphere. These are called from their direction, converging fibres, and from their office, commissures. They are — the corpus callo- sum, fornix, septum lucidum, the anterior, middle and posterior commissures, peduncles of the pineal gland, processus e cere- bello ad testes, valve of Vieussens, and pons Yarolii. SPINAL CORD. The dissection of the spinal cord requires that the spinal co- lumn should be opened throughout its entire length, by sawing through the laminae of the vertebrae, close to the roots of the transverse processes, and raising the arches with a chisel, after the muscles of the back have been removed. The spinal column contains the spinal cord, or medulla spi- nalis, the roots of the spinal nerves, and the membranes of the cord, viz. dura mater, arachnoid, pia mater, and membrana den- tata. In form, the spinal cord is a flattened cylinder, and presents on its anterior surface a groove, which extends into the cord to the depth of one third of its diameter. This is the sulcus lon- gitudinalis anterior. On the posterior surface another fissure exists, which is so narrow as to be hardly perceptible without careful examination. This is the sulcus longitudinalis posterior. Two other lines are observed on the medulla, the anterior MATERIA MEDICA. 447 and posterior sulci, corresponding with the attachment of the anterior and posterior roots of the spinal nerves. These sulci divide the medulla into four fascicuh, or cords, viz.— the anterior, lateral, posterior, and median posterior co- lumns. CRANIAL NERVES. There are nine pairs of cranial nerves. Functionally or phy- sioloo-ically they are divided into four groups, viz.— 1. special se7ise—Q\(oiCtoij, optic, auditory; 2. mo^ioM— motores oculo- PLATE 86.* -V' ♦ The Anatomy of the side of the Neck, showing the Nerves of the Tongve. — 1. A fragmeut of the temporal bone, containing the meatus anditorius exter- nus, mastoid, and styloid process. 2. The st5'lo-hyoid muscle. 3. The st5'lo- glossus. 4. The stylo-pharyngeus. 5. The tongue. 6. The hyo-glossus mus- cle — its two portions. 7. The genio-hyo-glossus muscle. 8. The genio-hyoi- deus ; they both arise from the inner surface of the symphysis of the lower jaw. 9. The steriio-hyoid muscle. 10. The sterno-thy-roid. 11. The thyro- hyoid, upon which the hyoid branch of the lyngual nerve is seen ramifying. 12. The omo-hyoid crossing the common carotid artery (13), and internal ju- gular vein (14). 15. The external carotid giving oil' its branches. 16. The internal carotid. 17. The gustatory nerve giving ofl" a branch to the submax- illary ganglion (IS), and communicating a little further on with the lingual nerve. 19. The submaxillary or Wharton's duct, passing forwards to the sub- lingual gland. 20. The glosso-pharyngeal nerve. 21. The lingual nerve, curving around the occipital artery. 22. The descendens noni nerve, forming a loup with (23) the communicans noni, a branch formed bj^ two filaments, one from the second and one from the third cervical nerve. 24. The pneumo- gastric nerve, emerging from between the internal jugular vein and common carotid artery, and entering the chest. 25. The facial nerve, emerging from the stylo-mastoid foramen, and crossing the external carotid artery. 448 THE THOMSONIAN rum, abdncentes, lingual; '^.respiration — patheticus, fascial glosso-pharyngeal (pheumogastric, spinal accessory) ; A.sjnnal — trifacial. The branches of the lingual (the trne motive nerve of the tongue), are — the communicating branches with the pneumo- gastric, spinal accessory, first and second cervical, and sympa- thetic ; the descendent noni, hyoidean branch, and communi- cating filaments with the gustatory nerve. The branches of tlie faded nerve are — the tympanic, com- municating, posterior auricular, digastric stylo-hyoid, tempore, and cervico-facial. The facial nerve has been named the sympatheticiis mi- PLATE ST.* * The Distribution of the Facial Nerve, and the Branches of the Cemcal Plexus. — 1 The facial nerve, escaping from the stylo-mastoid foramen, and crossing the ramus of the lower jaw; the parotid gland has been removed, in order to sec the nerve more distinctly. 2. The posterior auricular branch ; the digastric and stylo-mastoid filaments are seen near the origin of this branch. 3. Temporal branches, communicatinsr with (1) the branches of the frontal nerve. .5. Facial branches, communicating with ((i) the infra-orbital nerve. 7. Facial branches, communicating with (S) the mental nerve. 9. Cervical branches, communicating witli (10) the superficialis colli nerve, and forming a plexus (11) over the submaxillary gland. The distribution of the branches of the facial in a iadiatc current laryngeal branch. i8. Anterior pulmonary branches 19. Posterior pulmonary branches. 20. (Esophageal plexus. 21. Gastric branches. 22. Origin of the spinal accessory nerve. 23. Its branches distributed to the stej- no-mastoid muscle. 24. Its branches to the trapezius muscle. 450 THE THOMSONIAN Fifth Pair (trifacial). — This nerve is analogous to the spi- nal nerves in its origin by two roots from the anterior and pos- terior columns of the spinal cord, and in the existence of a gan- glion on the posterior root. Hence it ranges with the spinal nerves, and is considered as the cranial spinal nerve. The branches of the nasal nerve withia the orbit are, tire ganglionic, ciliary, and infra-trochlear ; in the nose it gives one or two filaments to the anterior ethmoidal cells and frontal si- nus. The branches of the superior maxillary nerve are divisible PLATE 89.* • A Diagram, showing the Fifth Pair of nerves, with its Branches. — 1. The origin of llie nerve by two roots. 2. The nerve escaping from the cms cere- belli. 3. The Casserian ganglion. 4. Its opthalmic division. 5. The frontal nerve, giving off the supra-trochlear branch, and escaping on the forehead through the supra-orbital foramen. 6. The lachrjmal nerve. 7. The nasal nerve, passing at 8 through the anterior ethmoidal foromen, and giving off the infra-trochlear branch. 9. The communication of the nasal nerve with the ci- liary g-anglion. 10. A small portion of the third nerve witli Avhich the gangli- on is seen communicating ; the ganglion gives off the ciliary branches from its anterior aspect. 11. The superior maxillary nerve. 12. Its orbital branch. 13. The two branches communicating with Meckel's ganglion ; the three branches given off from the lower part of tlie ganglion are the posterior pala- tine nerves. 14. 14. The superior dental nerves, posterior, middle and ante- rior. 15. The infra-orbital branches, distributed upon the cheek. IG. The inferior maxillary nerve. 17. Its anterior or muscular trunk. IS. The pos- terior trunk — the two divisions separated by an arrow. 19. The gustatory nerve. 20. The chorda tympani joining it at an acute angle. 21. The sub- maxillary ganglion. 22. The inferior dental nerve. 23. Its mylo-hyoidean branch. 24. The auricular nerve, dividing behind the articulation of the low- er jaw, to reunite and form a single trunk. 2.5. Its branch of communication with the facial nerve. 26. Us temporal branch. MATERIA MEDICA. 451 into three groups : — those which are given off in the spheno- maxillary fossa ; those in the infra-orbital canal ; and those on the face. They may be thus arranged : 1st group, orbital, two from Meckel's ganglion, posterior dental; 2d, middle and ante- rior dental ; 3d, muscular, and cutaneous. The inferior maxillary is the largest of the three divisions of the fifth nerve. It divides into two trunks, external and in- ternal, which are separated from each other by the external pterygoid muscle. The external trunk divides into five branches, which are dis- tributed to the muscles of the temporo-maxillary region ; they are — the masseteric, temporal, buccal, and external and internal pterygoid. The internal trunk divides into three branches — the gustato- ry, inferior dental, and anterior auricular, SPINAL NERVES. There are thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves, each arising by two roots, an anterior or motor root, and a posterior or sensitive root. The spinal nerves are divided into — cervical, S pairs ; dor- sal, 12 pairs ; lumbar, 5 pairs ; sacral, 6 pairs. The cervical jilexiis is formed by loops of communication which pass from one nerve to another. The branches of the cervical plexus may be arranged into three groups, superficial ascending, superficial descending, and deep, viz. — ascending, superficialis colli, auricularis magnus, occipitalis minor; descending, acromiales, claviculares ; deep^ communicating branches, muscular, communicans noni, phre- nic. AXILLARY PLEXUS. The axillary plexus of nerves is formed by communications between the anterior branches of the four last cervical and first dorsal nerves. Its branches may be arranged into two groups, humeral and descending; — humeral, shoit and long thoracic, supra-scapu- lar and subscapular; descending branches, external and inter- nal cutaneous, median, ulnar, musculo-spiral, and circumflex. The branches of the median nerve are — muscular, anterior interosseous, superficial palmar, digital. The branches of the idnar nerve are — muscular in the up- per and fore arms, dorsal branch, and superficial and deep pal- mar. The branches of the muscido-spiral nerve are — the muscu- lar, spiral cutaneous, radial, and posterior interosseous. 452 THE THOMSONIAN DORSAL NERVES. The dorsal nerves are twelve in number on each side ; the first appears between the first and second dorsal vertebrEe, and the last between the twelfth dor- sal and first lu mbur. Each nerve as soon as it has escaped from the intervertebral foramen, di- vides into two branches, a dor- sal branch and the true intercos- tal nerve. LUMBAR NERVES. There are live pairs of lum- bar nerves, ol which the first makes its appearance between the last dorsal and first lumbar vertebra, and the last between the fifth lumbar and the base of the sacrum. The lumbar plexus is formed by the anterior branches of the last dorsal and four upper lum- bar nerves, the posterior branch- es passing backwards, to be dis- tributed to the muscles and inte- gument of the loins. The branches of this plexus are — the musculo and external cutaneous, genito-crural, crural, and obturator. PLATE 90. * The Axillary Plexvs of nerves, with its Branches and their Distribtttion.^ 1. The axillary plexus. 2. The sliorl thoracic nerves. 3. The long thoracic or external respiratory of Bell. 4. The phrenic nerve. 5. The suprascapular nerve. 6. The subscapular nerves. 7. The external cutaneous nerve. 8. The point at which it pierces the coraco-brachialis muscle. 9. The internal cuta- neous nerve; the point at which it pierces the deep fascia. 10. The origin of the median nerve by two heads. 11 The bend of tlie elbow where the medi- an passes between the two heads of the pronator radii teres, and of the flexor sublimis di^itorum. 12. Its muscular branches. 13. Its anterior interosseous branch. 11. The point at which the nerve passes beneath the annular liga- ment, and divides into five terminal branches. J5. The ulnar nerve, giving off several muscular branches to the triceps. 10. The point at which it pass- es between the two heads of the flexor carpi ulnaris. 17. Its dorsal branch. 18. The termination of the nerve, dividing into a. supcrlicial and deep palmar branch. 19. The musciilo-spiral nerve. 20. Muscular brandies. 21. Spinal cutaneous nerve. 22. The posterior interosseous nerve piercing the supinator brevis muscle. 23. The radial nerve. The two last nerves are the terminal branches of the musculo-spiral. 24. The point at which the radial nerve fierces the deep fascia. 25. The circumflex nerve. MATERIA MEDICA. 453 The branches of the crural nerve are — some muscular twigs to the psoas and ihacus muscles, and in the thigh, the cutaneous, muscular, and long and short saphenous nerves. The posterior tibial nerve at the in- ner ankle divides into the internal and external plantar nerves. Its branches are few — intended for the supply of the deep layer of muscles of the leg. The peroneal nerve gives off but one branch in its course, the commuuicans peronei, which unites with the commu- nicans poplitei, to form the external sa- phenous nerve. The peroneal cutaneous nerves pass in front of the ankle joint, and are dis- tributed to the integument of the foot and of the toes ; the external supplying three toes and a half, and the internal one and a half. PLATE 91/ SYMPATHETIC SYSTEM. The sympathetic system consists of a series of ganglia extending along each side of the vertebral column, from the head to the coccyx, communicating with all the other nerves of the body, and distributing branches to all the in- ternal organs and viscera. The branches of distribution accom- pany the arteries which supply the dif- ferent organs ; and form communica- tions around them, which are called plexuses, and take the name of the artery with which they are associated. All the * The Lumbar and Sacral Plexuses, with the nerves of the Lower Extremity . — 1. The five lumbar nerves ; the four superior, with a branch from the last dorsal, form the lumbar plexus. 2. The four upper sacral nerves, which with the last lumbar form the sacral plexus. 3. The two musculo-cutaneous nerves, branches of the first lumbar nerve. 4. The external cutaneous nerve. 5. The genito-crural nerve. 6. The crural, or femoral nerve. 7. Its muscular branches. (S. Its cutaneous branches, middle cutaneous. 9. Its descending, or saphenous branches. 10. The short saphenous nerve. 11. The Ion?, or internal saphenous. 12. The obturator nerve. 13. The gluteal nerve ; a branch of the last lumbar, or lumbo-sacral nerve. 14. The internal pudic nerve. 15. The lesser ischiatic nerve. 16. The greater ischiatic nerve. 17. The popliteal nerve. 18. The peroneal nerve. 19. The muscular branches 454 THE THOMSONIAN internal orofans of the head, neck and trunk, are supplied with branches from the sympathetic, and some of them exclusively; hence it is considered a nerve of organic life. It is called the ganglionic nerve, from the circumstance of being formed by a number of ganglia, and from the constant disposition which it evinces, in its distribution, to communicate and form small knots or sfansflia. PLATE 92.* of the popliteal nerve. 20. The posterior tibial nerve, dividing at 21 into the two plantar nerves. 22. The external saphenous, nerve, formed by the union of the coramunicans poplitei and communicans peronei. 23. The anterior ti- bial nerve. 24. The musculo-cutaneous nerve, piercing the deep fascia, and dividing into two cutaneous branches, for the supply of the dorsum of the foot. * The Cranial Ganglia of the Sympathetic Nerve. — 1. The ganglion of Ribes. 2. The lilament by which it communicates with the carotid plexus (3). 4. The ciliary or lenticular ganglion, giving off ciliary branches for the supply of the globe of the eye. 5. Part of the inferior division of the third nerve, receivins; a short thick branch from the ganglion. 6. Part of the nasal nerve, receiving a longer branch from the ganglion. 7. A slender filament, sent directly backwards from the ganglion to the sympathetic branches in the cavernous sinus. 8. Part of the sixth nerve in the cavernous sinus, receiving two branches from the carotid plexus. 9. Meckel's ganglion (spheno-pala- tine). 10. Its ascending branches, communicating with the superior maxilla- ry nerve. 11. Its descending branches, the posterior palatine. 12. Its ante- rior branches, spheno-palatine, or nasal. 13. The naso-palaline branch, one of the nasal branches. * The swelling which Cloquet imagines to be a gan- glion. 14. The posterior branch of the ganglion, the Vidian nerve. 15. Its carotid branch, communicating with the carotid plexus. 16. Its petrosal branch, joining the angular bend of the facial nerve. 17. The facial nerve. 1*^. The chorda tympani nerve, which descends to join the gustatory nerve. 19. Gustatory nerve. 20. Submaxillary ganglion, receiving the chorda tympani nerve from the gustatory. 21. Superior cervical ganglion of the sympathetic. MATERIA MEDICA. 455 There are six sympathetic gangHa in the head, viz. the gan- gUon of Ribes ; the ciliary, or lenticular ; the naso-palatine, or Cloquet's ; the sphenopalatine, or Meckel's ; the submaxillary; and the otic, or Arnold's ; three in the neck — superior, middle, and inferior ; twelve in the dorsal region ; four in the lumbar region, and four or five in the sacral region. Each ganglion may be considered as a distinct centre, giving off branches in four different directions, viz. superior, or ascend- ing, to communicate with the ganglion above; inferior, or de- scendmg, to communicate with the ganglion below ; external, to communicate with the spinal nerves ; and internal, to com- municate with the sympathetic filaments of the opposite side, and to be distributed to the viscera. CRANIAL GANGLIA. Ganglion of Ribes, ciliary, or lenticular ganglion, naso-pala- tine, or Cloquet's ganglion, spheno-palatine, or Meckel's gan- glion, submaxillary ganglion, otic, or Arnold's ganglion. The ganglion of Ribes is small, situated upon the anterior communicating artery, and formed by the the union of the sym- pathetic filaments which accompany the ramifications of the two anterior cerebral arteries. It is interesting as being the su- perior point of union between the sympathetic chains of oppo- site sides of the body. The ciliary is a small quadrangular ganglion, situated with- in the orbit, between the optic nerve and the external rectus. Its branches of distribution are the ciliary; they supply the tunics of the eye. The 7iaso-j)alati?ie ganglion (Cloquet's) is a small lengthened body, situated in the naso-palatme canal. The spheno-palatine ganglion (Meckel's) occupies the sphe- no-maxillary fossa, and is of considerable size. Its branches are divisible into four groups — ascending de- scending, anterior or internal, and posterior. The branches of communication are two small ascending, and the posterior branch, or vidian nerve. The siibfna.villarT/ gsiDgVion. is of small size but very distinct, and is situated in the submaxillary gland. Its branches of distribution are numerous, and ramify upon the ducts of the gland, and upon Wharton's duct. The otic ganglion (Arnold's) is a small red body, resting against the inner surface of the inferior maxillary nerve. It is closely adherent to the internal pterygoid nerve, and appears like a swelling upon that branch. The branches of the otic ganglion are, two of distribution and five of communication. 456 THE THOMSONIAN CERVICAL GANGLIA. The superior cervical ganglion is long and fusiform, of a greyish color, and smooth on the surface, and of considerable thickness. It is a single branch, whicli ascends by the side of the internal carotid, and divides into two branches, which en- ter the carotid canal to constitute the carotid plexus. The inferior or descending branch, sometimes two, is the cord of communication with the middle cervical ffanorlion. The cardiac nerves are — the superior, middle, and inferior, with their branches, plexuses, &,c. There is no constancy with reo^ard to the ori2:in and course of these nerves. THORACIC GANGLIA. The thoracic ganglia are twelve in number on each side. They are flattened and triangular or irregular in form, and present the peculiar grey color and pearly lustre of the other sympathetic ganglia. They rest upon the heads of the ribs, and are covered in by the pleura costalis. The two first and the last ganglia are usually the largest. The semilunar ganglion is situated by the side of the coeliac axis, and communicates with the ganglion of the other side, so as to form a gangliform cirlce, from which branches pass off in all directions, like rays from a centre. Hence the entire circle has been named the solar plexus. From the solar plexus we have derived the phrenic, gastric, hepatic, splenic, supra-renal and renal, superior and inferior mesenteric, and the spermatic plexuses. LUMBAR GANGLIA. The lumbar ganglia are four in number on each side, of the peculiar pearly grey color, fusiform, and situated upon the an- terior part of the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae. The aortic plexus is formed by branches from the lumbar ganglia, and receives filaments from the solar and superior me- senteric plexuses. The hypogastric plexus is formed by the termination of the aortic plexus, and by the union of branches from the lower lumbar ganglia. It distributes branches to all the viscera of the pelvis, and to the branches of the internal iliac artery. SACRAL GANGLIA. The sacral ganglia are four or five in number on each side. They are situated upon the sacrum, close to the anterior sacral foramina, and resemble the lumbar ganglia in form and mode of connection, although they are much smaller in size. MATERIA MEDICA, 457 3dly. matter organized AND ANIMATED. Or man possessing his faculties under the influence of the five senses which makes him subject to disease and death, and a return again to matter, to assist in the organization and animation of other BODIES, ORGANS OF SENSE. The organs of sense, the instrumeiits by which the animai frame is brought into relation with surrounding nature, are five in number. Four of these organs are situated within the head, viz. the apparatus of smell, sight, hearing, and taste, and the remaining organ, o( touch, is resident in the sliin, and is distri- buted over the entire surface of the body. THE NOSE AND NASAL FOSS^. The organ of smell consists essentially of two parts : one external, the nose ; the other internal, the nasal fossas. The nose is the triangular pyramid projecting from the cen- tre of the face, immediately above the upper lip. Superiorly, it is connected with the forehead, by means of a narrow bridge ; inferiorly, it presents two openings, the nostrils, which over- hang the mouth, and are so constructed that the odor of all substances must be received by the nose before they can be in- troduced within the lips. The septum between the openings of the nostrils is called the columna. Their entrance is guard- ed by a number of stiff hairs, which project across the open- ings, and act as a filter in preventing the introduction of foreio-n substances, such as dust or insects, with the current of air in- tended for respiration. The anatomical elements of which the nose is composed are — 1. Integument. 2. Muscles. 3. Bones. 4. Fibro-cartila- 2:es. 5. Mucous membrane. 6. Vessels and nerves. 1. The integument forming the tip and wings of the nose is extremely thick and dense, so as to be with difficulty separated from the fibro-cartilage. It is furnished with a number of se- baceous follicles, which by their oily secretion protect the ex- tremity of the nose in excessive alternations of temperature. The sebaceous matter of these follicles becomes of a dark color upon the surface, from the attraction of the carbonaceous mat- ter floating in the atmosphere : hence the spotted appearance which the tip of the nose presents in large cities. When the integument is firmly compressed, the inspissated sebaceous se- cretion is squeezed out from the follicles, and, taking the cylin- drical form of their excretory ducts, has the appearance of small white maggots with black heads. 2. The muscles are brought into view by reflecting the inte- gument: they are the pyramidalis nasi, compressor nasi, leva- 30 458 THE THOMSONIAN tor labii superioris alasqne nasi, and depressor labii superioris alaeque nasi. They have been ah'eady described with the mus- cles of the face. 3. The bones of the nose are the nasal, and nasal processes of the superior maxillary. 4. The fibro-cartilages s^ive form and stability to the outwork of the nose, providing at the same time, by their elasticity, against injuries. They are live in number — the Fibro-cartilage of the septum, Two lateral tibro-cartilages, Two alar fibro-cartilages. The fibro-cartilage of the septum, somewhat triangular in form, divides the nose into its two nostrils. It is coimected above with the nasal bones and lateral fibro-cartilages ; behind, with the ethmoidal septum and vomer ; and below, with the palate processes of the superior maxillary bones. The alar fi- bro-cartilages and columna iiiove freely upon the fibro-cartilage of the septum, bemg but loosely connected with it by perichon- drium. The lateral fibro-cartilages are also triangular ; they are con- nected, along the middle line, with the fibro-cartilage of the septum ; above, with the nasal bones ; behind, with the nasal processes of the superior maxillary; and below, with the alar fibro-cartilages. Alar fibro-cartilages. — Each of these cartilages is curved in such a manner as to correspond with the opening of the nos- tril, to which it forms a kind of rim. The inner portion is loosely connected witli the same part of the opposite cartilage, so as to form the columna. It is expanded and thickened at the point of the nose, to constitute the lobe ; and, upon the side, forms a curve corresponding with the form of I he ala. This curve is prolonged downwards and forwards in the direction of the posterior border of the ala by three or four small fibro-carti- laginous plates, which are appendages to the alar fibro-carti- lage. The whole of these fibro-cartilages are connected with each other, and to the bones, by perichondrium, which, Irom ita membranous structure, permits of the freedom of motion exist- ing between them. 5. The mucous membrane, lining the interior of the nose, is contitiuous with the skin externally, and with the pituitary membrane of the nasal fossas within. Around the entrance of the nostrils it is provided with numerous vibrissse. 6. Vessels and nerves. — The arteries of the nose aie the la- teralis nasi from the facial, and the nasalis septi from the supe- rior coronary. MATERIA MEDICA. 459 Its nerves are the facial, infra-orbital, and nasal branch of the ophthalmic. NASAL FOSSJE. To obtain a good view of the nasal fossse, the face must be divided through the nose by a vertical incision, a little to one side of the middle line. The nasal ibssge are two irregular, compressed, cavities, ex- tending backwards from the nose to th« pharynx. They are bounded, superiorly, by the sphenoid and ethmoid bones. Infe- riorly, by the hard palate; and in the middle line they are sepa- rated from each other by a bony and fibro-cartilaginous septum. Upon the outer wall of each fossae, in the dried skull, are three projecting processes, termed spongy bones. The two su- perior belong to the ethmoid, the inferior is a separate bone. In the fresh fossae these are covered with mucous membrane, and serve to increase its surface by their projection and by their convoluted form. The space intervenmg between the two su- perior spongy bones is the superior meatus ; the space between the middle and inferior bones is the middle meatus ; and that between the inferior and the floor of the fossa, is the inferior meatus. These meatuses are passages which extend from before back- wards, and it is in rushing through and amongst these that the atmosphere deposits its odorant particles upon the mucous membrane. There are several openings into the nasal fossae : thus, in the superior meatus are the openings of the sphenoidal and posterior ethmoidal cells ; in the middle, the anterior eth- moidal cells, the frontal sinuses, and the antrum maxillare; and in the inferior meatus, the termination of the nasal duct. In the dried bone are two additional openings, the spheno-palatine and the anterior palatine foramen, the former being situated in the superior and the latter in the infertor meatus. The mucous membrane of the nasal fossa is called pituitary, or Schneiderian. The former name being derived from its se- cretion, the latter from Schneider, Vv'^ho was the first to show that the secretion of the nose proceeded from the mucous mem- brane, and not from the brain, as was formerly imagined. It is continuous with the general gastro-pulmonary mucous mem- brane, and may be traced through the openings of the meatus- es, into the sphenoidal and ethmoidal cells ; into the antrum maxillare ; through the nasal duct to the surface of the eye, where it is continuous with the conjunctiva ; along the Eusta- chian tubes into the tympanum and mastoid cells,"^to which it forms the lining membrane ; and through the posterior nares into the pharynx and mouth, and thence through the lungs and alimentary canal. 460 THE THOMSONIAN The surface of this membrane is furnished with a cohimnar epithehum supporting innumerable cilia. Vessels and nerves. — The arteries of the nasal fossae are the anterior and posterior ethmoidal, from the ophthalmic artery ; and spheno-palatme, and pterygo-palatine, from the internal maxillary. The nerves are, the olfactory, the spheno-palatine branches from Meckel's ganglion, and the nasal branch of the ophthal- mic. The ultimate filaments of the olfactory nerve terminate in minute papillae. THE EYE, WITH ITS APPENDAGES. The form of the eyeball is that of a sphere, having the seg- ment of a smaller sphere ingrafted upon its anterior surface, which increases its antero-postcrior diameter. The axes of the two eyeballs are parallel with each other, but do not correspond with the axes of the orbits, which are directed outwards. The optic nerves follow the direction of the orbits, and therefore en- ter the eyeballs to their nasal side. The globe of the eye is composed of tunics and humors. The tunics are three in number, 1. Sclerotic and cornea, 2. Choroid, iris, and ciliary processes, 3. Retina and zonula ciliaris. The humors are also three — Aqueous, Crystalline (lens), Vitreous. 1. The sclerotic and cornea form the external tunic of the eyeball, and give to it its peculiar form. Four fifths of the globe are invested by the sclerotic, the remaining fifth by the cornea. The sclerotic (hard) is a dense fibrous membrane, thicker be- hind than in front. It is continuous, posteriorly, with the sheath of the optic nerve, which is derived from the dura ma- ter, and it is pierced by that nerve, as well as by the ciliary nerves and arteries. Anteriorly it presents a bevelled edge, which receives the cornea in the same way that a watch glass is received by the groove in its case. Its anterior surface is co- vered by a thin tendinous layer, the tunica albuginea, derived from the expansion of the tendons of the four recti muscles. By its posterior surface it gives attachment to the two oblique muscles. The tunica albuginea is covered for a part of its ex- tent by the mucous membrane of the front of the eye, the con- junctiva; and by reason of the brilliancy of its whiteness, gives occasion to the common expression, " the white of the eye." MATERIA MEDICA. 461 At the entrance of the optic nerve, the sclerotic forms a thin cribriform lamella, which is pierced by a number of minute opening's for the passage of the nervous filaments. One of these openings, larger than the rest, and situated in the centre of the lamella, is the poms opticus, through which the arteria centralis retinas enters the eye. The cornea is the transparent projecting layer that forms the anterior fifth of the globe of the eye. In its form it resembles a watch glass. In structure it consists of five or six thin lamel- lae, connected to each other by a delicate cellular tissue. It is covered by the conjunctiva in front, and lined by the mem- brane of the aqueous humor behind. By its edge, which is sharp and thin, it is received within the bevelled border of the sclerotic, to which it is very firmly attached. It is thicker than the anterior portion of the sclerotic. The cornea is not perfectly circular, the transverse diameter being slightly greater than the vertical. This form is parti- cularly evident in animals. The opacity of the cornea, pro- PLATE 93*. • A Longitudinal Section of the Globe of the Eye. — 1. The sclerotic, thicker behind than in front. 2. The cornea, received within the anterior margin of the sclerotic, and connected with it by means of a bevelled edge. 3. The cho- roid, connected anteriorly with (4) the ciliary ligament, and (5) the ciliary processes. 6. The iris. 7. The pupil. S. Tlie third layer of tlie eye, the re- tina, terminating anteriorly by an abrupt border at the commencement of the ciliary processes. 9. The canal of Petit, which encircles the lens (12). The thin layer in front of this canal is the zonula ciliaris, a prolongation of the vascular layer of the retina to the lens. 10. The anterior chamber of the eye, containing the aqueous humor ; the lining membrane by which the humor is secreted, is represented in the diagram. 11. The posterior chamber. 12. The lens, more convex behind than before, and enclosed in its proper capsule. 13. The vitreous homor enclosed in the hyaloid membrane, and in cells form- ed in its interior by that membrane. 14. A tubular sheath of the hyaloid membrane, which serves for the passage of the artery of the capsule of the lens. 15. The neurilema of the optic nerve. 16. Tlie arteria centralis reti- nae, embedded in its centre. 462 THE THOMSONIAN diiced by pressure on the globe, results from the infiltration of fluid into the cellular tissue connecting its layers. This ap- pearance cannot be produced in a sound living eye. Dissection. — The sclerotic and cornea are now to be dissect- ed away from the second tunic ; this, with care, may be easily performed, the only connections subsisting between them being at the circumference of the iris, the entrance of the optic nerve, and the perforation of the ciliary nerves and arteries. Pinch up a fold of the sclerotic near its anterior circumference, and make a small opening into it ; then raise the edge of the tunic, and with a pair of fine scissors, having a probe point, divide the entire circumference of the sclerotic, and cut it away bit by bit. Then separate it from its attachment around the circum- ference of the iris by a gentle pressure with the edge of the knife. The dissection of the eye must be conducted under wa- ter. In the course of this dissection the ciliary nerves and long ciliary arteries will be seen passing forwards between the scle- rotic and choroid, to be distributed to the iris. 2. The second tunic of the eyeball is formed by the choroid, ciliary ligament and iris, the ciliary processes being an appen- dage developed from its inner surface. The choroid is a vascular membrane, of a rich chocolate- brown color upon its external surface, and of a deep black color within. It is connected to the sclerotic externally by an ex- tremely fine cellular tissue, and by the passage of nerves and vessels. Internally it is in simple contact with the third tunic of the eye, the retina. It is pierced posteriorly for the passage of the optic nerve, and is connected anteriorly with the iris, ci- liary process, and junction of the cornea and sclerotic, by a dense white structure, the ciliary ligament, which surrounds the circumference of the iris like a ring. The choroid membrane is composed of three layers: — I. An external or venous, which consists principally of veins arrang- ed in a peculiar manner ; hence they have been named vense verticosae. The marking upon the surface of the membrane produced by these veins resembles so many centres, to which a number of curved lines converge It is this layer which is con- nected with the ciliary li2:ament. 2. The middle or arterial layer is formed principally by the ramifications of minute arte- ries, and secretes upon its surface the pigmentum nigrum. It is reflected inwards at its junction with the ciliary ligament, so as to form the ciliary processes. 3. The internal layer is a de- licate membrane, which presents a beautiful appearance beneath the microscope ; it is composed of several laminae of regular hexagonal cells, which contain the granules of pigmentum ni- MATERIA MEDICA. 463 grum, and are arranged so as to resemble a tesselated pave- ment. In animals, the piCTmentum nigrum, upon the posterior wall of the eyeball, is replaced by a layer of considerable extent, and of metalic brilliancy, called the tapetum. The ciliary ligament, or circle, is the bond of union between the external and middle tunics of the eye, and serves to con- nect the cornea and sclerotic with the iris and external layer of the clioroid. It is also the point to which the ciliary nerves and vessels proceed previously to their distribution, and it re- iceives the anterior ciliary arteries through the anterior margui of the sclerotic. A minute vascular canal is situated within the ciliary ligament, called the ciliary canal, or the canal of Fontana, from its discoverer. The iris (rainbow) is so named from its variety of color in different individuals; it forms a septum between the anterior and posterior chambers of the eye, and is pierced in its centre by a circular opening, which is called the pupil. By its pe- riphery it is cormected with the ciliary liijament, and by its in- ner circumfiennice forms the margin of the pupil; its anterior surface looks towards the cornea, and the posterior towards the ciliary process and lens. It is composed of two layers, an anterior, or muscular, con- sisting of radiating fibres, which converge from the circumfe- rence towards the centre, and have the power of dilating the pupil; and the circular, which surroimd the pupil like a sphinc- ter, and by their action produce contraction of its area. The PLATE 94.* • The interior Segment of a Transverse Section of the Globe of the Eye, as seen from within.— I. The divided edge of the three" tunics ; sclerotic choroid (the darlclayer), and retina. 2. The pupil. 3. The iris. 4. The ciliary pro- cesses. 5. The scalloped anterior border of the retina. 464 THE THOMSONIAN posterior layer is of a deep purple tint, and is thence named uvea, from its resemblance in color to a ripe grape. The ciliary processes may be seen in two ways, either by re- moving the iris from its attachment to the ciliary ligament, when a front view of the processes will be obtained, or by mak- ing a transverse section through the globe of the eye, when they may be examined from behind, as in plate 94. The ciliary processes consist of a number of triangular folds, formed apparently by the plaiting of the internal layer of the choroid. They are, according to Zinn, about sixty in number, and may be divided into large and small, the latter being situ- ated in the spaces between the former. The periphery is con- nected with the ciliary ligament, and is continuous with the in- ternal layer of the choroid. The central border is free, and rests against the circumference of the lens. The anterior sur- face corresponds with the uvea; the posterior receives the folds of the zonula ciliaris between its processes, and thus establishes a connection between the choroid and the third tunic of the eye. The ciliary processes are covered with a thick layer of pigmentum nigrum, which is more abundant upon them, and upon the anterior part of the choroid, than upon the posterior. When the pigment is washed ofF, the processes are of a whitish color. 3. The third tunic of the eye is the retina, which is prolong- ed forwards to the lens by the zonula ciliaris. Dissection. — If after the preceding dissection the choroid membrane be carefully raised and removed, the eye being kept under water, the retina may be seen very distinctly. The retina is composed of three layers — External, or Jacob's membrane, Middle., Nervous membrane. Internal Vascular membrane. Jacob's membrane is extremely thin, and is seen as a fioccu- lent film when the eye is suspended in water. Examined by the microscope, it is seen to be composed of granules having a tesselated arrangement. Dr. Jacob considers it a serous mem- brane. The nervous membrane is the expansion of the optic nerve, and forms a thin semi-transparent bluish white layer, which envelopes the vitreous humor, and extends forwards to the commencement of the ciliary processes, where it terminates in an abrupt scalloped margin. This layer has been observed by Treviranus to be composed of cylindrical fibres, which proceed from the optic nerve and bend abruptly inwards, near their termination, to form the in- ternal papillary layer, which lies in contact with the hyaloid MATERIA MEDICA. 465 membrane ; each fibre constituting by its extremity a distinct papilla. The vascular membrane consists of the ramifications of a mi- nute artery, the arteria centralis retiocC, and its accompanying vein ; the artery pierces the optic nerve and enters the globe of the eye through the porus opticus in the centre of the lamina cribrosa. This artery may be seen very distinctly by making a transverse section of the eyeball. Its branches are continu- ous anteriorly with the zonula ciliaris. This vascular layer forms distinct sheaths for the nervous papillas, which constitute the inner surface of the retina. The retina is deficient posteriorly at a spot corresponding with the axis of the globe of the eye. This spot is. called the foramen of Soemmering, and is surrounded by a yellow halo, the limbus luteus. It exists only in animals having the axis of the eyeballs parallel with each other, as man, quadrumana, and some reptiles, and is said to give passage to a small lymphatic vessel. The zonula ciliaris (zonula of Zinn) is a thin vascular layer, which connects the anterior margin of the retina with the cir- cumference of the lens. It presents upon its surface a number of small folds corresponding with the ciliary processes, between which they are received. These processes are arranged in the form of rays around the lens, and the spaces between them are stained by the pigmentum nigrum of the ciliary processes. PLATE 95.* The Postenor Segment of a Transverse Section of the Globe of the Eye as seen from within.— 1. The divided edge of the three tunics. The mem- brane covering the whole internal surface is the retina. 2. The entrance of the optic nerve with the arteria centralis retinte piercing its centre. 3, 3. The ramifications of the arteria centralis. 4. The foramen of Soemmering, in the centre of the axis of the eye ; the shade from the sides of the section obscures the limbus luteus which surrounds it. 5. Folds of the retina, which general- ly obscure the foramen of Soemmering after the eye has been opened. 4-66 THE THOMSONIAN They derive their vessels from the vascular layer of the retina. The under surface of the zonula is in contact witii the hyaloid membrane, and around the lens forms the anterior fluted wall of the canal of Petit. The cormection between these folds and thecihary processes maybe very easily demonstrated by dividing an eye transverse- ly into two portions, then raising the anterior half, and allowing the vitreous humor to separate from its attachment by its own weight. The folds of the zonula will then be seen to be drawn out from between the folds of the ciliary processes. Humors. — The aqueous humor is situated in the anterior and posterior chambers of the eye. The anterior chamber is the space intervening between the cornea in front, and the iris and pupil behind. The posterior chamber, smaller than tlie anterior, is the nar- row space bounded by the posterior surface of the iris and pu- pil in front, and by the ciliary processes and lens behind. The two chambers are lined by a thin layer, the secreting membrane of the aqueous humor. The vitreous humor forms the principal bulk of the globe of the eye. It is enclosed in a delicate membrane, the hyaloid, which sends processes into its interior, forming cells in which tbe humor is retained. A small artery may sometimes be traced through the centre of the vitreous humor to the capsule of the lens ; it is surrounded by a tubular sheath of the hyaloid mem- brane. This vessel is easily injected in the fcetus. The crystalline humor or lens is situated immediately behind the pupil, and is surrounded by the ciliary processes, which slightly overlap its margin. It is more convex on the posterior than on the anterior surface, and is embedded in the anterior part of the vitreous humor, from which it is separated by the hyaloid membrane. It is invested by a proper capsule, which contains a small quantity of fluid called liquor Morgagni, and is retained in its place by the attachment of the zonula ciliaris. The lens consists of concentric layers, of which Ihe external are soft, the next firmer, and the central form a hardened nucle- us. These layers are best demonstrated by boiling, or by im- mersion in alcohol, when they separate easily from each other. Another division of the lens takes place at the same time ; it splits into three triangular segments which have the sharp edge directed towards the centre, and the base towards the circum- ference. The concentric lamellge are composed of minute pa- rallel fibres, which are united with each other by means of scal- loped borders ; the convexity on the one border fitting accu- rately the concave scallop upon the other. Immediately around the circumference of the lens is a trian- gular canal, the canal of Petit, which is bounded in front by MATERIA MEDICA. 467 the flutings of the zonula ciharis ; behind by the hyaloid mem- brane, and within by tlie border of the lens. - The vessels of the globe of the eye are the long and short and anterior ciliary arteries, and the arteria centralis retinae. The long ciliary arteries, two in number, pierce the posterior part of the sclerotic, and pass forward on each side, between that membrane and the choroid, to the ciliary ligament, where they divide into two branches, which are distributed to the iris. The short ciliary arteries pierce the posterior part of the scle- rotic coat, and are distributed to the internal layer of the cho- roid membrane. The anterior ciliary are branches of the mus- cular arteries. They enter the eye through the anterior part of the sclerotic, and are distributed to the iris. It is the increased number of these arteries in iritis that forms the peculiar red zone around the circumference of the cornea. The arteria centralis retinas enters the optic nerve at about half an inch from the globe of the eye, and passing through the porus opticus is distributed upon the inner snrfoce of the reti- na, forming its vascular layer ; one branch pierces the centre of the vitreous humor, and supplies the capsule of the lens. The nerves of the eyeball are the optic, two ciliary nerves from the nasal branch of the opthalmic, and the ciliary nerves from the ciliary ganglion. Observations. — The sclerotic is a tunic of protection, and the cornea a medium for the transmission of light. The choroid supports the vessels destined for the nourishment of the eye, and by its pigmentum nigrum absorbs all loose and scattered rays that might confuse the image impressed upon the retina. The iris, by means of its powers of expansion and contraction, regulates the quantity of light admitted through the pupil. If the iris be thin, and the rays of light pass through its substance, they are immediately absorbed by the uvea; and if that layer be insufficient, they are taken up by the black pigment of the ciliary process. In Albinoes, where there is an absence of the pigmentum ni- grum, the rays of light traverse the iris and even the sclerotic, and so overwhelm the eye with light, that sight is destroyed, except in the dimness of evening, or at night. In the manufacture of optical instruments, care is taken to color their interior black, with the same object — the absorption of scattered rays. The transparent lamellated cornea and the humors of the eye have for their office the refraction of the rays in such propor- tion as to direct the image in the most favorable manner up- on the retina. Where the refracting medium is too great, as in over convexity of the cornea and lens, the image falls short 468 THE THOMSONIAN of the retina (near-sightedness) ; and where it is too little, the imaf^e is thrown beyond the nervons membrane (far-sightedness). These conditions are rectified by the use of spectacles, which provide a differently refracting medium external to the eye, and thereby correct the transmission of light. APPENDAGES OF THE EYE. The appendages of the eye are the eyebrows, eyelids, con- junctiva, caruncula laciiryumlis, and the lachrymal apparatus. The eyebrows are two projecting arches of integument, co- vered with short thick hairs, which form the upper boundary of the orbits. They are connected beneath with the orbicula- ris, occipito-frontalis, and corrugator supercilii muscles ; their use is to shade the eyes from a too vivid light, or protect them from particles of dust and moisture flowing over the forehead. The eyelids are two valvular layers placed in front of the eye, and serve to defend it from injury by their closure. When drawn open, they leave between them an eliptic space, the an- gles of which are called canthi. Near to the inner canthus, two small projections are observed on both lids, upon which are seen the openings of the lachrymal ducts. The eyelids have, entering into their structure, integument^ orbicularis muscle^ tarsal cartilages, Meibomian glands, and conjunctiva. The tegumentary cellular tissue of the eyelids is remarkable for its looseness and for the entire absence of adipose substance. It is particularly liable to serous infiltration. The fibres of the orbicularis muscle covering the eyelids are extremely thin and pale. The tarsal cartilages are two thin lamellae of fibro-cartilage, which give form and support to the eyelids. The superior is of a semilunar form, broad in the middle, and tapering to each extremity. Its lower border is broad and flat, its upper is thin, and gives attachment to the levator palpebras and to the fibrous membrane of the lids. The inferior fibro-cartilage is a narrow elliptical band situat- ed in the substance of the lower lid. Its upper border is flat, and corresponds with the flat edge of the upper cartilage. The lower is held in its place by the fibrous membrane. The car- tilages do not extend quite so far as the angles of the lids. The fibrous membrane of the lids is firmly attached to the periosteum around the margin of the orbit by its circumference, and to the tarsal cartilages by its central margin. It is thick and dense on the outer half of the orbit, but becomes thin to its inner side. Its use is to retain the tarsal cartilages in their place, and give support to the lids ; hence it has been named the broad tarsal ligament. The Meibomian glands are embedded in the internal surface MATERIA MEDICA. 469 of the cartilages, and are very distinctly seen on examining the inner surface of the lids. They have the appearance of paral- lel strings of pearls, about twenty or twenty-four upon each cartilage, and open by minute foramina upon the edges of the lids. They correspond in length with the breadth of the carti- lage, and are consequently longer in the upper than in the low- er lid. Each gland consists of a single lengthened follicle or tube, into which a number of small chistered follicles open ; the lat- ter are so numerous as almost to conceal the tube by which the secretion is poured out upon the margin of the lids. The edges of the eyelids are furnished with a triple row of long thick hairs, which curve upwards from the upper lid, and downwards from the lower, so that they may not interlace with each other in the closure of the eyelids, and prove an impedi- ment to the opening of the eyes. These are the eyelashes, im- portant organs of defence to the sensitive surface of so delicate an organ as the eye. The conjunctiva is the mucous membrane of the eye. It co- vers the whole of its anterior surface, and is then reflected up- on the lids, so as to form their internal layer. It is very thin, and closely adherent where it covers the cornea, and no vessels can be traced into it. Upon the sclerotica it is thicker and less adherent, and to the inner surface of the lids is connected by loose cellular tissue. It is continuous with the general gastro- pulmonary mucous membrane, and sympathises in its aflec- tions, as may be observed in various diseases. From the sur- face of the eye it may be traced through the lachrymal ducts into the lachrymal gland ; along the edges of the lids it is con- tinuous with the mucous lining of the Meibomian glands, and at the inner angle of the eye may be followed through the punc- ta lachrymalia into the lachrymal sac, and thence downwards through the nasal duct into the inferior meatus of the nose. This membrane is coated with a lamellated epithelium, com- posed of vesicles and flattened, scales, with central nuclei. The caruncula lachrymalis is the small reddish body which occupies the inner angle or canthus of the eye. In health it presents a bright pink tint, in sickness it loses its color and be- comes pale. It consists of an assemblage of mucous follicles, and is the source of the whitish secretion which so constantly forms at the inner angle of the eye. It is frequently found studded with short hairs. Immediately to the outer side of the caruncula is a slight du- plicature of the conjunctiva, called plica semilunaris, w-liich is the rudiment of the third lid of animals, and membrana nictitans of birds. Vessels and nerve.s. — The palpebrse are supplied internally 470 THE THOMSOMIAN with arteries from the ophthcahnic, and externally from the fa- cial and transverse facial. Their nerves are branches of the fifth and of the facial. LACHRYMAL APPARATUS. The lachrymal apparatus consists of the lachrymal gland with its excretory ducts ; the puncta lachrymalia, and lachry- mal ducts ; the lachrymal sac and nasal duct. The lachrymal gland is a small, flattened bilobate body, situ- ated at the upper and outer angle of the eye, resting upon the eyeball by its under surface, and against the wall of the orbit by the upper. Its secretion is poured out upon the surface of the conjunctiva by seven small excretory ducts. Lachrymal ducts. — Near to the inner canthus are two slight projections on the edges of the eyelids. These are the lachry- mal tubercles ; and upon the point of each may be seen a smaJl opening, the punctam lachrymals, the commencement of the corresponding lachrymal duct. From these points the lachry- mal ducts proceed to the lachrymal sac. The superior duct at first ascends, and then turns suddenly inwards towards the sac, forming an abrupt angle. The inferior duct forms the same kind of angle, by descending at first, and then turning abruptly inwards. They are dense and elastic in structure, and remain constantly open, so that they act like capillary tubes in ab- sorbing the tears from the surface of the eye. The two fasci- culi of the tensor tarsi muscle are inserted into these ducts, and serve to draw them inwards. The lachrymal sac is the upper extremity of the nasal duct, and is scarcely more dilated than the rest of the canal. It is iodo-ed in the groove of the lachrymal bone, and is often distin- guished internally from thenasal duct by a semilunar or circu- lar valve. It consists of mucous membrane, but is covered in and retained in its place by a fibrous expansion, derived from the tendon of the orbicularis, which is inserted into the ridge on the lachrymal bone ; it is also covered by the tensor tarsi muscle, which arises from the same ridge, and in its action up- on the lachrymal ducts may serve to compress the lachrymal sac. The nasal duct is a short canal, directed downwards, back, wards, and a little inwards, to the inferior meatus of the nose where it terminates by an expanded orifice. It is lined by the' mucous membrane, which is continuous with the conjunctiva above and the pituitiary membrane of the nose below. Obstruc- tion from inflammation and suppuration of the duct constitute the disease called fistula lachrymalis. Vessels and nerves. — The lachrymal gland is supplied with blood by the lachrymal branch of the ophthalmic artery, and MATERIA MEDICA. 471 with nerves by the lachrymal branch of the ophthalmic and or- bital branch of the superior maxillary. THE ORGAN OF HEARING. The ear is composed of three parts. 1, External ear, 2, Middle ear, or tympanum. 3. Internal ear, or labyrinth. The external ear consists of two portions, the pinna and meatus; the former representing a kind of funnel, which col- lects the vibrations of the atmosphere, called sounds, and the latter a tube which conveys the vibrations to the tympanum. The pinna presents a number of folds and hollows upon its surface, which have diflerent names assigned to them. Thus the external folded margin is called the helix (a fold). The elevation parallel to and m front of the helix is called antihelix (opposite). The pointed process, projecting like a valve over the opening of the ear from the face, is called the tragus (goal), probably from being sometimes covered with bristly hair like that of a goat; and a tubercle opposite to this is the antitragus. The lower dependent and fleshy portion of the pinna is the lo- bulus. The space between the helix and antihelix is named the fossa innominata. Another depression is observed at the upper extremity of the antihelix, which bifurcates and leaves a triangular space between its branches, called the scaphoid fos- sa ; and the large central space to which all the channels con- verge, is the concha, which opens directly into the meatus. The pinna is composed of integument, fibro-cartilas^e, liga- ments, and muscles. The integument is thin, and closely connected with the fibro- cartilage. The fibro-cartilage gives form to the pinna, and is folded so as to produce the various convexities and grooves which have been described upon its surface. The helix commences in the concha, and partially divides that cavity into two parts ; on its anterior border is a tubercle for the attachment of the attrahens aurem muscle, and a little above this a small vertical fissure, the fissure of the helix. The termination of the helix and antihelix forms a lengthened pro- cess, the processus caudatus, which is separated from the con- cha by an extensive fissure. Upon the anterior surface of the tragus is another fissure, the fissure of the tragus, and in the lo- bulus the fibro-cartilage is wholly deficient." The fibro-carti- lage of the meatus, at the upper and anterior part of the cylin- der, is divided from the concha by a fissure which is closed in the entire ear by ligamentous fibres ; it is firmly attached at its termination to the processus auditorius. The ligaments of the external ear are those which attach the pinna to the side of the head, viz. the anterior, posterior, and 11- 472 THE THOMSONIAN ^ament of the tragus ; and those of the fibro-cartilage, which serve to preserve its folds and connect the opposite margins of the fissures. The latter are two in number— the ligament be- tween the concha and the processus caudatus, and the broad ligament which extends from the upper margin of the fibro- cartilao-e of the tragus to the helix, and completes the meatus, The^proper muscles of the pinna are— the Major helicis, Minor helicis, Tragicus, Antitragicus, Transversus auriculae. The major helicus is a narrow band of muscular fibres, situ- ated upon the anterior border of the helix, just above the tragus. PLATE 96.* • A Diagram of the Ear. — p. The pinna, t. The tj-mpanum. I. The laby- rynth. 1. The upper part of the helix. 2. The antihelix. 3. The tragus. 4. The antitragus. 5. The lobulus. 6. The concha. 7. The iipper part of the fossa innoininata. 8. The meatus. 9. The membrana tjTiipani, divided by the section. 10. The three little bones, crossing the area of the tympanum, malleus, incus, and stapes ; the foot of the stapes blocks up the fenestra ovalis upon the inner wall of the tympanum. 11. The promontory. 12. The fenestra rotunda ; the dark opening above the ossicula leads into the mastoid cells. 13. The Eustachian tube ; the little canal upon this tube contains the tensor lympani muscle, in its passage to the tympanum. 14. The vestibule. 15. Thethree semicircular canals, horizontal, perpendicular and oblique. 16. The ampulli£ upon the perpendicular and horizontal canals. 17. The cochlea. IS. The convexities of the two tubuli which communicate with the tympanum and vestibule ; the one is the scala tympaui, terminating at 12; the other io the scala vestibuli. i MATERIA MEDICA. 473 The minor helicis is placed upon the posterior border of the helix, and at its commencement in the fossa of the concha. The tracrjcuf is a thin quadrilateral layer of muscular fibres, situated npon the tragus. The aniitragicus arises from the antitragus, and is inserted into the posterior extremity, or processus caudatus of the helix. The transversus auriculae, partly tendinous and partly mus- cular, extends transversely from the convexity of the concha to that of (he h.elix, on the posterior surface of the pinna. These muscles are rudimentary in the human ear, and de- serve only the titles of muscles in the ears of animals. Two other muscles are described by Mr. Tod, the obliquus auris and contractor meatus, or trago-helicus. The meatus audiior'ms is a canal partly cartilagenous and partly osseous, about an inch in length, which extends inv/ards and a little forwards, from the concha to the tympanum. It is narrower in the middle than at each extremity, forms an oval cylinder, the Ions: diameter being vertical, and is slightly curv- ed upon itself, the concavity looking downwards. It is lined by an extremely thin pouch of cuticle, which, when witlidrawn after maceration, preserves the form of the meatus. Some stiff short hairs are also found in its interior, which stretch across the tube, and prevent the ingress of insects and dust. Beneath the cuticle are a number of small cerumi- nous follicles, which secrete the wax of the ear. Vessel>( and nerves. — The piima is plentifully supplied with arteries, by the anterior auricular from the temporal, and by the posterior auricular from the external carotid. Its nerves are derived from the auricular branch of the fifth, and the auricularis magnus of the cervical plexus. Tympamnn — The tympanum is an irregular bony cavity, compressed from without inwards, and situated within the pe- trous bone. It is bounded exteriuilly by the meatus and mem- braua tympani; internally by its inner wall, and in its circum- ference by the petrous bone and mastoid cells. The membrana tympani is stretched obliquely from above downwards across the extremity of the meatus auditorius. and gives attachment by its centre and inner surface to the handle of the malleus. It is depressed towards the centre, being con- cave towards the meatus, and convex towards the tympanum, and is composed of three layers, an external cuticular, middle fi- brous and muscular, and internal mucous, derived from the mucous lining of the tympanum. The tympanum contains three email bones, ossicula auditus, viz. the malleus, incus, and stapes. The malleus (hammer) consists of ahead, neck, handle (ma- nubrium), .md two processes, long (gracilis), and short (brevis). 31 474 THE THOMSONIAN It is attached by the manubrium to the membrana tympani, be- ing enclosed between the mucous and the fibrous layer, and extending by its extremity to near the middle ofHhe membrane. The lono- process descends to the fissura Glaseri, and gives at- tachment to the laxator tym))ani muscle. Into the short pro- cess is inserted the tendon of the tensor tympani, and the head of the bone articulates with the incus. The incus (anvil) is named from an imagined resemblance to an anvil. It has also been likened to a bicuspid tootii, having one root longer and widely separated from the other. It con- sists of two processes, which unite nearly at right angles, and at their junction form a flattened body, to articulate with the head of the malleus. The short process is free ; the long pro- cess descends nearly parallel with the handle of the malleus, and curves inwards near to its termination. At its extremity is a small globular projection, the os orbiculare, which is a dis- tinct bone in the foetus, but becomes anchylosed to the long process of the incus in the adult. It articulates with the head of the stapes. The stapes is shaped like a stirrup, to which it bears a close resemblance. Its head articulates with the os orbiculare, and the two branches are connected by their extremities with a flat oval-shaped plate, representing the foot of the stirrup, which fits accurately the opening between the tympanum and the ves- tibule, the fenestra ovalis. The neck of the stapes gives attach- ment to the stapedius muscle. The muscles of the tympanum are four in number — the Tensor tympani, Laxator tympani, Laxator tympani minor, Stapedius. The tensor tympani arises from the spinous process of the sphenoid, from the petrous portion of the temporal bone, and from the Eustachian tube, and passes forwards in a distint ca- nal, separated from the tube by the processus cochlearifoimis, to be inserted into the handle of the malleus, immediately below the commencement of the processus gracilis. The laxator tympani arises from the spinous process of the sphenoid bone, and passes through an opening in the fissura Glaseri, to be inserted into the long process of the malleus. The laxator tympani minor arises from the upper margin of the meatus, and is inserted into the handle of the malleus, near to the processus brevis. The stapedius arises from the interior of the pyramid, and escapes from its summit, to be inserted into the neck of the stapes. MATERIA MEDICA. 475 The openings in the tympanum are ten in number, five large and five small ; they are — Large Openings. Small Openings. Meatus auditorius, Entrance of the chorda tympani. Fenestra ovalis, Exit of the chorda tympani, Fenestra rotunda, For the laxator tympani. Mastoid cells, For the tensor tympani, Eustachian tube. For the stapedius. The opening of the meatus auditorius has been previously described. The fenestra ovalis is an oval opening, situated in the upper part of the inner wall of the tympanum, directly opposite the meatus ; it is the opening of communication between the tym- panum and vestibule, and is closed by the foot of the stapes and by the lining membranes of both cavities. The fenestra rotunda is somewhat triangular in its form, and situated in the inner wall of the tympanum, below and rather posterior to the fenestra ovalis, from which it is separated by a bony elevation called the promontory. It serves to establish a communication between the tympanum and the cochlea. In the fresh subject it is closed by a proper membrane, as well as by the mucous lining of both cavities. The mastoid cells are very numerous, and occupy the whole of the interior of the mastoid process, and part of the petrous bone. They communicate by a large irregular opening with the upper and posterior circumference of the tympanum. The Eustachian tube is a canal of communication extending obhqucly between the pharynx and the anterior circumference of the tympanum. In structure it is partl^^ fibro-cartilagenous and partly osseous, is broad and expanded at its pharyngeal ex- tremity, and narrow and compressed at the tympanum. The smaller openings serve for the transmission of the chor- da tympani nerve, and three of the muscles of the tympanum. The opening by which the chorda tympani enters the tym- panum is near the root of the pyramid, at about the middle of the posterior wall. The opening of exit for the chorda tympani is at the fissura Glaseri in the anterior wall of the tympanum. The opening for the laxator tympani muscle is also situated in the fissura Glaseri, in the anterior wall of the tympanum. The opening lor the tensor tympani muscle is in the anterior wall, immediately above the opening of the Eustachian tube. The opening for the stapedius muscle is at the apex of a co- nical bony eminence, called the pyramid, which is situated on the posterior wall of the tympanum, immediately behind the fe- nestra ovalis. 476 THE THOMSONIAN Directly above the fenestra ovalis is a rounded ridge formed by the projection of the aqiuicductus Fallopii, Beneath the fenestra ovalis, and separatin^r it from the fenes- tra rotuda, is the promontory, a rounded projection cliannelled upon its surface by three small grooves, which lodge the three tympanic branches of Jacobson's nerve. The foramina and processes of the tympanum may be ar- ranged, according to their situation, into four groups. 1. In the external wall is the meatus auditorius, closed by the membrana tympani. 2. In the inner wall, from above downwards, are the Ridge of the aquseductus Fallopii, Fenestra ovalis, Promontory, Grooves for Jacobson's nerve. Fenestra rotunda. 3. In the posterior wall are, the Opening of the mastoid cells, Pyramid. Opening for the stapedius, Apertura chordae (entrance). 4. In the anterior wall are, the Eustachian tube. Opening for the tensor tympani, Opening for the laxator tympani, Apertura chorda3 (exit). The tympanum is lined by a vascular mucous membrane; which invests the ossicula and chorda tympani, and forms the internal layer of the membrana tympani. From the tympanum it is reflected into the mastoid cells, which it lines throughout, and passes through the Eustachian tube, to become continuous with the mucous membrane of the pharynx. Vessels and nsrves. — The arteries of the tympanum are de- rived from the internal maxillary, internal carotid, and posteri- or auricular. Its nerves are— 1. Minute branches of the facial, which are distributed to the muscles. 2. The chorda tympani, which leaves the facial nerve near the stylomastoid foramen, and arch- es upwards to enter the tympanum at the foot of the pyramid j it then passes forwards between the handle of the malleus and Ions: process of the incus, to the opening in the fissura Glaseri. 3. The tympanic branches of Jacobson's nerve, which are dis- tributed to the membranes of the fenestra ovjilis and fenestra rotunda, and to the Eustachian tube, and form a plexus by communicating with the carotid plexus and otic ganglion. MATERIA MEDICA. 477 INTERNAL EAR. The internal ear is called labT/rinth, from the complexity of its commanications; It consists of a series of cavities which are channelled through the substance of the petrous bone, and is situated between the cavity of the tympanum and the meatus audi tori us in tern us. The labyrinth consists of the Vestibule, Semicircular canals, Cochlea. The vestibule is a small oval cavity, situated immediately ■within the inner wall of the tympanum. It is named vestibule, from being, as it were, the hall of communication between the other cavities of the ear. It therefore presents a number of openings, corresponding with these different cavities. They may be arranged, like those of the tympanum, into large and small. The large openings are seven in number, viz. — the Fenestra ovalis, Scala vestibuli. Five openings of the three semicircular canals. The small openings are — the Aquoeductus vestibuli, Openings for small arteries, Three openings for branches of the auditory nerve. The fenestra ovalis is closed by the lining membrane of the ^ff-estibule, and by the foot of the stapes. It is the opening into the tympanum. The opening of the scala vestibuli is the communication be- tween the vestibule and the cochlea. The aqus'.ductus vestibuli is the commencement of the small canal which opens upon the posterior surface of the petrous bone. It gives passage to a small artery, and to a small vein which terminates in the superior petrosal sinus. The openings for the arteries and nerves are situated in the internal wall of the vestibule, and correspond with the termina- tion of the meatus auditorius internus. The semicircular canals are three bony passages which communicate with the vestibule ; one is perpendicular.in its di- rection, and corresponds with a tubercle upon the anterior sur- face of the petrous bone ; another is oblique; and the third ho- rizontal. Each canal presents a dilatation at one extremity, which is called ampulla. The two undilated extremities of the perpendicular and oblique canals unite to ibrm a single 478 THE THOMSONIAN tube ; all the others open singly into the vestibule — hence the five openings of the three canals. The vestibule contains two sacs, forme(^ by the expansion of the auditory nerve. The larger of these is the utriculus com- munis, the smaller the sacculus proprius. The semicircular canals contain tubes of nervous membrane, which communi- cate with the utriculus communis, and form three dilatations, corresponding with the ampullae at the extremities of the ca- nals. These sacs, together with the nervous tubes lodged in the canals, contain a limpid secretion, which is called liquor of Cotunnius. The sacs likewise contain a calcareous deposit, which is analogous to the otolites, or calcareous crystalline masses found in the vestibular sacs of fishes. The sacs and membranous canals do not completely fill the cavities of the bone, but leave a space which is occupied by an- other fluid, the liquor of Scarpa, or aqua labyrinthi. The cochlea (snail shell) is a spiral canal, which describes two turns and a half round a central pillar which is called mo- diolus. It is situated in the anterior part of the petrous bone, its base being directed backwards and inwards, and correspond- ing with the termination of the cul-de-sac of the meatus audi- torius internus. The canal of the cochlea is divided into two equal parts by a thin bony lamina (lamina spiralis), which is wound spirally around the modiolus. The two half canals, thus formed, are called scala tympani and seal a vestibuli. At the apex of the cochlea the two scalae communicate, and form a dilated cavity, which is termed the cupola. The lami- na spiralis is not continued entirely across the canal of the cochlea, but is completed by the mucous membrane which lines its interior. Near to the termination of tlie scala tympani is the opening of a small canal, aquseductus cochleae, which passes backwards to the jugular fossa. It transmits a small vein from the cochlea, which opens into the commencement of the inter- nal jugular vein. The cavity of the cochlea is lined throughout by a thin mu- cous membrane, which is continuous with that of the vestibule, but which closes the fenestra rotunda. It is filled with the aqua labyrinthi. The openings into the cochlea are, the fenestra rotunda from the tympanum, the opening into the vestibule, the aquseductus cochleae, and the openings for the branches of the auditory nerve. Auditory nerve. — -When the auditory nerve reaches the ex- tremity of the meatus auditorius internus, it divides into two branches. 1. The larger, or anterior, to the cochlea. 2. The smaller, or posterior, to the vestibule and semicircular canals. MATERIA MEDICA. 479 The Tintcrior branch divides into a number of minute fila- ments, which pierce the base of the cochlea, and expand in its mucous lining; others enter the modiolus, which is hollowed into canals to receive them, and pass off through small open- ings in its circumference, to spread out in the mucous mem- brane covering the lamina spiralis. The posterior or vestibular portion of the nerve divides into three branches, which are distributed — 1. The larger, to form the utriculus communis and the membranous tubes of the per- pendicular and horizontal canals. 2. To form the sacculus proprius. 3. Tiie smallest, to form the membranous tube of the oblique canal. The extremities of the nervous filaments, both in the cochlea and vestibule, form a papillary layer upon the internal surface of the nervous membrane, like that of the retina. The arteries of the labyrinth are derived principally from the auditory branch of the superior cerebellar artery. ORGAN OF TASTE. The tongue is composed of muscular fibres, which are dis- tributed in layers arranged in various directions ; thus some are disposed longitudinally, others transversely, others again ob- liquely and vertically. Between the muscular fibres is a consi- derable quantity of adipose substance The tongue is connected posteriorly with the os hyoides by muscular attachment, and to the epiglottis by mucous mem- brane, forming the three folds which are called frena epiglotti- dis. On either side it is held in connection with the lower jaw by mucous membrane, and in front a fold of that membrane is formed beneath its under surface, which is named frajnum lin- guaB, The surface of the tongue is covered by a dense layer analo- gous to the corium of the skin, which gives support to the pa- pillae. A raphe marks the middle line of the organ, and divides it into symmetrical halves. The papillcB of the tongue are — the Papillae circumvallatoe, Papilla3 conicae, Papillae filiformes, Papillae fungiformes. The papillae circumvallatae are of large size, and from fifteen to twenty in number. They are situated on the dorsum of the tongue, near its root, and form a row upon each side, which meets its fellow at its middle Jine, like the two branches of the letter A. Each papilla resembles a cone, attached by the apex to the bottom of a cup-shaped depression ; hence they are also 480 THE THOMSOjSIAN named papillaj calyciforines. This ciip-sbaped cavity forms a kind of fossa around the papilla, whence their name, circum- vallata\ At the meeting of the two rows of these papilla- upon the middle of the root of the tongue, is a deep mucous follicle call- ed foramen caecum. The papillffi conicte and filiformes cover the whole surface of the tongue in front of the circumvallatfie, but are most abun- dant near its apex. They are conical and filiform in shape, and have their points directed backwards. The papilla? fimgiformes are irregularly dispersed over the dorsum of the tongue, and are easily recognized amongst the other papilla^ by their rounded heads and larger size. A num- ber of tliese papilUe will generally be observed at the tip of the tongue. Behind the papilUic circumvallatoe, at the root of the tongue, are a number of mucous glands, which open upon the surface. They liave been improperly described as papilUc by some au- thors. Vessels and nerves. — The tongue is abundantly supphed with blood by the lingual arteries. The nerves are three in number, and of larcje size : — 1. The gustatory branch of the fifth, which is distributed to the papil- la, and is the nerve of common sensation and of taste. 2. The glosso-pharyngeal, which is distributed to the mucous mem- brane, follicles, and glands of the tongue, is a nerve of sensa- tion and motion ; it also serves to associate the touirue with the pharynx and larynx. 3. The liuijual, which is the motor nerve of the tongue, and is distributed to the muscles. The mucous membrane, which invests the tongue, is conti- nuous with the cutis along the margins of the lips. On either side of the fi'tenum lingua-, it may be traced through the sublin- gual ducts into tlie sublingual glands, and along Wharton's ducts into the submaxillary glands ; from the sides of the cheeks it passes through the openings of kStenton's ducts to the parotid gland ; in the fauces it forms the assemblage of follicles called tonsils, and may be thence traced downwards into the larynx and pharynx, where it is continuous with the general gastro- pulmonary mucous membrane. Beneath the mucous membrane of the mouth, are a number of small glandular granules, which pour their secretion upon the surface. A considerable number of them are situated with- in the lips, in the palate, and in the fioor of the mouth. They are named from the position whith they may chance to occu- py, labial, palatine glands, dsc. MATERIA MEDICA. 481 ORGAN OF TOUCH. The skin is composed of three layers, viz. — the Cutis, Rete mucosum, Cuticle. The cutis (dermis), or true skin, covers the entire sursace of the body, and is continuous with the mucous membrane which lines its cavities. It consists of two layers, a deep one called cnrium, and a superiicial or papillary layer. The coriuni is the base of support to the skin, and owes its density of structure to an interlacement of fibrous bands, which form a firm and elastic web. By its under surface it is con- nected with the common superficial fascia of the body, and pre- sents a number of areolae, in which are lodged small masses of adipose tissue. PLATE 97.* Sip' ^^ffe^^ '^■ * The Anatoimj of the Skin. — 1. The cuticle, showing the oblique laminae ot" which it is composed, and the imbricated disposition of the ridges upon its surface. 2. The rete mucosum. 3. Two of the quadrilateral papillary mass- es, such as are seen in the palm of the hand or sole of the foot ; tlie}' arc com- posed of minute conical papillae. 4. The deeper layer of the cutis, the cori- um. 5. Adipose vesicles, showing their appearance beneath the microscope. 6. A perspiratory sland, with its spiral duct, auch as is seen in the palm of the hand or sole of the foot. 7. Another perspiratory gland with a slraiahter duct, such as is seen in the scalp. 8. Two hairs from the scalp, enclosed in their follicles; their relative depth in the skin is preserved. 9. A pair of se- baceous glands, opening by short ducts into the follicles of the hair. 482 THE THOMSOMAN On the upper surface, the fibres are more closely aggregated, and form a smooth plane for the support of the papillary layer. The corium differs very much in thickness in different parts of the body; thus, on the lips, eyelids and scrotum, it is ex- tremely thin. On the head, back, soles of the feet, and palms of the hand, it is very thick ; and on the more exposed parts of the body it is much thicker than on those which are protected. The papillary layer is soft, and formed by minute papilltfi, which cover every part of its surface. On the body generally, the papilke are very small and irregular in their distribution : they are best seen in the palm of the hand or sole of the foot, where they are disposed in linear ridges, as indicated by the markings on the cuticle. The ridges of papille6 in these situa- tions are separated from each other by transverse furrows into small quadrilateral rounded masses. These quadrilateral mass- es are each composed of a considerable number of minute pa- pilUr, which are conical in form and variable in length, one or two of the papillffi in each mass being generally longer than the rest. In the middle of the transverse furrow, between the papilJEs, is the opening for the perspiratory duct. The papillte beneath the nail have a peculiar form and ar- rangement. At the root of the nail they are numerous, but small and very vascular ; opposite to the part of the nail called lunula, they are scarcely raised above the surface, and less vas- cular ; but beyond this point they form lengthened vascular plicffi, which afford a large surface for secretion. These lengthened papillae deposite the horny secretion in longitudinal lamelkie, which give to the nail the ribbed appearance which it presents upon its surface. Vessels and nerves. — The papillae are abundantly supplied with vessels and nerves, the former to enable them to perform the office of secretion in the production of the cuticle, the latter to give them the sensibility necessary to an organ of touch. The rete mucosum is the soft medium which is situated be- tween the papillary surface of the cutis and cuticle ; after a careful maceration, it may be separated as a distinct layer, par- ticularly in the negro, where it is firmer than in the wliite man, and contains the coloring matter of the skin. The name rete mucosum, given to it by Malpighi, conveys a very inaccurate notion of its structure ; for it is neither a net- work, nor is it mucous. It is thin upon the general surface of the body, but is thicker in the palm of the hand and sole of the foot, and presents a close correspondence with the thickness of the cuticle. Examined with the microscope, it is seen to be moulded accurately upon the papilhe, being thick in the spaces between these, and thin over their convexities; hence arises the appearance of a network. In the rete mucosum, from the MATERIA MEDICA. 483 hand these depressions are arranged in a hnear series, as are the papilla? ; in other situations they are more irregular, but correspond alway with the distribution of the papilUe. The rete mucosuni is the freshly secreted layer of cuticle, and gradually hardens as it approaches the surface. It has been shown to be composed of minute oval vesicular cells, which become converted in the hardened cuticle into flattened scales, each containing a central nucleus. The dark pigment ot the negro exists in the form of small granules of coloring matter. The cuticle (epidermis, scarf-skin), is the horny unorganized lamella which covers and protects the entire surface of the more delicate layers of the skin. In situations exposed to pres- sure, as the palm of the hand and sole of the foot, it is very thick ; in other parts it forms only a thin layer. The cuticle is marked on the surface by a network of lines ; these are more numerous and larger near to joints, where they form deep wrinkles, on account of the inelastic nature of its structure. Their appearance differs in different regions of the body; but every where depends upon the same cause, the inelasticity of the cuticle. At the entrance to the cavities of the body, it is continuous with the epithelium, or cuticular covering of the mucous membrane. The cuticle is secreted by the cutis in the form of laminae, the innermost and last secreted layer being the rete mucosum. The lamiucie are composed of minute scales with central nu- clei, and are disposed obliquely, so as to project by their free extremities upon the surface of the skin ; in the palm of the hand and sole of the foot, these layers correspond with the ele- vations of the papillae, and present an imbricated linear surface. This is particularly seen on the points of the fingers, where the rows of papillse have a circular arrangement. Upon the inner surface of the cuticle, a number of depres- sions and linear furrows are seen, corresponding with the pro- jections of the papilhe. A number of conical processes are also observed on this surface, which correspond with the passage of hairs through the cuticle, and with the openings of the perspi- ratory ducts. The openings in the cuticle are the pores or openings for the perspiratory ducts, the openings for the passage of the hairs, and those of the sebaceous follicles. APPENDAGES TO THE SKIN. The appendages to the skin are the nails, hairs, sebaceous glands, and perspiratory glands and ducts. The 7iails are parts of the cuticle secreted in the same man- ner, composed of the same material, but disposed in a peculiar 4B4 THE THOMSONIAN way to serve an especial purpose — the protection of the tactile extremities of the fingers. They are inserted by their roots into a deep groove of tlie skin (matrix), and are firmly attached to the papillary snrface by the close connection of the papillcE with the longitudinal laniiniP. The white semilunar segment near the root of the nail is called the lunula. The cuticle is closely connected with it all round, and in maceration the nail comes off with tliat layer. The hairs have a very dmerent structure and arrangement from that of the nails ; they are inserted for a considerable depth within the integument, and terminate in conical or somewhat bulbous roots. Each hair is enclosed beneath the surface by a vascular secretory follicle, which regulates its form during its growth. Hairs are very rarely completely cylindrical ; they are gene- rally more or less compressed, and somewhat prismoid in form. The transverse section is reniform; in texture it is dense and homogeneous towards the circumference, and porous and cel- lular in the centre, like the pith of a plant. The sebaceous glands are abundant in some parts of the skin, as in the arm-pits, the nose, &c., and vary in complexity of structure, from a simple pouch-like tbllicle to a lobulated gland. At the extremity of the nose they have several lobes ; and in the scalp they are lobulated like a bunch of grapes, and terminate in the follicles of the hairs near the surface of the skin. They secrete an oily fluid, which is poured ont npon the sur- face of the skin, and tends to preserve the flexibility of the cu- ticle. The perspiratory ducts are minute spiral tubes which com- mence in small lobulated glands, situated deeply in the integu- ment beneath the corium and among the adipose vesicles. They are easily seen by examining a thm perpendicular section of the skin from the palm of the hand, with a lens of moderate power. Proceeding from the glands, the ducts ascend through the transverse fissure, between the quadrilateral masses of pa- pillffi and through the rete mucosum, to terminate by open pores upon the surface of the cuticle. That portion of the tube which is situated in the cuticle, is pretty equally spiral ; but that be- low the level of the papillary surface is very irregularly twist- ed, and is often nearly straight. In the scalp the tubes are ser- pentine, or but slightly curved. Tne pores are best observed during perspiratign, when the fluid is seen oozing through their minute openings. In the hand and sole of the foot they are easily seen by the naked eye without this assistance. They are disposed at regular distan- ces along the ridges of the cuticle, and give rise to the appear- ance of lines cutting the ridges transversely. MATERIA MEDICA. 485 INDEX. ATjclomcn, 270 Abdominal regions, 270 Acini, 294 Alimentary canal, 276 Ampulla, 477 Aravgdaloe, 278 Annulus ovalis, 253 Antihelix, 471 Antitragus, 47] Aorta, abdominal, 380 arch, 380 ascending, 380 thoracic. 380 Aortic sinuses, 257 Aponeurosis, 334 Appendices epiploica?, 275 Appendix vermiformis cseci, 2.81 Aqua la.byrinthi, 478 Aqueductus cochleJE, 478 vestibuli. 477 Aqueous humor, 466 Arachnoid membrane. 438 Arbor vitas. 443 uterina, 319 Arch, femoral, 376 palmar superficial. 395 Areola, 322 Artreies. — General anatomy, 377 structure, 377 anastomotica magna. 393 angular, 383 aorta, 379 articular azygos. 408 inferior, 408 superior, 408 auricular postreior. 384 axillary, 390 basilar, 387 brachial, 392 bronchial, 395 carotid common. 381 external, 382 internal, 385 carpal ulnar anterior, 394 posterior, 394 radial anterior, 394 posterior, 394 cerebellar inferior. 388 superior. 388 cerebral posterior, 388 cervicalis anterior. 390 posterior. 390 circumflex anterior. 392 external, 407 illi. 405 internal, 407 posterior, 392 superficialis, , 407 coccygeal, 403 cosliac. 397 Arteries. — Colica dextra, 398 media, 398 sinistra, 400 coronaria dextra, 381 corporis bulbosi, 403 cavernosi, 403 cystic, 398 dorsaiis carpi radiaiis, 394 pedis, 408 penis, 403 scapulae, 392 epigastric, 405 facia), 383 femoral; 405 gastric, 398 gastro-duodenalis, 398 epiploica dextra, 398 sinistra, 398 gluteal, 405 inferior, 405 superior, 405 hcemorrhoidal external, 403 superior, 400 hepatic. 398 ileo-colic. 398 iliac, common, 401 external, 405 internal, 401 innominnti, 381 intercostal, 395 anterior, 390 superior, 390 inter-osseous, 395 anterior, 395 posterior, 395 ischiatic, 403 lyngua], 382 lumbar, 401 malleolar external, 410 interna], 410 mammary internal, 390 mastoid, 384 maxillary internal, 385 meningea posterior, 388 mesenteric 398 inferior, 400 metatarsea, 409 obturator, 404 occipital, 3S4 ffisophaseal, 395 pancreatica magna, 398 pancrealicffi parvse, 398 pancreatico-duodenalis, 398 perforantes femoralis, ' 407 plantaris, 411 perineal superficial, 403 peroneal, 409 anterior, 410 posterior. 410 pharyngea ascendens, 384 486 THE THOMSON IAN Akteries— Phrenic, 397 Bronchi, 266 plantar external, 411 Bronchial tubes. 268 internal, 410 Brunner's glands. 284 popliteal. 407 Bulb of the corpus spongiosum, 310 profunda cervicis, 390 Bulbous part of the urethra, 313 femoris, 407 Caecum, 281 inferior, 393 Calices, 304 superior, 392 Canal of Fontana, 463 pterygoid, 385 Petit, 466 pudic-internal, 403 Canthi, 468 pulmonary. 411 Capillaries, 377 pyloric, 398 Capitula laryngis, 261 radial 393 Capsule of Glisson, 293 ranine. 383 Capsules supra-renal. 301 recurrens radialis, 394 Caput gallinaginnis. 312. tibialis. 408 Cardia, 281 ulnaris ante- Caruncula lachrymalis 469 rior. 395 Carunculaj myrtiformes. 322 posterior. , 395 Centrum ovale majus. 443 renal, 401 Cerebellum, 443 sacra media, 401 Cerebro-spinal axis, 431 lateralis. 404 Cerebrum, 439 scapular posterior, 3S9 Ceruminous follicles, 473 sigmoid, 400 Cervical ganglia. 467 spermatic, 398 Cheeks, 276, 254 spinal anterior. 387 Chordae tendineae. 256 lateral. 387 vocales, 262 posterior, 387 Choroid membrane, 462 splenic, 398 plexus. 441 subclavian. 386 Ciliary ligament, 463 subscapular, 392 processes. 464 superlicialis cervicis, 390 Circle of Willis, 388 supra-renal, 400 Circulation, adult. 251 supra-scapular, 398 foetal. 324 sural. 408 Clitoris, 322 tarsea. 409 Cochlea, 478 temporal, 384 Colon, 282 anterior. 384 Calumnse Carneae, 257, 254 posterior. 384 Commissures anterior. 442 thoracica acromialis. 390 middle, or soft. 442 axillaris. 390 posterior. 442 inferior, 390 Concha, 471 superior, 390 Coni renales. 304 thyroid inferior. 388 vasculosi, 316 superior. 382 Conjunctiva, 469 tibialis antica. 407 Converging fibres, 446 postica. 409 Corium, 481 transversalis faciei. 384 Cornea, 461 perinei. 403 Cornicula larjTigis, 261 ulnar. 394 Corona glandis. 309 umbilical. 403 Coronary valve, 253 uterine, 405 vaginal. 405 Corpora Arantii, 255, 257 vasa brevia. 398 cavernosa. 310 intestini tenuis. 398 olivaria. 446 vertebral, 387 pyramidalia. 446 vesical inferior, 403 quadrigemina, 442 Arytenoid cartilages, 261 striata. 442 glands. 465 Corpus callosum, 446 Auricles of the heart, 252, 255 cavernosum. 310 Auriculo-ventricular openings. 254 fimbriatum. 440 Bladder, 306 luteum, 320 Brain, 436 rhomboideum, 443 MATERIA MEDICA 487 Corpus spongiosum, 310 Fibres of the heart, 257 Cowper's glands, 313 Fimbriae, Fallopian, 320 Cricoid cartilage, 261 Foetal circulation, 324 Crico-thyroid membrane, 262 Foetus, anatomy of. 323 Crura cerebelli. 444 Follicles of Lieberkuhn, 285 penis, 309 Foramen coecum, 480 Crystalline lens, 466 commune anterius. 442 Cuneiform cartilages, 261 posterius, 442 Cupola, 478 of Monro, 440 Cuticle, 481 Soemmering, 465 Cutis, 481 Winslow, 274 Cystic duct, 299, 481 ovale, 325 Dartos, 313 saphenum. 376 Dermis, 481 Fornix, 440 Detrusor urinae. 307 Fossa navicularis urethrse, 313 Diaphragm, 351 vaginae, 321 Ductus arteriosus. 325 ovalis, 253 communis choledochus, 299 Fourchette, 321 cysticus, 299 FrEena epiglottidis. 262 ejaculatorius, 309, 317 Frtenum labii inferioris. 276 hepaticus, 299 linguae. 276 pancreaticus, 300 praeputtii. 309 prostaticus, 309 superioris. 276 venosus, 325 Gall bladder. 299 Duodenum, 281 Ganglia cervical. 456 Dura mater. 437 lumbar. 456 Ear, 471 sacral. 456 Ejaculatory duct, 309 semi-lunar, 456 Encephalon, 436 thoracic, 410 Epidermis, 481 Ganglion, Arnold's, 455 Epididjmis, 316 cardiac. 456 Epigastric region, 270 ciliary, 455 Epiglottic gland. 265 Cloquet's, 455 Epiglottis, 261 lenticular. 455 Epithelium, 275, 283 Meckel's, 455 Erectile tissue. 310 naso-palatine. 455 Eustachian tube. 475 of Ribes, 455 valve, 253 otic. 455 Eye, 460 spheno-palatine, 455 brows. 468 submaxillary. 455 globe. 460 Gland, epiglottic, 265 lashes, 468 lachrymal,] 470 lids. 468 parotid, 278 Fallopian tubes, 320 prostrate. 308 Falx cerebeJli, 438 thymus, 328 carebri. 438 thyroid, 266 Facia, general anatomy, 369 Glands, aggregate. 285 cervical deep, 374 arytenoid. 265 superficial, 374 Brunner's. 284 denlata. 441 Cowper's, 313 iliaca, 373 duodenal. 284 lata. 376 gastric. 284 palmar, 374 inguinal. 425 pelvica. 373 lymphatic. 421 perineal deep, 373 mammary. 322 superficial 373 Meibomian, 469 spermatica. 314 (Esophageal, 284 temporal, 370 Peyer's, 285 thoracic. 371 salivary. 278 transversalis, 371 solitary. 285 Fauces, 278 sublingual. 279 Femoral arch. 376 submaxillary, 278 488 THE THOMSONIAN Glaadulae odorifcrae, 309 Liquor Morgagni, 466 Pacchioni, 437 of Scarpa, 478 Tysoni, 309 Liver, 287 Glans clitoridis, 321 Lobes of the liver, 292 penis, 309 Lobuli testis, 316 Glisson's capsule, 293 Lobulus auris. 471 Globus major epidydimus, 315 Lobus caudatus. 290 minor do 315 quadratus, 291 Glottis, 265 Spigelii, 291 Gubeniaculum testis, 333 Lumbar regions, 270 Gums, 277 Lungs, 267 Hair, 434 Lunula, 484 Heart, 250 Lymphatic glands and vessels, 421 Helix, 471 axillary, 424 Hepatic ducts, 295 bronchial, 428 Hernia, congenital, 372 cardiac. 428 direct, 372 head and neck. 423 encysted. 372 inguinal, 425 inguinal, 372 intestines. 429 Hilus lienis, 301 kidney, 429 renalis, 303 lacteals, 422 Hippocampus major, 141 liver, 428 minor, 441 lower extremity. 425 Humors of the eye. 466 lungs. 427 Hyaloid membrane. 466 mesenteric. 429 Hymen, 322 pelvic viscera. 429 Hypochondriac regions, 270 spleen. 428 Hypogastric region, 270 stomach, 428 Ileo csecal valve, 233 testicle. 429 Ileum, 231 trunk. 426 Iliac regions. 270 upper extremity. 424 Infundibula, 304 viscera. 427 Inguinal region, 270 Malleus, 473 Intestinal canal. 276 Mastoid cells. 475 Iris, 463 Mammffi, 322 Isthmus of the fauces, 278 Mammary gland, 322 Jacob's membrane, 464 Meatus auditorius cxternus. 473 Jejunum, 231 urinarius, female. 322 Kidneys, 302 male, 309 Labia majora, • 321 Meatuses of the narcs, 459 minora. 321 Meckel's ganglion. 455 Labyrinth, 477 Mediastinum anterior, 270 Lachrymal ducts, 470 middle, 270 gland, 470 posterior, 270 sac, 470 testis, 315 Lacteals, 429 Meibomian glands, ^ 468 Lacunar, 313- Membrana pigmenti. 462 Lamina spiralis. 478 papillaris, 327 Larynx, 260 tympani. 473 Lens, 466 Membrane choroid, 462 Ligaments, crico-thyroidean. 262 hyaloid. 166 cpiglotlo-hyoidean, 262 Jacob's, 464 of the liver, 288 Membranous part of the urethra. 312 suspensorium penis, 309 Mesenteric glands. 429 thyro-arytenoid, 262 Mesentery, " 275 thyro-hyoidean, 262 Meso-cola, 275 Limbus luteus 465 Meso-recium, 275 LinecE alba, 350 Mitral valves, 256 Linese tranversfp, 3r)0 Mons veneris. 321 semi-lunare§, 350 Mouth, 276 Lips, 276 Mucous membrane, structure, 277 Liquor Cotunnii, 478 Muscles, general anatomy, 334 MATERIA MEDICA. 489 Muscles, accelerator urinse, accessorious adductor brevis, longus, anconeus, anti-lragicus, arytenoideus, aryteno-epiglottideus su- perior and inferior, brachialis amicus, cervicalis ascendens, coccygeus, complexus, compressor urethrse, coraco-brachialis, lateralis, posticus, thyroideus, detrusor urinse, digasti'icus, erector penis, spinee, extensor carpi radialis brevior, carpi radialis longior, carpi ulnaris, flexor carpi radialis, ulnaris. digitorum profun- dus, sublimis, lorigus digitorum pedis, policis manus, gastrocnemius, gemellus inferior, superior, genio-hyo-glossus, hyoideus, gluteus, maximus, medius, minimus, gracilis, helicis major, minor, iliacus, inter-spinales, inter-lransversales, latissimus dorsi, laxator tympani major, minor, ievator ani, glandulce thyroideae, palpebrfE, longissimus dorsi, multifidus spinse, mylo-hyoideus, obturator exturnus, » occipito-frontalis, omo-hyoideus, palmaris brevis, longus, 353 Muscles, pictineus, 364 347 peroneus longus, 365 361 poplitius, 367 364 tertius, 365 359 pronator quadratus, 358 472 radii teres, 358 263 psoas magnus, 363 quadratus femoris, 362 264 rectus abdominis, 349 356 sacro-Iumbalis, 347 390 sartorius, 363 353 semi-spinalis colli, 346 340 dorsi, 346 353 membranosus, 365 356 tendinosus, 365 263 serratus magnus, 356 263 posticus inferior, 347 263 superior, 347 306 sphincter ani externus, 355 340 _ internus, 355 353 spinalis dorsi, 347 347 stapedius, 474 sterno-hyoideus, 340 359 thyoideus, 340 stylo-hyoideus, 340 359 pharyngeus, 342 359 subscapularis, 399 359 supinator radii brevis, 359 359 longus, 359 tensor tympani, 474 359 vaginee femoris, 363 359 thyro-arytenoideus, 263 367 epiglottideus, 263 359 hyoideus, 349 366 tibialis anticus, 365 362 posticus, 365 362 tragicus, 470 340 transversus auriculse, 472 340 perinei, 353 361 trapezius, 347 361 Musculi pectinati, 256 362 Nails, 483, Nares, 280 365 Nasal duct, ^7q 472 fossffi, 459 472 Nates cerebri, 440 362 Neuves, general anatomy, 43^ 349 abducentes, 44g 349 auditory, 447 347 auricularis anterior, 45i 474 buccal, 45^ 474 cardiac, 45g 353 cardiacus inferior, 455 267 magnus, 456 338 medius, 456 347 superior, 455 347 cervical, 455 340 cervico-facial, 44s 362 ciliary, 455 336 circumflex, 452 340 communicans peronei, 453 361 cranial, 447 359 oural, 453 32 490 THE THOMSOJNIAN Nerves, cutaneus externus brachi- alls, internus brachi- alis, spiralis, dental anterior, inferior, postei'ior, descendens noni, dorsal, eighth pair, facial, fifth pair, first pair, frontal, glosso-pharyngeal, gustatory, inferior maxillary, infra-trochlear, inter-osseous anterior, posterior, lachrymal, laryngeal inferior, lingual, lumbar, masseteric, maxiUaris inferior, superior, median, motores oculorum, musculo-spiral, nasalj olfactory, ophthalmic, optic, 447, orbital, palatine posterior, anterior, palmaris superficial, perineo-cutaneous, peroneal, pharyngeal, pneumo-gastric, pterygoid, radial, sacral, saphenous long, short, spinal, accessory, subscapular, superficialis colli, superior maxillary, supra-scapular, sympatheticus major, temporal, temporo-facial, thoracic short, long, tibialis posticus, trifacial, tympanic, ulnar, Nipple, 322 451 Nose, 457 Nymphce, 321 451 (Esophagus, m) 451 Omentum, gastro-splenic, 275 451 great. 274 451 lesser, 274 451 Omphalo-mesenteric vessels, 331 448 Optic thalami, 442 452 Orbiculare os. 474 449 Ossicula auditus. 473 448 Ovaries, 320 450 Ovula of Naboth, 319 445 Palate, 277 449 Pancreas, 300 449 Papillae of the nail. 482 451 skin, 482 451 tongue, 479 450 crJcyformes, 480 451 circumvallata;, 479 451 cornicffi . 479 449 filiforraes. 479 448 fungiformes. 479 448 Parotid gland, 278 452 Penis, 309 339 Pericardium, 250 451 Peritoneum, 272 450 Perspiratory ducts, 484 451 Peyer's glands. 285 447 Pharynx, 280 451 Pia mater. 438 455 Pigmentum nigrum. 462 445 Pillars of the palate, 277 449 Pineal gland, 446 450 Pinna, 471 455 Pituitary membrane, 459 455 Pleura costalis, 269 451 pulraonalis. 269 453 Plexus, aortic, 456 4gi axillary. 451 449 cervical anterior, 451 44S choroid. 440 339 ccEliac, 456 451 gastric, 456 456 hepatic. 456 453 hypogastric, 456 453 lumbar. 452 456 451 mesenteric inferior. 456 451 superior, 456 451 phrenic, 456 451 renal, 456 450 sacral, 456 451 solar, 456 453 spermatic. 456 339 splenic, 455 448 supra-renal, 456 451 Plica semi-lunaris. 469 451 Plicte longitudinal, 283 453 Pomum Adami, 260 450 Pons Varolii, 446 449 Pores, 484 451 Porus opticus. 461 MATERIA MEDIC A. 491 Poupart"s ligament, 363 Prepuce, 309 Processus e cerebello ad testes, 444 Promontory, 475 Prostrate gland. 308 Prostatic part of the urethra, 311 Pulmouarj' artery, 411 sinuses, 255 veins. 425 Pylorus, 281 Receptaculum chyli, 429 Rectum, 282 Rete mucosum, 481 testis. 316 Retina, 464 Rima glottidis, 265 Ring, internal abdominal, 371 Rugje, 281 Saceulus laryngis, 265 Scala tympani, 478 vestibuli, 477 Schneiderian membrane, 459 Sclerotic coat. 460 Scrotum, 313 Sebaceous glands, 484 Semicircular canals, 477 Semilunar- fibro-valves, 255, 257 Septum auricularum. 252 ludicum. 441 pectinifcrme, 310 scroti. 313 Sigmoid valves, 255, 257 Sinuses, 415 Sinus aortic, 257 cavernous, 415 circular. 415 fourth, 415 lateral. 415 longitudinal inferior. 415 superior, 415 occipital anterior, 415 posterior, 415 petrosal inferior, 415 superior, 415 pocularis. 312 pulmonary. 255 rectus or straight, 415 transverse, 415 Skin, 481 Socia parotidis, 278 Soft palate, 277 Spermatic canal, 372 cord, 314 Spinal cord. 446 nerves, 451 veins, 419 Spleen, 301 Spongy part of the urethra, 312 Stapes, 474 Stomach, 281 Sub-archnoiJean fluid, 438 space, 438 Sublingual gland, 279 Submaxillary gland, 278 Sulcus longitudinalis hepatis. 290 transversus, 290 Superficial facia, 374 Supra-renal capsules, 301 Suspensory ligament of the liver. 288 penis, 309 S}'mpathetic nerve, 453 Tapetum, 463 Tarsal cartilages, 468 Tendon, 334 Tenia semicircularis, 439 Testicles, 313 descent. 333 Thalami optici. 442 Thoracic duct, 429 Thorax, 249 Thymus gland. 328 Thyro-hyoid membrane, 262 ThjToid cartilage, 260 gland, 227, 266 Tonsue, 479 Tonsils, 278 Torcular Herophilli, 415 Trachea, 266 Tragus, 471 Trigone vesicale, 307 Tuberculum Loweri, 253 Tubuli seminiferi. 316 uriniferi, 303 Tunica albuginea testis, 316 erythroides. 314 nervea. 284 vaginalis, 315 vasculosa testis, 316 Tympanum, 473 Tyson's glands. 309 TJ^ibilical region. 270 TJrachus, 306 Ureter. 304 Urethra, female., 317 male. 311 Uterus, 318 Utriculus communis, 478 Uvea, 464 Uvula palati, 277 vesicae, 307 Vagina, 318 Valve, coronary. 250 Eustachian, 253 ilio-csecal. 283 mitral. 256 pyloric, 285 of the rectum, 283 semi-lunar. 255 tricuspid. 254 of Vieussens, 446 Valvulse conniventes, 283 Vasa efTerentia, 316 lactea, 429 lymphatica, 431 492 THE THOMSONIAN Vasa pampiniformia, 314 Veins, portal, 419 recta, 316 pulmonary, 419 Vasculum aberrans, 317 radial. 416 Vas deferens, 317, 314 renal. 419 Veins, 412 saphenous internal, 418 axillary, 417 spermatic. 419 azygos major, 419 splenic. 420 minor, 419 subclavian. 417 basalic, 416 temporal. 414 cardiac, 419 temporo-maxillary. 414 cava inferior, 418 ulnar anterior, 416 superior, 418 posterior, 416 cephalic, 416 vertebral, 419 cerebellar, 414 Velum interpositum. 441 cerebral, 414 pendulum palati. 277 diploe, 414 VensB Galeni, 441 dorsalis penis. 311 vorticosa;, 462 dorsi-spinal, 419 Ventricles of the brain. facial, 414 fifth. 441 femoral, 418 fourth. 442 Galeni, 414 lateral. 439 gastric, 420 third, 442 hepatic, 419 of the heart, 256 intercostal superior, 419 larynx. 265 jugular anterior 416 Vermiform processes, 443 external. 416 Veru montanum. 312 internal. 416 VesicuIoE seminales. 308 maxillary internal, 414 Vestibule, 477 median basalic. 416 Vestibulum vaginas. 322 cephalic, 416 Villi, 284 medulli-spinal, 419 Vitreous humor, 466 mesenteric inferior, 420 Vulva, 321 superior, 420 Wharton's duct. 279 occipital, 414 Zonula ciliaris, 465 popliteal, 418 of Zinn, 465 MATERIA MEDICA. 493 HISTORY OF THE EFFORTS OF DR. SAMUEL THOMSON TO SUSTAIN HIS SYSTEM OP VITALITY IN MATTER. Of all the reformers in the science of medicine, there appears to have been no one more successfnl in perfecting his system of practice, and receiving the congratulations of grateful nations during his hfetime, than Samuel Thomson. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. This man was born in the town of Alstead, in the state of New-Hampshire, Feb. 9th, 1769. His* parents were poor, but industrious, and taught their son to imitate their habits of in- dustry and economy ; and over his principles of moral honesty they watched with unceasing vigilance. The father of young Thomson was one of the most enter- prising and determined spirits of the age, and bethought every person should possess the same indomitable perseverance as himself; and fortunately for future generations, he succeeded in imbuing the mind and composition of his son with that pe- culiar tact, talent, and trait of character, which at maturity has rendered him one of the greatest benefactors the world has ever known. COMMENCES AT HARD LABOR. At a very early age (five years) he was put to hard labor up- on a farm, and his daily task was always better fitted for those of riper years. But he was rigidly required to perform the amount of labor allotted to him, without complaint ; and such was the severity of his labor, that at the age of seven years he was round shouldered, and stooped forward like a hard labor- ing old man. The writer of this has frequently heard him say, that after having performed his daily task he has been sent for the cows and so great was his fatigue of body from labor, that on sitting down to rest he would unconsciously fall asleep, and that his father by calling to him has awoke him at the distance of half a mile, so sensitive was his hearing to the voice of his father of whom he lived in such constant fear, on account of the se- verity of his punishment at the slightest offence. Under such a tutor, whose severity he was able to stand, who will wonder that Samuel Thomson had a robust and vigorous constitution at a more mature age. We are astonished that his constitution and health were not entirely destroyed under such severity. 494 THE THOMSONIAN Such a disciplinarian as the father, and such a pupil as the son, have made Samuel Thomson the nondescript that we find him. For where can we find a match-mate for this man 1 As it has terminated, the severity of his parental treatment has ma- tured a firmness of muscle, a determination of spirit, and an m- domitable perseverance and an untiring industry, that knows not the meaning, practically, of the common method of com- plaint, '"i cannot do it f^ but I will iry^ v^^as what this youth was taught to say, let the task be ever so onerous ; and not to give up, until bodily and mental efforts had proved, by actual application, inadequate to the task. Our readers, after learning the early history, habits and in- dustry of young Thomson, will have the key to the masterly secret, why he in after l;fe could, without complaint, buffet per- secution, imprisonment, irons, and a trial for life, for the sake of truth, and the good of mankind. HIS TALENT FOR. INVESTIGATION. At a very early age, our hero evinced a disposition to exa- mine closely the works and mysteries of nature ; for as he had not the opportunity for book knowledge that others of his age were permitted to enjoy, the deficiency he consequently endea- vored fo supply, with what he could accumulate by observation. One principle v/hich was instilled into his mind in youth, was brought into active requisition in more mature age. That was, not to take for fact, all that was told for truth. Before he believed marvellous stories, his philosophic mind was brought into active operation to scan the rationale, the circumstances, consistency, (fcc, and then reason dictated whether to accept or reject, believe or disbelieve, the report. And when the mind was once settled as to the correctness or falsity of the position assumed, he maintained it, through good or evil report. And under such circumstances, one of the most noble traits of the character of Samuel Thomson was made manifest. Where the truth v/as concerned, he knew no fear ; and he would promul- gate it, whether unpopular or not. He would attack the law- yer, minister, doctor or statesman, or any other person, without regard to place or station, who he supposed had g-iven counte- nance to a falsehood, or any other wrong principle, to sustain power or honors, or to acquire wealth. EXAMINING VEGETATION. While upon the farm, young Thomson was constantly tast- ing the diflerent vegetable substances, with which the face of nature appeared clad during their appropriate seasons. Know- ing the fact, that certain plants were gathered by individuals, to be cured for medical uses, it was natural for him to enquire to what purposes those plants were applied, the diseases to MATERIA MEDICA. 495 which they were applicable, (fcc, and such was his tact for ac- quiring medical facts, and treasuring them up in his retentive memory, that at the age of sixteen years he had a very exten- sive knowledge of tlie medical virtues of most of the plants in his vicinity. LOBELIA INFLATA. Possessing in this respect many advantages over the other youth of his age in his neighborhood, it was in his power to I'lay off many a juvenile trick upon his more unsuspecting playmates, upon wliom the emetic properties of the Lobelia in- fiata were brought into requisition, and from which may be dated the knowledge of the useful and active properties of that valuable herb. Thus he continued to store away in his active and retentive memory, medical facts in relation to the proper- ties of plants, merely as sustenance to his active and enquiring mind, not even anticipating that future generations were about to tax his fund of medical knowledge for the good of posterity. MARRIAGE — BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER — SICKNESS, &C. On the 7th day of July, 1790, Samuel Thomson was united in wedlock with Susanna Allen, of Surry, New- Hampshire. On the 4th of July following, his eldest child was born. Soon af- ter, the mother went into fits, and notwithstanding she had the attendance of six of the best medical men the county could pro- duce, she grew worse, and a seventh doctor was sent for ; but she continued to grow worse under their care. DISAGREEMENT AMONG THE DOCTORS. One v/ould give her medicine, and another said it was wrong; another would propose to bleed her, and a fourth would say it would kill her; and this is a fair specimen of their manage- ment of the patient, and treatment to each other. Thomson found they were trying their experiments upon his'wife, which so much dissatisfied him, that he dismissed them all the same night, after they had pronounced her incurable, and sent for two root doctors, by whose eftbrts she was restored to feeble health. CASE OP COLIC. In about one month she was attacked with the colic, and the two physicians were employed who had restored her in her for- mer sickness ; but the disease had a run of several days, in spite of their efforts. These attacks continued once a month or ofiener ; and it was attended with so much trouble to go for the doctors so often, during those attacks, that Thomson employed one to remove into a house upon one part of his farm, so as to have him at hand in time of sickness. 496 THE THOMSOiNIAN BIRTH OF SECOND CHILD — CASE OF SCARLET FEVER. In March, 1794, Mrs. Thomson was confined with her se- cond child (a daughter), but received no other medical assist- ance than that of her husband, with the advice of the doctor who resided on the farm. After this time, she was never at- tacked with the colic. When this child was two years old. she was attacked with canker rash. Dr. Bliss, who resided on the farm, was sent for, and he said she had that disorder as bad as any one lie ever saw. He tried his utmost to prevent putrefaction ; and, after usinof his best exertions without doing- any good, he gave her up to die. She was senseless, and the canker was to be seen in her mouth, nose, and ears, and one of her eyes was covered with it, and closed. The other eye began to swell, and turn purple also. Thomson asked the doctor if he could not keep the canker out of the other eye ; he said it would be of no use, for she could not live. He then informed the doctor, that if he (the doctor) could do no more for the child, he would try himself, as he found that without itnmediate assistance the child would be blind with both eyes ; and she was so much distressed that she would spring up in bed, in struggling for breath. In this case we see the germ of Thomson's steaming process. FIRST TRIAL OF STAEBIING IN SICKNESS. He sat down in a chair and held the child in his lap, and put a blanket around them both, and Mrs. Thomson held a hot spi- der or shovel between his feet, and he poured on vinegar to raise a steam, and kept it as hot as she could bear it, changing them as often as they became cold ; and by following this plan about twenty minutes, she became comfortable and breathed easy. COLD WATER FOR INFLAMMATION. A cloth wet with cold water was kept upon the eyes, chang- ing it as often as it grew warm. Dr. Thomson informs us, that he continued this steaming process, once in two hours, for about one week, when the patient began to gain. Her eyes came open ; the one that was worst was completely covered with canker, and as white as paper. ASTRINGENTS USED FOR CANKER. In this case, we see the first use of the astringent wash, or rough medicine, to take off the coat of canker from the eyes, which was made of marsh-rosemary ; and when the scale came off the right eye, the sight came out with it, and it entirely pe- rished. The left eye was saved, to the astonishment of all, and especially the doctor, who said she was saved by the treatment MATERIA MEDICA. 497 received from the young iEsculapius, who first found out the use of steamincr and cold water, as an application in this case. After this successful debut in the healing art, we are informed that he found by experience that putting a hot stone into a ket- tle with water sufficient partly to cover it, and then pouring vi- negar on the stone, was an improvement in steaming, for which hehad abundant occasion in after years in his own family. THIRD CHILD BORN — LONG FEVER, &C. A short time before this daughter was taken sick, the third child, a son, was born, and was very weakly, in consequence of the mother's having:, previous to his birth, what was then called the three months' fever; which experience gave Thom- son a good knowledge of the management of the doctors to pro- long the disease, as he could never harbor the idea that a doc- tor was of any use, if the fever must have its course, and nature perform the cure in the end. Yet the doctor got his pay, and the credit of the cure. If nature was sufficiently strong to re- sist the combined attacks of the disease and the doctor, they would recover; if not, they would run down in what was call- ed the galloping consumption. The doctor undertook to man- age with Mrs, Thomson, but her husband interfered, and dis- missed him. As soon as she stopped taking his medicines she began to gain, and soon got about. CROUP, OR RATTLES. Vv'hen this son was about six weeks old, he was taken with the croup or rattles, and very much distressed, so that he could be heard all over the house. Not yet being entirely satisfied with the doctor's skill, he was sent for again, and attended the child until about ten o'clock at night, v/ithout doing any good, and he then left for home, saying that tlie child would not live until morning. RATTLE snake's OIL FIRST USED. Thomson's inventive genius was again taxed, to do for the sick what those who professed superior skill failed in perform- ing. We are informed, that in this case he had recourse to rattle snake's oil, and succeeded in making tlie child quite com- fortable by the next morning. Thomson's medical skill appreciated. We now for the first time begin to see the medical know- ledge of Dr. Thomson appreciated ; as we are told that the doc- tor came in the next morning, and was much surprised on see- ing the child so much better, and wished to know what had wrought the change ; and on being intormed, appeared much pleased with the information ; and he observed, that he was willing to allow that the greatest knowledge that doctors ever 498 THE THOMSONIAN obtained, was either by accident or through necessity. So the cure which was discovered for this desperate disease by neces- sity, was of great vaUie both to the doctor and himself Yet we are informed that Thomson was charged by the doctor for his useless visit, notwithstanding the information he gained of the experimenter. GATHERING HOOTS AND HERES. After his great success in his own family in time of sickness, we are informed that Dr. Thomson began to gather all kinds of roots and herbs in the proper season, and prepare them for medicine, to prevent as well as to cure disease, for he found by experience that "an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure." NOT EXPECTING TO PRACTICE. Dr. Thomson informs us, that he had not the most distant idea of engaging in the practice of medicine, more than to as- sist those of his own family in time of sickness ; and little did he expect, as he very justly remarks, what those severe trials and sufierings in his own fan)ily were destined to bring about. '•It seemed," said he, "as a judgment upon me and my family, for some one living with me v%^is sick most of the time while the doctor lived on the farm, which was seven 5'ears. Since I" have had more experience, and become better acquainted with the subject, I am satisfied as to the cause, which was excessive bleeding, and taking too much physic." After the doctor had removed from the farm, we are inform- ed that he had but little sickness in his family. SECOND SON BORN — NO MIDWIFE. On the birth of his second son, which was two years from that of the first, he had no occasion lor adoctor. Thomson in- forms us, that his wife did well, and the child was much more healthy than the others had been ; and he informs us also, that he has never employed a doctor since, as he had found from sad experience that they made more disease than they cured. HIS OWN PHYSICIAN. When any of his family were taken sick, he found no diffi- culty in restoring them to health, from the fund of practical knowledge which he had acquired from the more desperate cas- es of disease which he had already successfully treated. INSTRUCTION TO CHILDREN. We are informed, that as fast as his children arrived to years of discretion, they were instructed how to avoid, as well as to cure disease ; and they have generally enjoyed good health since. MATERIA MEDICA. 499 BIRTH OF 3d son — -MIDWIFE PRESENT — SEVERE SICKN3SS. At the birth of his third son, Thomson informs us, he em- ployed a midwife, and soon after the child was born his wife was taken with ague fits and cramp in the stomach ; she was in great distress, and they were all much alarmed at lier situa- tion. " I proposed to make use of some of my medicines (says Thomson), but it was strenuously objected to by the midwife, who said she wished to have a do8tor, and the sooner the bet- ter. A physician was immediately sent for, and I proposed to give her something to aflbrd temporary relief until the doctor came ; but it was all to no purpose, the midwife would not hear to it. She said the patient was in a very dangerous situation, and not more than one in twenty lived through it, and proba- bly she would not live more than twenty-four hours from that time." THE WIFE AGAIN RESTORED, AFTER BEING GIVEN OVER FIFTH CASE. The man who went for the doctor having returned without him, and there being no other within six miles, I then, (says he) came to the determination of. hearing to no one's advice, but to pursue my own plan. I told my wife, that as the mid- wife said she could not Uve more than twenty-four hours, there- fore there would not be much hazard in my attempting to re- lieve her. I gave her warm medicines, to raise the inward heat, and then applied the steam, which was much opposed by the midwife ; but I persisted in it, according to the best of my judgment, and relieved her in one hour, after she had lain in that situation about four hours, without any thing being done, waiting for a doctor. The midwife expressed much astonish- ment at the success attending: my efforts, and said that 1 had saved my wife's life, for she was certain that without the means I had used she could not have lived. She continued to do well and soon recovered. This makes the fifth time, he remarks, that I had applied to the mother of invention for assistance, after the failure of oth- ers, and in all of them was completely successful. HIS SUCCESS APPRECIATED. " The success which had attended my efforts in my own fa- mily (he observes) caused much conversation in the neighbor- hood, and in some instances I was employed in consequence of my successful nursing, and in all cases I was completely trium- phant. BIRTH OF FIFTH SON — THIRD DAUGHTER, &C. The next sickness of his wife took place, says Thomson, in 1799 ; and in about two years after, she had another son, and 500 THE THOMSONIAN did well ; making in all five sons in succession, after which she had another daughter, which was the last of eight children — five sons and three daughters. " The different circumstances through which I passed in bringing up this family of children, the scenes of sickness and distress, the experience acquired of the regular practice, and the success attending my efforts in time of disease, are the occasion of my mentioning them so mi- nutely. The knowledge afid experience, however, which 1 gained by these scenes, 1 have reason to be satisfied with, as they have proved to be a blessing, not only to me, but to many hun- dreds of others, who have been relieved from sickness and dis- tress through my instrumentality. And I hope and trust, that it will eventually be the cause of throwini]; off the veil of igno- rance from the eyes of the good people of ^this country, and do- ing away the blind confidence they are so much in the habit of placing in those who call themselves physicians; who fare sumptuously every day, living in splendor and magnificence, supported by the impositions they practise upon a deluded and credulous people. It appears to me that the physicians have much more regard for their own interest than for the health and happiness of those who are so unfortunate as to have any thing to do with them." KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED BY EXPERIMENTS ON OTHERS. "If this was the worst side of the picture, it might be borne with more patience ; but their practice is altogether experimen- tal, to try the effect of their poisons upon their patients ; and if they happen to give anymore tlian nature can bear, they either die, or become miserable invalids for life. There are many physicians within my knowledge who do not follow the fa- shionable practice of the day, but are governed by their own judgment, and make use ot vegetable mc-dicines of our own country, with the mode of treatment the most consistent with nature.-' FIRST CASE OF MEASLES. "Some time in the month of [November, 1802, my children were taken with the measles, and some of them had the com- plaint very bad. The want of the knowledge how to treat them, gave me a great deal of trouble — much more than it would at the present time — for experience has taught me that they are very easy to manage. One of my children took the disease and gave it to the resr, and I think we had four down with them at one time. My third son had the disorder very bad ; they would not come out, but continued in the system, and he turned purple and became stupid. The canker was in his tliroat and mouth, and the rosemary would have no effect. Putrid symptoms made their appearance, and I was then under MATERIA MEDICA. 501 the necessity of inventing something to allay those symptoms and remove the canker. 1 used the steam of vinegar to guard against putrefaction, and gold thread (Coptis trifolia) with red oak acorns (C^uercus rubra), pounded and steeped together, for the canker. This remedy had the desired effect, and by close attention he soon began to improve." SECOND ATTACK. " The second son was attacked nearly in the same manner as the first, and I pursued nearly the same course of treatment, with similar success: but the disease had so affected his lungs that I feared he would have the consumption. He could not speak aloud for three weeks. I could do nothing that would help him, until I gave him several potions of the emetic herb, (Lobelia infiata) which relieved him, and he soon got well. During this sickness, we suffered much from fatigue and want of sleep, for neither my wife nor myself had our clothes off for twelve nights. This was a good fortnight's school to me, in which I learned much of the nature and treatment of the mea- sles, and found it to be canker and putrefaction. This experi- ence enabled me to relieve many others of this complaint, and likewise of the canker rash. In these two disorders, and the small pox, I found a looking-glass, in which may be seen the nature of every other disease." .SMALL POX. " I had the small pox in 1798, and examined its symptoms with all the skill I was capable of, to ascertain the nature of the disease ; and I found it was the highest stage of canker and putrefaction that the human system was capable of bearing ; the measles the next in point of virulence, and the canker rash, or scarlet fever, the least of the three. And all other disorders partake more or less of the same, which I am satisfied is a key to the whole ; for by knowing how to cure those complaints, will furnish a general rule by which all other complaints may be safely treated ; as the same means that will put out a large fire will extinguish a candle." MRS. REDDING — CASE OF COLIC. "Soon after my family had recovered from the measles, I was sent for to attend a woman by the name ©f Redding, who had been afflicted with the colic ibr several years, and could find no relief from the doctors. I attended her .in my usual way, and found that canker was the cause of her complaint, and in a very short time restored her to health, insomuch that she has never had another attack to my knowledge. The lady- was restored to health in so simple a manner that it became a subject of ridicule ; and when asked about her situation, she 502 THE THOMSONIAN was ashamed to acknowledge that I had performed the cure. It appeared there could be nothing done right but by tho regu- lar physicians. I attended in this family for several years, and always successfully; but my treatment was so simple, and my remedies so universally known to the people, that my services were not considered worthy of compensation. Finding that such remuneration would not support my family, I refused en- tirely to do any thing more for them. After which they had plenty of sickness, and doctor's bills to attend to, and one bill amounted to one hundred dollars; while I did not received cent. MRS. WETHERBEE's CASE. I was soon after called upon to attend a Mrs. Wetherbee, who had been troubled with violent attacks of the colic, about once a month, for a number of years, and having heard of my suc- cess in the Redding family. I gave her the medicine to re- move canker, and steamed her, which relieved her in one hour. She had a large family to attend to, having thirteen children, and before she gained her strength she had another attack. 1 attended her again, and again relieved her. But she would not be prudent, so as to gain her strength, but must go to work again, and took cold and had a third attack. Her hus- band said that I only relieved her for the time, but did not re- move the cause. Consequently, he sent for a physician to re- move the complaint, who carried her through a course of mer- cury, which reduced her to that degree that she was not able to attend to her domestic affairs in eight weeks ; and then he de- cided that she had the consumption, and gave her over to die. After the doctor had left her to die, she aofain applied to me, but I declined doing any thing for her, as I knew her situation was much worse than when the doctor commenced with her; and should I fail in effecting a cure, the blame would all be placed to my account, and if she got well I should get no credit for the cure. One day, after finishing my forenoon's work, on going to din- ner I found her at my house waiting for me to come home, and she entreated so hard for me to undertake to cure her, and seemed to have so m.uch faith of ultimate success, that I con- sented, provided she would come to my house and stay with my wife, I would do the best I could. She readily consented, and staid but three days with us, during which time I pursued my usual course of tieatment, giving her things to remove the canker, and steaming to promote a natural perspiration ; and at the end of the time she went home, taking with her some medicine, with directions how to manage herself, and in a short time entirely recovered her health. Soon after this, Mrs. W. had another child, which was her MATERIA MEDICA. 503 last. She did extremely well, and never had another attack of the colic. Notwithstanding she was restored so soon, the fa- mily were hardly willing to give me any credit for the cure, or acknowledge that I had benefitted her; and in time of sickness they never would send for me, until all other remedies had failed. SICKNESS OP A SON OF MRS. WETHERBEE. In about one year after this, a young man, one of this family, about 16 years of age, was taken with a fever, and it was not time for me to be employed, consequently the physician was called in as usual, and reduced him with Mercury and other poisons, to that degree that he lingered several months, grow- ing constantly worse, and the doctor said he had the rheumatic fever, and afterwards that he was in a decline or consumption. The mercury had settled in his back and hips, and he was so stiff that he could not bring his hands lower than his knees. The doctor now gave him over to die — consequently he was a fit subject for me. DR. THOMSON SENT FOR. His parents as usual called upon me, and out of pity for the young man I agreed to take him home to my house, and to do the best I could for him. It was a difficult task, 'for I had to bring him back to the same situation he was in when he had the fever, and destroy the effects of the poison, and regulate the system by steaming, to produce a natural perspiration. By pursuing this plan, and living such articles as I could obtain to restore the digestive system, in two months he was com- pletely restored to health. For this service I received five dol- lars, and that was more grudgingly paid than the fifty dollars paid the doctor for making him sick. A CASE OF CONSUMPTION. In the spring of 1805, I was sent for to go to Woodstock, in Vermont, to attend a young woman who was considered in a decline, and was given over as incurable by the doctors. I at- tended her about one week, and then left her medicines and started for home. In about one month I visited her again, and found her so much better that she was able to ride to her fa- ther's, which was a distance of about twenty miles. DIFFIDENCE OF DR. THOMSON. All this time 1 did not think that I possessed any knowledge of disease or of medicine, more than what I had learned by accident, and all the cases I had attended were from necessity. At any rate the success attending my practice created much talk and it was known for fifty miles around the country, and I was so constantly harrassed that I found it impossible to at- 504 THE THOMSONIAN tend to my farm and family as I ou2:ht. For the cases I had attended I had received very htlle compensation, not sufficient to pay me for my time, and I found it to be my duty to give up practice entirely or to make a business of it. CONSULTS ABOUT CONTINUING HIS PRACTICE. " I consulted with my wife and advised with my friends what was best for me to do, and they all agreed that as it seem- ed to be the natural turn of my mind, and if I thought myself capable of grappling with so important an undertaking, it would be best to let my own judgment govern me and do as 1 thought best, I finally concluded to improve the talent which the God of nature appeared to have endowed me with for the good of mankind. IDEAS OF HIS RECEIVING AN EDUCATION. " Whether I should have been any more useful, had it been my lot to have been educated, and learned the profession in the regular and fashionable way, I cannot say ; Init am inclin- ed to think my usefulness would in a great measure have been destroyed, as my mind would then have been guided by the acquired knowledge of others, instead of reason and philosophy which I took lor my criterion, and by which I was never de- ceived. TALENTS OF EDUCATED AND UNEDUCATED MEN. "I wish my readers to understand that I do not intend to convey the idea that learning is not necessary and essential in obtainuig a knowledge of any profession ; but that going to college will make a wise man of a fool is what I am ready to deny. Or that a man cannot be useful and even eminent in his profession, or in the arts and sciences, without a classical education, is what I think no one will have the hardihood to deny, as it is contrary to reason and common sense ; as some of the greatest philosophers, statesmen, physicians and divines of the world were self-taught ; and who have done more good and rendered society more liappy by their knowledge than a million of those who have nothing to recommend them but a head stored with artificial knowladge to the exclusion of more rational and solid information acquired from a useful employ- ment." USE OF POISONS, &C. CONDEMNED BY THE FACULTY. Amons: the practising physicians I have found, I believe it a well known fact, that those who were really great in their pro- fession and have had the most experience, condemn as much as I do the fashionable practice of the present day. Such phy- sicians use but very litde mercurial poison, but confine them- selves in their treatment mostly to vegetable simples and the MATERIA MEDICA. 505 use of such things as will promote digestion and assist nature ; and many of late years disapprove entirely of bloodletting and depletion generally. This is a great point gained in the prac- tice of medicine. I have become acquainted with many phy- sicians that were eminent in their profession, who have treated me with civility and have heard a relation of my experience with apparent pleasure, especially the simple relation of my method of treating disease. THE GREATEST ABUSE RECEIVED WHERE THE MOST GOOD "WAS DONE. The greatest abuse I have ever received was where I had cured the patients that were given over by the doctors to die, as in such cases no abuse has been spared or ridicule wanting, that would in the least forward their object in destroying the confidence of the people in me and my practice. DETERMINES TO FOLLOW THE PRACTICE. After I had come to the determination to make a business of the medical practice, I found it necessary to fix upon some sys- tem or plan for future government in the treatment of disease; as what I had done has been as it were from accident, and the necessity arising out of the particular cases that came under my care, without any fixed plan. I deemed it necessary not only as a guide to myself, but that whatever discoveries 1 should make in future in ray practice might be so adapted to my plan that ray whole system might be easily taught to others, and preserved for the benefit of the world. 1 had no other as- sistance than my own observation and the natural reflections of my own mind unaided by learning or the opinions of others. 1 took nature for my guide, and experience for my instructor, and after considering every part of the subject I came to cer- tain conclusions concerning disease, and the whole animal eco- nomy ; which more than forty years' experience has perfectly satisfied me is the only correct theory. My practice has been invariably conformable to the general principles upon which my system is founded, and in no instance have I had reason to doubt the correctness of its application to all diseases incident to the country, when properly applied, that are curable. THOMSONIAN THEORY. That all diseases are the effect of one general cause and may he removed by one general remedy, is the founda- tion upon which I have erected my fabric, and which I shall endeavor to explain in as concise a manner as possible, that my readers may understand and be convinced of its correct- ness. J I'ound that all animal bodies were composed of the ele- ments, and that earth and water were the solids, and air and fire or heat were the fluids, and a proper organization and a 33 506 THE THOMSONIAN suitable temperature produced life and nioiion ; that cold or measurably the absence of heat was the cause of disease, that to restore the heat or animal warmth to its natural standard was the only way that health and strength could be produced ; and that after restoring the natural heat of the body by clearing the system of all obstructions, and causing a natural perspira- tion, the stomach would digest the food taken, by which means the whole body is nourished and invigorated and the heat of the body or nature is able to hold its supremacy. 1 found that the constitutions of all mankind were generally tlie same, and differing only in the temperament of the same materials of which they were composed. It appeared also clear to my mind that all disease originated from one general cause, and might be cured by one general remedy or principle, applied in a great variety of forms as medicine ; and that a state of perfect health arises from a due balance or proper temperature of the elements ; but if by any means this balance or equilibrium is destroyed, the heat of the body is wasted and more or less diseased. This is always the case in a partial absence of the active element or heat, or in proportion to this diminution or absence the oppos- ing principle, or cold, is received into the system, producing derangement and disease. COMMON ORIGIN OF DISEASES. I found that all diseases to which the human family were subject were, however various the symptoms and different the names by which they were called, produced directly from ob- structed perspiration, which is always produced by cold or the absence of a suitable degree of natural vitality, or warmth above the temperature of the atmosphere ; for upon the Aeac/ and/a/Z, as an engineer or miller would say, depends the move- ment of the machine, or life and motion in the human body; and if there is a natural heat, there must be a natural perspira- tion. GENERAL REMEDY. Having fixed upon these principles as the only solid founda- tion upon which a correct and true knowledge of the subject can be based, my next business was, what Kind of medicines and treatment would best answer the purpose, in conformity to this universal plan of curing disease. It must be self-evident, I tliink, to every one, that whatsoever course will restore or increase the natural internal warmth of the body, if not to exceed 100 deg. Fahrenheit, or the tempera- ture of the blood, and remove all obstructions of the system, re- store the powers of digestion, and promote a natural perspira- tion, is universally applicable in all cases of disease, and there- fore may be considered as a general remedy. MATERIA MEDICA 507 EMETICS — IIVTERNAL HEAT OF THE BODY. The first and most important consideration was to find a me- dicine that would establish a natural internal heat, so as to give nature its command over the body. The emetic herb (No. 1) Lobelia injlata I found would effectually cleanse the stomach, and aid in raisino^ the heat and promoting perspiration ; but the system would not hold it a sufficient length of time to ef- fect the desired object. It was like a fire made of shavings — a heat for a short time, then it would go out. After much trouble and experience, and trying every thing within my knowledge, I at length fixed upon the medicine which I have called No. 2, Cayenne pepper (or capsicum), for that purpose ; and after many years experience in its use, I am perfectly convinced that it is the best thing that can be used to hold the heat in the system until the stomach and various ave- nues of the body are cleared of their obstructions, so as to pro- duce a natural digestion of the food which will nourish the bo- dy, establish perspiration, and restore the health of the patient. I found it to be perfectly safe in all cases, and have never known any bad effects to arise from its use. A CURE FOR CANKER. My next grand object was to get something that would clear the stomach and bowels from canker, or the white feverish coat that was attached to the mucous membrane, which is more or less affected by it in all cases of disease to which the human fa- mily are subject. Canker and putrefaction are caused by cold, or want of heat ; for whenever any part of the body is so affect- ed with the cold as to overpower the natural heat, putrefaction commences ; and if not checked by medicine, or if the natural constitution is not strong enough to overcome its progress, it will communicate with the blood, when death will end the contest between the heat and cold, or the powers of life and death, by deciding in favor of the latter. In this case, too, as in the others, I have used a great variety of articles which are useful in removing this feverish coat or canker ; but my prepa- ration called No. 3, is the best for that purpose of any remedy that has come within my knowledge, though many other things may be used to good effect, which will be described in their ap- propriate place, under the head of compounded medicines. GENERAL TREATMENT OF THE SICK. My general plan of treatment has been in all cases of disease to cleanse the stomach by giving an emetic, or No. 1, and pro- duce as great an internal heat as I could, by the use of Cayenne pepper, or other stimulants under the head of No.. 2 ; and when necessary made use of the steam bath, in which 1 always found a great benefit, especially in fevers. After this I gave a tea made 508 THE THOMSONIAN of a compound of bayberry, sumac, hemlock bark, witch-hazle leaves, red raspberry leaves, and marsh rosemary, or a combi- nation of any two or three of them, as directed under the head of No. 3 (see directions), to clear off the canker ; and in all cases where the patient had not become so low that the consti- tution had nothing left to build upon, 1 have been successful in restoring them to health* OBSERVATIONS ON FEVER. 1 found that fever was a disturbed state of the heat, or animal warmth, or more properly, that it was caused by the efforts ■which nature makes to throw off" disease, and therefore ought to be treated as a friend, and not as an enemy, as in the practice of the regular physicians. ALL. FEVEKS PROCEED FROM THE SAME CAUSE. In all cases of disease, I have always found there is more or less fever, according to the state of the system ; but that all fe- vers proceed from the same cause, differing only in the symp- toms, and may be managed and brought to a crisis with much less trouble than is generally considered practicable, by increas- ing the internal heat or temperature of the body, until the cold is driven out, together with the cause of it. Thus, by keeping the fountain above the stream, every function will take its na- tural course, and free the body of every obstruction. YELLOW FEVER IN WALPOLE. In the year 1805, a very alarming disease broke out in the towns of Walpole and Alstead, which was considered the yel- low fever, and was fatal to many who were attacked with it. I was called on, and attended with very great success, not losing one patient that came under my care, while at the same time nearly one half of those who had regular physicians died. This disease prevailed for about forty days, during which time I was at home but eight nights. UNREMITTED ATTENTION — IMPROVEMENT IN PRACTICE. I was obliged to be nurse as well as doctor, and to do every thing myself, for the people had no knowledge of my mode of practice, and I could not depend upon what any person did ex- cept what was done under my immediate inspection. 1 pursu- ed the same general plan that I had before adopted, but the ex- perience 1 had from this practice suggested to me many im- provements which I had not before thought of, as respects the manner of treatment of patients, to effect the object I aimed at in curing the disease, which was to produce a natural perspira- tion. MATERIA MEDICA. 509 BENEFIT FROM STEAMING. I found great benefit from steaming in the manner I had dis- covered, and practised in the case of my litde daughter; but I found that putting a hot stone into a spider or iron basin, and then wetting the top of the stone with vinegar, was an impor- tant improvement; and this simple method, with a little me- dicine of my own preparing, answered a much better purpose than all the bleeding, poisons, or physic, of the doctors. INGRATITUDE OF CURED PATIENTS.. While I was attending those who were sick, and relieving their distress, they were ready to flatter, and give me great cre- dit for my practice ; but after I had nearly worn myself out in their service they began to think it was not done in a fashiona- ble way ; and the doctors made use of every means to ridicule my mode of treatment, for the purpose of more successfully maintaining their credit and ascendency with the people. This kind of treatment I did not then understand so well as I do now; as I have since learned from hard experience how to ap- preciate reports of doctors, when excited on account of the res- storation of their old abandoned patients to health, by one who does not believe or practice in their peculiar way. CALLED A QUACK. The words quack and quackery, when used by the doctors against me had a very important charm to prejudice the people against my practice; but I would ask the candid and reflect- ing part of community, which is the greatest quack, the one who relieves their infirmities by simple and safe means, or he who administers poisons and breaks down the constitution of the patient, and leaves death to relieve them from pain, and to finish the cure scientifically. CASE OF FAIRBANKS — BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS. I was called upon to attend a man in Walpole, by the name of Fairbanks ; he was taken with bleeding at the lungs. I found him in a very bad condition ; the family judged that he had lost nearly six quarts of blood in twenty-four ho^rs. He was in despair, and had taken leave of his family, as they con- sidered there was no chance for his living. The doctor was with him when 1 first entered the house, but he immediately left. 1 found the patient with both legs corded, and the first thing I did was to take ofl the cords, and leave what little blood there was to circulate freely, and then gave him medicine to procure as great an internal heat as I could possibly produce. I procured a lively perspiration to start from every part of the body, and then gave him medicines to clear away the canker, and in four days he was so well as to be able to go out and at- tend to his business. 510 THE THOMSONIAN CHILD-BED FEVER — COKSUMPTIOIV— CANCER. In October of the same year, I attended a Mrs. Goodell, of Walpole. She had been confined, and had taken cold. The most noted doctors in town had attended her through what they called a fever, and she was then pronounced by them to be in a decline. After three months' attendance, they said she was so putrid and ulcerated that it was utterly impossible to cure her. She had, in addition to her other difficulties, a cancer on her back. In this desperate situation, it was thought by her friends that she was a proper subject for me to undertake with. At the earnest solicitation of her husband I undertook her case, and met with much better success than I expected — as in four weeks she was able to be about house, and do some work. CASE OF DROPSY. In the same year, 1 was sent for to attend a woman who had been in a dropsical way for a number of years. The disease had of late gained with great rapidity. The doctors had tried mercury, which had very nearly proved fatal to her; for I was sent for in great haste, with a request that I would attend as quick as possible, as they did not expect the patient would live through the day. I found her in a very distressed situation. She said it appeared to her as if she was full of scalding water. She began to turn purple in spots, and it was expected that mortifiication had taken place. In the first place, I gave her about a gill of chickberry and hemlock distilled, which allayed the heat immediately. This answered the purpose until I could clear her stomach, and by the greatest exertions and the closest attention through the day, I was enabled to relieve her. I attended her for about one week, and she was so far recover- ed that she enjoyed comfortable health for twelve years. INGRATITUDE OF PATIENT'S FRIENDS. Notwithstauding this desperate case was cured, to the asto- nishment of all, the doctors had so much influence over the people, and made so many false statements, that I got no credit for the tease. The woman's brother said that her husband wanted to kill her, or he would not have sent for me. Such ingratitude was discouraging, but it did not prevent me from doing my duty. UNEXPECTED PATIENT. A short time from this, the woman's brother, who had made the speech about me, was taken sick, with what was called the yellow fever, and sent for me. I attended, and asked him if he wanted to die. He said, no — why do you ask me that? I told him, the language which he had used respecting my attending his sister, led me to suppose he wanted to die, or that he never MATERIA MEDICA. 511 would have sent for me, if he had believed his own words. He said he felt difterent now. I attended him through the day. JiEW METHOD OF STEAMING. To sweat him, I took hemlock boughs, and j5ut a hot stone in the middle of a large bundle of them, wrapped the whole in a cloth, and poured on hot water until 1 raised a lively steam, and then put one bunch to his feet and another near his body. I gave him medicine to raise the inward heat, and for the can- ker. After attending him through the day I went home, and on calling to sec him the next morning, found his fever had turned and he was quite comfortable, so that he was soon about his business. CASE OF A CHILD. I was sent for about this time to go to the town of Surry, to see a child which was taken very sick, and was entirely stupid. I told the father that the child had the canker very bad, but I soon relieved it with my usual treatment. TWO CASES OP FEVER. Being sent for to go to Walpole, to see two young men who had been taken two days before with the prevailing fever, I left the child, with directions for his parents how to proceed with it. I found the young men laboring under violent attacks of the fever. They had a brother who had been attended by the doctor for the same complaint for four weeks, and was just able sit up. It was thought by those who witnessed the attacks that the last were as violent cases as the other, and they expressed a strong desire that the young men might not be kept down as long as their brother was. I was as anxious as they were for a short job, and exerted all my powers to relieve them, which was accomplished that night, and I left them in the morning, quite comtbrtable, and they were soon able to attend to their work. The brother who was attended by the doctor was not able to do any labor in several months. NO COMPENSATION RECEIVED. The doctor was paid a heavy bill, but my cure was done so quick that it was not thought worthy of notice, and I never o-ot one cent for my trouble. RETURN TO THE CHILD. On returning to the child I left the day before, 1 found that the doctor had been there, and told them 1 did not know what was the matter with the patient, and persuaded them to give him the care of it. He filled it with mercury and run it down ; af- ter having ijiven as much mercury inwardly as nature would bear, and the bowels grew silent, he then rubbed the mercurial ointment over the exterior surface of the bowels as long as it 512 THE THOMSONIAN would absorb, after which he agreed that the child had tiie can- ker very badly; but he still persisted in the same course of treatment, until the child wasted away and died, in about two months after it was taken sick. After the child was dead, its parents were willins; to allow that I understood the disorder best. The doctor got twenty-five dollars for killing the child, but I got nothinor for relieving it. EXTRAORDINARY CASE. There was brought to my house in 1805, a Mrs. Richardson, from Westford, Vermont. She was brought all the way in her bed, a distance of 130 miles, and was attended by her son and daughter, the one twenty one and the other eighteen years of age. The mother had lain in her bed for the most part of the time for ten years. The best physicians in that part of the country had been employed without advantage, and they had spent nearly all their property. I undertook with her more from a charitable feeling for the young man and woman than from any expectation of a cure. The young man stated that his mother had been for a year together without opening her eyes ; that when she could open them, they thought heralmost well. She was perfectly help- less, not being able to do the least thing, not even to brush off a fly from her face, any more than an infant. She had lain so long that her knee joints had become stiff. TREATMENT OF MRS. RICHARDSON. I began with her by cleansing the stomach and promoting perspiration, after which I tried to give her some exercise. The first trial was made by putting a bed upon a wheel barrow and laying the patient upon it, when I would run her about until she appeared to be weary. Sometimes I would make a misstep and fail, pretendmg that I had hurt me, in order to try to get her to move herself, by frightening her. After exercising her in this way for a few days, I put her into a waggon, sitting on a bed, and drove her about in that manner, and when her joints became more limber I sat her on the seat of the waggon. She insisted that she should fall off, for she said she could not use her feet ; but the driver would sometimes drive on sideling ground, and rather than turn over she would start her feet un- expectedly. ^Vfter exercising her in this manner for some time, I put her on a horse behind her son. She at first insisted that she should fall off; but when 1 told her she was at liberty to fall if she chose, she would not, and would rather exert herself to hold on. AVhen she had rode in this way a few times, 1 put her on a horse alone, and after a few trials she would ride very well, so that in the course of two months she would ride four miles out and back every day. She used to be tired after riding, MATERIA MEDICA. 513 and would lie down, and apparently would not move for six hours together. I continued to ffive her medicine, to keep up a perspiration and to restore the digestive powers and strength- en the nervous system. RETURNED HOME, WELL. I attended lier in this way for three months, and then went with herself and children to Manchester. She rode upwards of 30 miles in a day, and stood the journey well. USUAL PAYMENT. I never received a cent for the trouble and expense of keep- ing them for three months ; but I accomplished what I under- took, and relieved those two unfortunate orphan children from their burthen, which was more satisfaction to me than to have received a large sum of money without doing any good. I saw this woman three years after, at the wedduig of her son, and she was quite comfortable, and has enjoyed her health in a to- lerable degree to this time (1822, date of the 1st edition,) being able to wait upon herself, A CASE OF FITS. On ray return from Manchester, I stopped in the afternoon at a meeting in Walpole (it being Sabbath), and durmg the service a young woman was taken in a fit, and carried out of the church. I went out to see her, and found that she had been subject to fits for some time. She was much bloated and very large, weighing about three hundred. A few days after, her friends brought her to my house, and were very urgent that I should undertake to help her ; but I told them that I was satis- fied that it would be a very difficult undertaking, and that 1 did not feel willing to engage in it ; but they were so urgent that I undertook to do what I could for her. EFFECT OF MEDICINE AND OF PERSPIRATION. Every time she took medicine, when I began with her, she would have a strong convulsion fit; but I soon got her to sweat profusely, and her fits were at an end. By persevering in my usual way, 1 established a natural perspiration, and her other evacuations became regular; she was reduced in size, and I have never heard of her having fits since. CAUSE OF HER FITS. The cause of her fits was taking a sudden cold, when all perspiration and the greater part of the other evacuations ceased. DYSENTERY AND CANCER. In the fall of 1805, 1 was sent for to go to Richmond, to see the family.of Elder Bowles, who were all sick with the dysen- tery ; and Mrs. Bowles had a cancer on her breast. I relieved 514 THE THOMSONIAN them of their disorder by my usual mode of practice, and gave the woman medicine for the cancer, which reUeved her also. CANCER DISSOLVED. I had occasion to visit her again, and the tumor was about the size of an egg] but by following my directions it was dis- solved without causing any pain, and she has been well for twelve years. SPOTTED FEVER STEAMING BY DOCTORS. I then practiced in Royalton and Warwick, and in my usual way of sweating for the spotted fever, which became known and was practiced by the physicians in Petersham. CANCER — HOW TREATED BY DOCTORS. After returning home, I was sent for to attend a woman in the neighborhood, who had been under the care of a celebrated doctor for a cancer in her breast. He had tortured her with his caustics until her breasts were burned through to the bone, and by its corrosive nature had caused the cords to draw up into knots. He had also burned her leg to the tendons. She had been under his care eleven weeks, until she was much wasted away, and her strength nearly gone. TAKEN CHARGE OF — CURED. In this situation, the doctor was willing to get her off his hands, and wished me to take charge of her. I consented and took charge of her, and in three weeks healed up her sores and cleared her of her humor so effectually that she has ever since enjoyed good health. ANOTHER LADY RESTORED. While attending her, I cured a woman from Hillsborough, who had a cancer on her neck. 1 dissolved the tumor and cur- ed her, by the use of the cancer balsam and the common course of medicine, and she has enjoyed good health ever since. SUPPOSED CASE OF POISON. I attended the funeral of a young man who had been attend- ed by a physician in the town of Alstead, who had lost about sixty patients in the town in a short time. The corpse was badly swelled, so that it was difficult to screw down tlie lid of the coftin. This patient had not been sick but about twenty- four hours and but twelve under the effects of the medicine of the doctor When I went into the room where the corpse was the doctor followed me and gave directions to have the coffin secured, so as to prevent the corpse from being seen, and then beo^an to insult me to attract the attention of the people. He said to me I understand you have a patent to cure such disor- ders as that, pointing; to the corpse. 1 said no. and then inti- MATERIA MEDICA. 515 mated what I thought of him. He put on an air of great importance and said to me, what can you know about medi- cine. You have no learning ; you cannot parse one sentence of grammar. 1 repHed that I did not know that grammar was made use of as medicine ; but if the operation of a potion of grammar produce symptoms so nearly like those of ratsbane as what appears in this corpse, I have no inclination to know the use of it. This unexpected use of the meaning of what he said displeased the medical gentleman very much, and finding that many of the people present had the same opinion that I had, irritated him so very much that he threatened to horsewhip me, but I told him he might do what he pleased provided he did not poison me with his grammar. He did not attempt to put his threat into execution, so I have escaped both his whip and his grammar. I have been more particular in relating these circumstances in order to show my reasons for refusing to prac- tice so near home for I had been ni constant employment among the people in my neighborhood and the adjoining towns and country for four or five years, and had been very success- ful, not havino; lost one patient during the whole time. My house had been constantly filled with patients from all parts of the country, for which I had received little or no compensa- tion for my services. Myself and family were broken down and worn out with nursing and attending to them night and day, so that I was obliged to leave home to free myself and fa- mily from so heavy a burthen. Besides, I felt it more a duty to attend the people in those parts where I had been treated with the most kindness and friendship and had received the most assistance in a pecuniary point of view, than where I had received little from those whom 1 considered under the great- est obligations to me. VISITS KEW YOUK THE YELLOAV FEVER, ETC. In 1806 I went to New York for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the yellow fever, and on my arrival put up with a Mr. Kavanagh a Roman Catliolic, and I soon had a chance to try the yellow fever. I was emploj/ed to attend a Mr. McGow- an, who had the yellow fever. He was the teacher of the Ro- man Catholic school and an acquaintance of ]\Ir. Kavanagh with whom I boarded and who recommended him to my care. He was attacked about noon, was very cold, and had no pain ; his eyes were half closed, and he appeared like a person half way between sleeping and waking ; he lost so mucli strength in two hours that he was unable to walk across the room with- out staggering. TREATMENT OF YELLOW FEVER. I began by giving him Nos. 2 and 3, to raise the internal heat and to clear the stomach, and in one hour after getting 516 THE THOMSONIAN him warm he was in extreme pain, so that his friends were alarmed about him; but 1 told them it was a favorable symp- tom. After being in this situation about one hoar, perspiration started, and the next day he was out about his business. The efToct in this case was precisely similar to a person's be- ing recovered after having been drowned. The balance of in- ward warmth above that of the external atmosphere having been lost, the sensation of feeling ceases, and of course there is no pain. But as soon as the vital warmth begins to gain the ascendancy so as to contend with the cold successfully, sensibi- lity returns, then the pain and distress commences, and will be very severe until the victory is fully established, and tlie sur- plus of vital warmth is restored. MASTY CASES CURED. While there, I attended a number of cases, with similar suc- cess. FEVER AND AGUE INGRATITUDE. While in New- York, I attended an Irishman by the name of Doyle, who had the fever and ague. This disease gives a complete view of my theory of heat and cold, for it is about an equal balance between the two, the heat keepino; a little the up- per hand. This man had been affected for four months; he had the fits very bad daily. I commenced by giving such me- dicines as I usually give to increase the heat of the body, and subdued the cold, thus establishing the surplus of vital warmth, and by strictly attendiuij him four days he was cured. Being short of money, I asked him /or some compensation for my trouble, but iie refused, and never paid me a cent. He said he must have been crettingf better before, for no one ever heard of such a disorder being cured in four days, FRIENDSHIP IN ADVERSITY. A gentleman by the name of Quackenbush, who had the care of the states prison, learning how I had been treated, in- vited jno to o-o and tarry with him while I remained in the city, for wliich privilesje I felt very thankful. I was treated with much kindness by himself and family, for which they have my most sincere thanks. RETURN HOME. On the 16th of September I started for home, and arrived after three months' absence. After my return I was frequently called upon to attend the sick, but g;enerally declined on ac- count of the treatment received, as before related, in relation to pay. COMMENCES COLLECTING MEDICINE. In November I went to Plumb Island to collect medicine. I MATERIA MEDICA. 517 went by the way of Newburyport, and after being on the Island three or four days and procuring the requisite quantity, I again returned to that place, SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE. While I was there in a store in conversation with several in- dividuals, there came in a man from Salisbury Mills, by the name of Osgood, who stated that he was unwell, and that his wife lay at the point of death with the lung fever. He said that she had been attended by one Dr. French, who had given her over to die. One of the gentlemen present told him that I was a doctor and used the medicine of our own country. He asked me if I would go home with him to see his wife, and I told him I would, and we immediately started in his chaise for home, which was about six miles. On arriving at his dwelling I was introduced to his wife as a Botanic Doctor and he asked her if she was willing that I should undertake to cure her, and she said yes, provided I thought there was a chance. I com- menced with her in my usual way, and in about fourteen hours her fever turned, and the next day she was comfortable and soon got well. PUBLIC SENTiaiENT. This cure was much talked of hi the neighborhood and was much thought of by the people. But it soon came to the ears of Doctor French who was much enraged to think that one of his patients who had been abandoned as incurable should be cured by one whom he called a quack. He said she was get- ting better before I saw her, and that she could set up during the day, all which reports were promptly denied by Osgood and his family. FURTHER SUCCESS. While I was waiting for a team which I expected to carry home the medicines I had procured, 1 was called to attend se- veral cases in all of which I was successful, and most of them were such as had been given over by the doctors to die. One of the cases was a young man who had cut three of his fingers so badly as to lay open the joints. Dr. French had attended him three weeks and he was then so bad that he advised that he should have them cut off as the only alternative. The young man applied to me. I told him that if they were mine I should not be willing to part with them at present. He request- ed that I would undertake his case, which I did, and commenc- ed by clearing the wound of mercury and washing it with weak lye. I then put on some drops and did up the hand with a bandage which was kept wet with cold water. While 1 was dressing his hand Doct. French's student came in and told the young man that I should spoil his hand, but I told him I was ac- 518 THE THOMSONIAN countable for what was then doing, and he left immediately, telling the patient that Doctor French's bill must be paid forth- with. In ten days the young man was well and at work in a nail factory. I asked him what Doct. French had charged him and he said seventeen dollars. I told him that I thought that a sufficient charge for us both, and should charge him nothing. His mother was a poor widow depending on her own exertions and that of her son for a living. I soon after return- ed home to the great disappointment of many who wished ray assistance. VISITS VERMONT CASE OF FITS, ETC. In the winter of 1807 I went to Jericho, Vermont, to visit my fatlier's family who resided there. While 1 was there I was called to see a number who were sick. Among them was a young man who was taken with cramp convulsion fits. He was taken on Sunday and continued until Tuesday. He was attended by the best doctors in that vicinity without doing him any good. They could not make their medicine operate, and the most part of the time he was as stiff as a graven image. He was at length given over to die. Now came my turn of course. The father came for me, and just as we entered the room he went into a fit. His feet and hands were drawn to- wards his body ; his jaws were set ; his head drawn back ; and every part of him as completely fixed as a statue. The first difficulty was to get him to take medicine, for his jaws were set as tight as a vice. I took a solution of No's. 1, 2, and 6, as strong as it could be made, then put my finger into the corner of his mouth between his clieek and teeth, and poured some of it in as well as I could, and as soon as it touched the glands at the roots of the tongue his jaws came open and he swallowed some of the medicine, which had such an effect upon the sto- mach that all the spasms left. I left him some medicine with directions for its use, and he soon entirely recovered his health. I saw him three years after and he told me he had never had a fit since. I was convinced from this case that the cause of all cramps or spasms of this kind were seated in the stomach, and that all applications for relief should be made there, as it will be of no service to work on the effect while the cause yet remains. CASE OF FEVER SORE. I was also called to see the son of Capt. Lyman of Jericho, who had been afflicted with a fever sore for seven years. All the doctors in those parts had a hand at him. It was their opinion that the thigh should be laid open and the bone scrap- ed. I told him I did not see how that could be done without injury to the great artery, [femoral,) which lay close to the MATERIA MEDICA. 519 bone where they must cut. He was satisfied it would not do, and wished me to attend him. I told the father that it was impossible for me to stay there and attend him, but if his son wanted to go home witli me I would make a trial oi what I could do for him ; to which they all consented, and the young man went home with me. I began by giving him medicines to correct and strengthen the stomach and digestive system : batljing the sore with rheumatic drops, sometimes bathing with cold water to strenjrthen the leg, and after proceeding in this manner about one month, he was sufficiently restored to do some work. He remained with me until August when he was entirely cured, so that he was able to return to his father's on foot, a distance of one hundred and thirty miles. GREAT SUCCESS IN DYSENTERY. In the fall of this year, (1807,) the dysentery or camp dis- temper as it was called became epidemic in Jericho, and was attended with such fatality that all except two who were at- tended by the doctors had died, having lost about twenty in a short time. The inhabitants were much alarmed and held a consultation what was best to do. and being informed by young Lyman that I was at home, they came to the conclusion to send an express after me, which was done, and I immediately made arrangements to comply with their request. In twenty-four hours after 1 started, and arrived there on the third day after, and found them waiting with great anxiety for me, the sick having refused to take any thing further from the doctors. I had an interview with the select men of the town who had taken upon themselves the care of the sick. They informed me that there was then about thirty sick, who wished my assist- ance. I agreed to take charge of them, on condition, that I could have two men to assist me. This was complied with, and I commenced my practice upon thirty in the course of three days. The disorder was the most distressing of any that I had ever witnessed. One man had been speechless for G hours, and was supposed to be dying ; but on my giving him medi- cine to warm him, he seemed to revive, like an insect that had been warmed by the sun after having laid in a torpid state through the winter. INVENTS MEDICINE, AS REQUIRED. 1 had but little medicine with me, and had to use such as I could procure in the place. CAUSE OF THE DISEASE. I found the cause of the disease to be coldness and canker ; the digestive powers being lost, the stomach being deranged so that the system could not hold the heat. 520 THE THOMSONIAN CANKER MEDICINE, ETC. I made use of red peppers steeped in sumac tea, sweetened, and sometimes the bark and berries, to raise the heat and scour off the canker, which had the desired effect. After taking this tea, those who were strong enough I placed over a steam as long as they could bear it, and then put them in bed. Those who were too weak to stand, I managed to have set over a steam, and repeated as often as occasion required. SYRUP FOR DIGESTION. To restore the digestive powers, I made use of cherry stones. 1 pounded them fine, and then made a tea of black birch bark and put in the cherries, and made a syrup, by puttimg from two to three ounces of sugar to one quart of the liquor ; this was given freely, and answered a good purpose. TOWN CLEARED OF THE DISEASE IN EIGHT DAYS. I continued to attend upon my patients, aided by those ap- pointed to assist me, and in eight days I had completely sub- dued the disease. The patients all recovered except two, who were dying when 1 first saw them. MEDICINE TO NURSES. 1 gave the same medicine to the nurses and those exposed to disease, as well as to those that were sick, which prevented them from having the disorder : for the same remedy that will cure disease will prevent it. ATTENDANCE IN GEORGIA. After finishing my practice in this town, I was sent for to go to the town of Georgia, about thirty miles distant, where 1 prac- ticed with general success for one week, and then returned to Jericho. Those patients I left were comfortable, and soon en- tirely recovered. DUE CREDIT GIVEN. The doctors were not well pleased on account of my inform- ing the people how to attend themselves ; and they have never required their assistance in that disorder since. Due credit was awarded me for my medical services in this place. SPRAINED ARM. About this time I was called to see a young man in the town of Bridgewater, Vt., about 18 years of age, who had lost the use of his arm by a strain. It had become perfectly useless, and he carried it in a sling. His health was also bad. As I could not stay to attend him, he was carried to my house. 1 began with him in my usual way, by warming the stomach and restoring digestion, and bathed his arm with the oil of spearmint, and in MATERIA MEDICA. 521 about ten days he was sufficiently restored to use Iiis arm and do some work, and in two months he returned home, entirely cured. RHEUMATISM CURED. In the spring I returned to Salisbury, agreeable to promise the preceding foil. On my way I stopped at Pelham. The man at wliose house I staid insisted that I should go and see his father in-law, who had the rheumatism, having been con- fined to his bed for two months. 1 attended him three days, when he was able to walk some by the use of a cane ; he was soon restored to health. CASE OF CONSUMPTION DOCTOR PRESENT. While at this place, I was sent for to see a young woman, sick of a consumption. She had a long time been attended by a doctor, who seemed very willing for my advice. I carried her through with a course of my medicine, and the doctor staid to see the operation. He seemed well pleased with my system of practice, and gave me much credit, saying that I was the first whom he ever knew who could make his medicine do as he said it would. OTHEP^ CASES. I was also sent for to attend several other cases of consump- tion, and various other complaints, in all of which I was suc- cessful. RECEPTION AT SALISBURY MILLS — PRACTICE, ETC. After stopping at Pelham several weeks, during which time I had as much l3usiness as I could attend to, I went to Salisbu- ry Mills, where I was most cordially welcomed by my old pa- tients, which T had attended the year before. 1 was called up- on to practice here and at Newburyport, and my success was so great that the physicians and their friends appeared much alarmed, and they did all they could to injure me and destroy the credit of my practice with the people. ^ EFFECT OF CURES. A considerable part of the patients that were put under my care were such as the doctors had given over, and their beino- cured by me had a bad tendency upon their practice, as it open- ed the eyes of the people, who began to examine and compare the two systems of practice in point of success ; and it did not require a long time for them to judge and decide between the two systems of medicine. PERSECUTION, INSULT, ETC. Among the doctors who appeared the most inimical towards me, was a Dr. French, who used every means he was possess- 34 522 THE THOMSONIAN ed of to injure me in connection with his friends, one of whom sent for me to come and give a calf of his that was sick a green powder and a sweat. Knowing that his object was to insult me, I sent back word for him to employ Dr. French, as usual, and if he could not cure it, I would ihen attend and restore it, as I was in the habit of doing with the rest ot his patients. It so happened that the calf died. Soon after, a son was taken very sick. In a few days another calf was found dead in the pasture, and about the same time his oldest son was taken sick. These things happened in such an unexpected manner, that it set this man a thinking of his abuse towards me, and his con- science condemned him, and he had the folly to believe it was all the effect of witchcraft, and wished to make his peace with me, and he sent word that if I would let his family alone he would never do or say any thing more to my injury. This treaty I readily assented to; his children soon after got well, and providentially it so operated upon him as to keep his slan- derous tongue still in relation to me. RETURNS HOME — SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE. I soon after returned home, and was immediately sent for to attend the sick, and was generally very successful, when the dysentery and fever were most prevalent, never foiling in any instance of giving relief, and completely putting a check to those alarming epidemics, which caused so much terror in ma- ny parts of the country. RETURN TO SALISBURY — SICK RELIEVED. In the year ISOS I went again to Salisbury Mills, and on my way stopped at Pelham, and relieved several cases. On my arrival at Salisbury Mills, where I made it my home, 1 was immediately called upon to practice in the adjacent town and country. Many desperate cases came from different parts, which had been given over by the doctors as hopeless, such as humors, dropsies, mortifications, felons, consumptions, &,c. "WONDER AT CURES. Fevers were so quickly cured, and with so little trouble, that many were unwilling to believe that they had the disease. My practice s:ave si^eneral satisfaction, and was considered to be su- perior to all other systems known. VIOLENT OPPOSITION. Dr. French appeared to be much enraged at my success with his patients, and failing to destroy the confidence which the people had in me, be then attempted to frigiiten me by threats. MEANNESS. He would frequently cause me to be sent for in great haste ^ MATERIA MEDICA. 523 to attend some of his sick neighbors, but I saw through all his tricks, and avoided his snares. GREAT WICKEDNESS. It seemed that if he failed in destroying my reputation, he was determined to destroy me. Being one day at Salisbury village, in company with Jeremiah Eaton, of Exeter, whose wife was then under my care, for a dropsical complaint, I was sent for four times to visit a young man at the house of Dr. F. The last time, a man came on horseback in the greatest haste, and insisted that T should go and see him, I asked why Dr. French did not attend him. He answered that the young man had rather have me. Being convinced of a trick, I refused to go, and the man returned. PLOT CONFESSED. In a short time Dr. French came into the village, and Mr. Eaton asked him what was the matter with the young man at his house. He said nothing, and that he was as well as any body. Mr. Eaton then asked him why he caused me to be sent for so many times, and he said, to see if I dared to come into his neighborhood to doctor, for he said he would blow out my brains if I came upon his side of the river. FRENCH ARRESTED. Mr. Eaton and others of my friends considered my life in danger, and advised nie to be on my guard. 1 had to pass his house both day and night, and it was not deemed safe for me to go alone; consequently I had some one to accompany me. I continued in this way several days, when, finding his malice against me as great as ever, I had him arrested and put under two hundred dollar bonds to keep the peace, and appear at the next court of common pleas. He Appeared at court, was order- ed to pay the costs, and discharged from bail. NETTLE RASH — CURE. Rev. Jabez True, of Salisbury, was afflicted with the nettle rash, or St. Anthony's fire. It was caused by fighting fire, about 25 years before, and he had been subject to breakino- out ever since, which at times was very painfiil, as it felt like the stinging of bees, and would swell all over his body. The doc- tors could not relieve him. I told him that he had heated himself to that degree that there was nearly a balance of power between the outward and internal heat, and then cooling him- self suddenly, the inward heat had fallen as much below the natural state as it had been above it before, and the only way to effect a cure was to bring him into the same state as he was in when fighting fire. He wished me to undertake his case. I carried him through with a course of medicine, and made use 524 THE THOMSONIAN of every means in my power to raise the inward heat, pursu- ing my plan with zeal for two days, when he became alarmed, and said he felt as if he should die, for he felt the same as when he was fightiuo^ the fire. I then kept him in that situation as much as possible, and it went down gradually, so as to hold a natural proportion of heat. I succeeded completely in effecting a cure, and he has enjoyed good health ever since. CONSUMPTION CURED. I attended his wife at the same lime, who had been long in a consumption, and had been given over by the doctors to die. She was perfectly cured, and they were both in good health in 1822, and ready to testify to the truth of this statement. CASE OF DROPSY. A woman by the name of Lifford came to me at Salisbury Mills, and wished me to attend her. She was very poorly with the dropsy. I told her that I thought her case was very bad, and her chance was so slender for a cure that I advised her to go home. She left, as 1 supposed for home, but soon returned, and said she had found a place to board, and a young woman had ao-reed to nurse h^r. I undertook with her, as 1 could not well avoid it. I gave her some medicine and it operated favor- ably, and I then gave strict orders to the nurse to keep up a perspiration through the night ; bui she almost totally neglect- ed her duty to the sick, for the sake of young company. On visiting the patient in the morning, I found my directions had been disregarded. The lady told me that the nurse had neg- lected her, and that she had got her feet out of bed ; perspi- ration had ceased, and other symptoms appeared unfavorable. I attended her through the day, and did all I could to relieve her, but could not raise a perspiration again. She continued until about midnight the following night, and died. My hopes of doing her good were small, but I think that if she had not been neglected by the nurse there might have been a chance for her. The loss of this patient caused great triumph among my ene- mies, and Dr. French tried to have a jury on the !)ody, but he failed, for the case was too well known, and all cleared me of blame. The nurse said that 1 had done all I could, and if there was any blame it ought to fall on her, and not on me. PRIVILEGE TO KILL. This fashionable doctor might lose half of his patients with impunity, but if I happened to lose one out of several hundreds of desperate cases, 1 was guilty of murder in their estimation. MATERIA MEDICA. 525 MRS. EATON — OTHER CASES. Mrs. Eaton, before mentioned, wlio was afflicted with drop- sy, remained under my care about three weeks, and was reduc- ed in size eia:bt inches. She then returned to Exeter, I had several cases of dropsy and consumption from the same town, about this time, all of which were relieved. As soon as I could get my patients iu a proper situation to leave, 1 went to Salis- bury Mills and commenced practicing, and was applied to from all parts of the adjacent country. I had not as many to attend to as in some places, but they were all of the most desperate character, having been given over by the doctors to die, in all of which I had good success. AN HONEST DOCTOR. Many of those patients had been attended by one Dr. Shep- herd, a very plain and candid sort of a man, who treated me with much civility. I well remember his first remarks to me after an introduction. " Well," said he, " what are you doing here, are you killing or curing the people?" I replied, "you must judge about that yourself" "Well," said he, " I will watch you, not for fear of your doing any harm, but for my own in- formation ; I wish you well, and will do you all the good I can." I alwaj'^s found him candid, friendly, and without de- ceit. VISITED AVITH DR. SHEPHERD — RHEUMATISM. Dr. Shepherd once called upon me to visit one of his patients with him who had the rheumatism in the back and hips. The doctor had attended about two months, and said he had killed the pain, but his back was stiff, so that he could not bring his hands below the knees. VISIT RETURNED IN 48 HOURS BY PATIENT. I attended him about forty eight hours, and then went with him to see the doctor, which was half a mile. The doctor ap- peared to be much pleased to see him so well, and to have the use of his limbs, for he could stoop and use them as well as ever he could. Dr. S. frequently came to visit Mrs. Eaton, and expressed much astonishment at the effect of the medicine upon her, as he considered the dropsy incurable. On one occasion, after finding her so much better, (having been reduced in size over fifteen inches,) he expressed himself with much warmth, and said that he had never seen the like before, and wished me to inform him how it was done. " You know, doctor," said I, " that the fire having gone out the water had filled the body, and all 1 had to do was to build fire sufli- 526 THE THOMSONIAN cient to boil away the water." This reply pleased him very much, and he said it was a short way to do business. FIRST CASE OF VENEREAL. While practicing in Exeter, I had a patient (a woman from Portsmouth) who had the venereal, in consequence of a bad husband. She had been alttended for nearly a year by the doctors in Portsmouth, who had filled her with mercury for the purpose of curing the disorder, until the remedy was worse than the disease. Her case was alarming and very difficult; she was brought on a bed, being unable to sit up, and seemed to be one mass of putrefaction. I proceeded with her in my usual way of treating old disease where the system has become gene- rally disordered, by giving medicine to promote perspiration, steaming to throw out the mercury and to restore the digestive powers, and in three weeks she returned home, entirely cured. SECOND CASE — PERFECT CURE, ETC. Another woman came to me from the same place, who had been sick five years, which had been in consequence of having had the venereal. The doctors had filled her with mercury, to kill the disease, as they called it, and left her to linger out a mi- serable existence. When she stated the case to me, I felt very unwilling to un- dertake with her, apprehending that it would be very uncer- tain whether a cure could be effected, her disease had been of so long standing ; but she insisted that I should not put her off. I at length commenced upon her, and after three weeks attendance she returned home, well ; and in less than a year she had two children at a birth. Her last child previous to the twins was born eight years before. DISEASE EASILY CURED. This disease is very easily cured in its first stages, by a com- mon course of medicine, being nothing more than a high stage of canker seated in the glands of the organs of generation ; and if not cured, communicate with the glands of the throat and other parts. Under the fashionable treatment, there is more difficulty in removing the mercury from the body of one in this situation, than in curing a dozen who have not taken the poi- son. CASE OF CONSUMPTION. While in Exeter, a young man, son of Col. Nathaniel Gil- man, who was in a decline, called on me for assistance. He was about fourteen years of age, and had been troubled with bleeding at the nose. The physicians had made use of such powerful astringents, with corrosive sublimate snuffed into the head, that the blood vessels seemed shrunk, and his flesh , ' MATERIA MEDICA. 527 had wasted away, I carried him through with a course of me- dicine, and gave an equal circulation of blood through the bo- dy, and stopped its course to the head; then raised a natural perspiration, restored the digestive system, and regulated the body generally, so that it might receive support from his food and not medicine. PATtENT RESTORED, ETC. — FACULTY ALARMED. In a short time he recovered his health, so that he command- ed a company of the militia at the alarm at Portsmouth during the war. My success while at this place was very great, and gained me much credit among the people ; but the faculty were alarmed, and made use of every artifice to prejudce tlie public against me. SCALD-IIEAD. A son of John Underwood, of Portsmouth, was brought to me while at Exeter, who had what was called a scald-head. He had been afflicted with it for nino years. The doctors had been applied to, but to no purpose; and when the boy was brought to me, the father agreed to pay a generous price if I would cure him. I took charge of him, and pursued niy usual course of treatment, and in three weeks he returned home well, and has not since had any appearance of the disease. MORE INGRATITUDE. This man never paid me one cent for this service, and in or- der to make a refusal to pay plausible, he tJirned against me and my practice, although he had acknowledged that I had saved the life of his son. He said much against me and my prac- tice, and kept r.way many that might have been cured. At ienjjth he was taken sick himself, and applied to my agent for relief, and was restored to health. VENEREAL PATIENT KILLED BY DOCTORS. I was sent for to go to Portsmouth to see n young man by the name of Lebel', who was in a very dangerous situation, supposed by his friends to be in a dying state, having been giv- en over by doctors Cutler and Pierpont at ten o'clock that morn- ing. I arrived about two in the afternoon. He had been at- tended by the doctors for about a month, to cure the venereal. They had filled him so full of mercury that he had swollen all over with the poison. The doctors pronounced it the dropsy. His legs had been scarified to let off the water ; the disorder had gained the ascendency, and his vigorous constitution had submitted. OPINION OF CASE. I at once pronounced his case to be a desperate one, and told 528 THE THOMSONIAN the French counsel who had the care of him that I could give no encouragement that 1 could do him any good, but he was very anxious that I should make a trial, I told him, the only chance was to raise a perspiration, and that twenty-four liours would determine his case, for he would be better in that time or dead. PROMISED REWARD. The idea of a perspiration caused him to urge me to try, and he said if I could effecc it he would give me one hundred dol- lars — the doctors had tried a month and could not succeed. I gave him some medicine, then put on the clothes by degrees until he was shielded from the air, and he sweat freely in about one hour. ANXIETY OF DOCTORS — PATIENT BETTER. The two doctors were present, and astonished at my success; they walked the room, talked low, and then v\rent out. I staid with him until six o'clock, and the symptoms appeared favora- ble; he sweat profusely, and spat much matter, tinged with blood. I told the nurse to keep him in the same situation until I returned, and then went away and was gone about one hour, and came back with JMr. Underwood. OUTRAGEOUS TREATMENT. When we came into the room we found that the doctors had taken him out of bed, and sat him in a chair and opened the windows to let a draft of cold air strike him. I told them that this treatment of theirs towards the man would cause his death, and that I should do no more for him, and should now consider him as their patient. It appeared they were in trouble because I had effected in one hour a perspiration which they had failed in doing in a month. PATIENT FAINTS — DIES. The man fainted before I left the room. I went home with Mr. Underwood, and left them to pursue their own course, and the man died before morning. NO PAY— VILLANY OF DOCTORS. I received no compensation for my trouble, for coming fif- teen miles and returning on foot ; and besides, afterwards these two doctors came forward and swore that I killed this man, notwithstanding they had given him over to die the morning before I saw him, and they had taken him out of bed as before stated. On being informed that they designed to support a com- plaint against me, I obtained several depositions of persons who were knowing to the facts, to counteract their statements. On MATERIA MEDICA. 529 finding that I was about to oppose them, they dropped the mat- ter. I was informed that in their deposition they set forth that my medicine was of a poisonous nature, and if the patients did not vomit immediately they would certainly die. YELLOW FEVER — PHYSIC INJURIOUS. In September, 1808, I was called to Portsmouth to see Rich- ard Rice, Esq., who was sick with the yellow fever. The rea- son for his sending for me was, that he had heard that I sweat my patients to death. PREVIOUS TREATMENT. He had conceived the idea, that if he could be sweated he should be better, but they would not allow him to keep warm \. they kept the windows and doors open, and had scarcely any clothing upon his bed. No fire was allowed in the room, while he was shivering with the cold. The plan was to kill the fe- ver, and to effect this the doctor had bled him, and told his sis- ter that he had given him as much arsenic as he dared to. and if that did not answer he did not know what would. PATIENT RELIEVED. I began to give him medicine a little before night, and in an hour perspiration took place. He was so weak that he was un- able to help himself. In the morning the doctor proposed to bleed him, but he was dismissed. I was with him until his symptoms were favorable, and then left him in the care of three persons in whom I could confide. ATTEMPTS TO FRIGHTEN. After I was gone, Dr. Bracket came into the room where the patient was, in a great rage, saying they were killing him, for the mortification would soon take place in consequence of keep- ing him so warm. He was asked by one present, in which case was mortification most likely to take place — when the blood was cold and thick, or when warm and thin ? The doctor would not answer. Having failed in his plan with the nurses, he then tried to frighten the wife and relations; but it did not answer — they were satisfied with the treatment he was receiv- ing. PATIENT DERANGED — RELIEVED. The patient was much deranged by spells, sometimes ima- gined himself a lump of ice; but by following my directions, and keeping up a perspiration, by morning he was relieved and had become sane. He had no pain, except in the lower part of his bowels, for which he wished a dose of physic. I opposed the physic, being confident that it would not do in so putrid a case. 530 THE THOMSONIAN PHYSIC GIVEN — CONSEaUENCES. He was so urgent that I gave him a small dose, which ope- rated very soon, and the consequence was, it reinforced the disorder, and threw him into the greatest distress. He asked for more physic, but I told him I would not give him any more, being convinced of the impropriety of physic in such a case ; and I have never given any since. It checked the perspiration, and drew the determining powers from the surface inward, so that I had to go through with tlie same process again of raising the perspiration and vomiting, which was much more difficult than at first, and it was with the utmost attention and difficulty that 1 was able to keep off the mortification for twelve hours. All this was brought about by taking a small dose of physic. DIFFICULTY RELIEVED. I kept up the perspiration through Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday morning when I called to see him he was up and dressing, I asked him how he did, and he replied. " I am as strong as you are," and took me under the arm and carried me across the room. On Monday he was down on the wharf, at- tending to his shipping business. REMARKS OF THE PEOPLE. This case created much excitement with those by whom the facts were known. Some would say, how can this man be successful in practice, when he has no learning ? (book know- ledge.] Mr. Rice gave me much credit for this cure, and re- quested me to make his house my home while in Portsmouth. THEORY EXPLAINED. While here, I was introduced to Judge Alexander Rice, of Kittery, Maine, a gentleman of highly respectable standing in that vicinity. Like others. Judge Rice could not see how so valuable a discovery could be made by a man without an edu- cation. I explained the philosophical principles of my practice to him, showing him how every thing operated under the ele- ments, and by one acting upon another causing motion ; how fire, water and air, keep every thing in motion ; how the tem- perament of the body by adding or diminishing the heat or cold would promote life or death. After hearing my explanation, he confessed that my natural medical talent was of more value than artificial learning. CASE OF JUDGE RICE, ETC, Judge Rice then made known to me his infirmities, and wished that I would take care of his family, and give himself and wife such information as would enable them to attend up- on themselves in case of sickness. I carried some of their fa- mily through with courses of medicine, Mrs. Rice being very MATERIA MEDICA. 5S1 active, and anxious to gain information, after whicli she under- took to manage the business. She was a sound woman in judgment, and fearless in advocaling correct principles. SALT RHEUM. After Mrs. Rice had been satisfied with the utility of my practice, she wished me to attend her through with a course of medicine for a bad humor called the salt rheum, which she had been long alHicted with. She went through a few courses, which effected a complete cure. GOUT. xMajor Rice had been afflicted for a number of years with se- vere turns of the gout, and had in some instances been confin- ed with it six months together, and for six weeks not able to sit up, and much of the time not able to lift his hand to his head. PHYSICIANS' TREATMENT, ETC. He had constantly been under the care of one of the most skillful doctors in that section of country, who would bleed, blister and physic him, until his strength was exhausted; after attending him in this way through the winter, they would tell him that he must wait until warm weather before he could get about. OPER,ATION OF HIS DISEASE. When the weather became warm, he would crawl out to the sunny side of the house, and in this way he gradually gained his health and strength. After this, he was afflicted with a vi- olent burning in the stomach, which was almost as troublesome as the gout. RELIEF EASILY OBTAINED. After having a knowledge of my practice Major Rice never had an attack of the gout to last twenty-four hours before he found relief. The burning at the stomach troubled him but very little since he used this medicine. VALUE OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE. This gentleman has frequently told me, that if he could have been as sure of relief when he was first subject to this complaint, as he is now certain of it in twenty-four hours, he would have been willing to have given all he was worth. Money would be no inducement for this famJly to part with the knowledge of this practice, were it in their power to dispose of their information in relation to its virtues. DYSENTERY. I was sent for to go to Deerfield, where the dysentery pre- 532 THE THOMSONIAN vailed, and had proved very mortal. A young man by the name of Folsom came for me, and lie said that the doctor had lost every patient he had attended ; that seven had died and many were sick, and that his lather and two brothers were that morning given over by the doctors to die. The young man appeared so anxious, and Vv'as so much frightened, that I concluded to go with him. The distance was twenty-eiofht miles. We started a little before night, and ar- rived there about ten o'clock. STATE OF THE PATIENTS. I found the father and two sons as bad as they could be and be alive ; they were stupid and cold. I told the mother that it was very uncertain whether I could help them. She begged me to save her husband's life if possible. I could not tell whe- ther they were dymg or whether they were under the influence of opium. I gave them medicine; the two children died in about three hours, but Mr. Folsom soon grew better, and linal- ly got well. I attended eighteen in all, and fifteen of them re- covered. CHARGE OF MURDER, ETC. Two years after this, the death of these three children was brought against me by the doctors, on the charge of murder. 1 received for this service fifteen dollars, but no credit given tor the fifteen cures out of eighteen cases, when the doctors lost all they were called to attend ; and after they had given them over to die, I cured one of them twelve hours afterwards. After I left the place, the doctor adopted my practice, as far as he knew it, particularly sweating, and about half of his pa- tients lived. BALANCE OF POWER TO BE OBSERVED. 1 was sent for to go to Salisbury, to see a sick child who had been attended by a lady to whom I had given information. The lady complained that the child would not hold sufficient warmth to continue the perspiration. On seeing the child, I at once found out the difficulty. It was this: when they gave medi- cines to raise the inward heat, and start the determining power to the surface, they at the same time raised the heat on the sur- face so high as to counteract it. PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THEORY. After explaining the dilficulty to them, 1 raised up the child and poured on it a pint of cold vinegar, and it immediately re- vived, i applied no more outward heat, only sufficient to shield it from the outward air, and gave the warm medicines inwardly, and on the operation of which, the child grew cold, 'iiw MATERIA MEDICA. 5SS and was very much distressed. As soon as the inward heat had o-ained the ascendency, and drove tlie cold out or displaced it, the circulation became free, and the child was relieved from pain and fell asleep. The next day the heat was as much high- er than what was natural as it was lower the day before ; and when tlie equilibrium of warmth had taken place through the system, establishing the proper balance of power, the child gain- ed its strength, and was soon restored to health. CONSUMPTION — SALT RHEUM — SUGAR OF LEAD. In the fall of the year 180S, I was sent for to go to Beverly, to see the wife of a Mr. Appleton, who was the daughter of El- der Williams, the Baptist minister in that town, and was very low of a consumption. She had formerly been afflicted with the salt rheum on her hands, and had applied to a doctor for advice ; lie had advised her to make use of a sugar of lead wash, which drove the disease to her lungs, and she Iiad been in that situation for a long time, and very little hopes were en- tertained of her ever being any better. I carried her through a course of the medicine, with very good effect. I remained in Beverly about a week, and while there became acquainted with Mr. Williams, and also with Mr. William Ray- mond, to whom I gave information of my practice, and he as- sisted me to attend on my patients. I then returned to Portsmouth, where I was constantly called to practice, and had the most desperate cases put under my care, in all of which I met with very great success. LOVETt's case INTERESTING. W'hile practicing in Beverly, I was called on by a Mr. Lovett to attend his son, who was sick, as tliey supposed with a bad cold — some thought it a typhus fever. I was very much engaged in attending upon the sick at the time, and could not attend, and he came after me three times before I could go. On seeing him, found that he complained of a stiff neck, and appeared to be very stupid, and had no pain. His aunt, who was his nurse, said that he would certainly die, for he had the same symptoms as his mo- ther, who died a short time before. I gave some medicine which relieved him, the next day carried him through a course of me- dicine, and he appeared to be doing well. Being called on to go to Salem, I left him in the care of Mr. Raymond, with particular directions to keep in the house and not expose himself This was on Wednesday, and I heard no- thing from him, and knew not but that he was doing well, till the Sunday afternoon following, when I was informed that he was worse. I immediately enquired of Mr. Raymond, and learned from him, that he got so much better that he had been down to the sea side and returned oq Friday night ; that the weather was 53^ THE THOMSONIAN very cold, being in the month of December ; that he had been chilled with the cold, and soon after his return had been taken very ill ; he staid with him on Saturday night, ; that he had not given any medicine, thinking he was too dangerously sick for him to undertake with. I told the young man's father, that it was very doubtful whe- ther I could do any tiling that would help him, but that I would try, and do what I could, I found that the patient was so far gone that the medicine would have no effect, and in two hours told him that I could not help his son, and advised him to call some other help. This was said in the presence of Elder Wil- liams and Mr. Raymond. Mr. Lovett made answer, that if I could not help his son he knew of none who could, and was very desirous for me to stay with him all night, which 1 did, and stood by his bed the whole time. He was much deranged till morning, when he came to himself and was quite sensible, I again re- quested the father to send for some other doctor, as I was sensible that I could do nothing for him that would be of any benefit. He immediately sent for two doctors, and as soon as they arrived I left him in their care. They attended him till the next night, about ten o'clock, when he died. I have been more particular in giving the history of this case, because two years after a charge was brought against me for murdering this young man. The father and friends expressed no dissatisfaction at the time in regard to my conduct, except they thought I ought not to have neglected the patient so long ; but it is a well known fact, that I attended as soon as I knew of his being worse, and that the sole cause of his second attack was owing to his going out and expos- ing himself, and could not be imputed as any fault of mine. CONSUMPTION. In the latter part of December, 1 808, I was sent for to attend Elder Bolles, the Baptist minister of Salem. I was introduced to him by Elder Williams, and found him in bed, very weak and low, in the last stage of a consumption — all hopes of a recovery were at an end — his doctors left him as incurable. He asked my opinion of his case ; 1 told him, I could not tell whether there was a possibility of a cure or not till after using the medicine, being doubtful whether there was mortification or not. I gave his friends as correct an account of his disorder and the operation of the medicine as I could, and said that I did not wish to do any thincr which might cause reflections hereafter; but they promised that, let the result be what it might, they should be satisfied, and would not think hard of me. On these conditions I undertook, and told them that twenty- four hours time would decide whether he lived or died. I began MATERIA MEDICA. 535 to give the medicine in the morning, which had a very calm and easy operation. The emetic operated very kindly, and threw off his stomach a large quantity of cold jelly, like the white of an egg ; the perspiration moved gently on, and was free ; the internal heat produced by the medicine fixed the determining power to the surface, and threw out the putrefaction to such a de- gree that the smell was very oflensive. Mr. Bolles had a brother present, who was a doctor; he said, he did not know whether the medicine made the putrefaction, or whether it made visible what was secreted in the body ; but he was soon convinced on that head, for when the medicme had cleansed him, all this pu- trid smell ceased. While the medicine was in the greatest ope- ration, the perspiration brought out the putrefaction to such a degree, that the nurse in making his bed was so affected with it, that she fainted and fell on the floor. 1 attended on him for about three weeks, in which time he was able to set up two or three hours in a day ; his food nourished his body, and his strength gained very fast considering the un- favorable season of the year. I gave him my best advice, and left directions how to proceed, and returned home to ray fami- ly, to spend the rest of the winter with them. I returned in the spring to see Mr. Bolles, and found him so far recovered as to be able to ride out, and in good spirits. He soon gained his health, and is now [1835] well, and ready to give testimony of the facts as I have related them. ANOTHER SEVERE CASE. In the season of 1809 I suffered much. In the first part of the summer I attended many patients with old complaints ; in particular, one case that I shall mention, of a young woman of Kittery, in a consumption. She had been confined to her house four months ; her flesh was exhausted, and she had a vi- olent stricture of the lungs, which she said seemed as though there was a string that drew her lungs to her back. This caus- ed a dry, hacking cough, which was very distressing. I could give her friends no encouragement of a cure ; but the youno- woman and her family were so urgent, that I undertook with her. Her courage was very great, and she took the medicines and followed all my directions with great perseverance. She said she wished that it might either kill or cure, for she did not de- sire to live in the situation she was then in. I left her medi- cine and directions, and occasionally visited her. My plan of treatment was followed with much attention and zeal for six months, before I could raise an inward heat that would hold more than six hours. She then had what was called a settled fever, and 1 gave her medicine to raise as great an internal heat 636 THE THOMSONIAN as I possibly could ; this caused much alarm among her friends, as they thought she would certainly die, I told them that the heat-holding, which was thf> cause of the fever, was the first fa- vorable symptom that I had seen in her case. She soon gain- ed her health, to the astonishment of all iier friends and ac- quaintances. She continued to enjoy good health till the next season, when she had another turn of the fever. I attended her in my usual way, and raised the heat till it completely overpowered the cold, when she was entirely cured, and has ever since enjoyed good health. [1822.] DROPSY RICKETS. During this summer, a woman applied to me from a neigh- boring town, who had the dropsy — and brought with her a lit- tle girl who had the rickets very badly, so that she was grown much out of shape. I carried them both through a course of the medicine, attended them for three or four weeks, and then gave the woman information hovv" to relieve herself and the girl, occasionally visiting them. They both recovered of their complaints, and have enjoyed perfect health since. GRATEFUL RETURNS. This woman paid me the most liberally of any that I had at- tended, and has on all occasions manifested her gratitude for the assistance I afforded her. CANCER. Another woman from the same town applied to me, who had a cancer on her breast. She had been under the care of seve- ral doctors, who had by their course of practice made her worse. I undertook with her, and by giving medicine to check the can- ker and promote perspiration, effectually relieved her from the disease. OTHER CASES. Many other desperate cases, such as consumptions, dropsies, cancers, &c., most of which had been given over by the doc- tors, were attended by me about this time, which it will be un- necessary for me to particularize; all of them were either com- pletely cured, or essentially relieved and made comfortable, by the system of practice. DEPLETION, ETC. A young lady applied to me, who had been much troubled with bleeding at the stomach. She stated to me that she had been bled by the doctors forty-two times in two years, and that they had bled her seven times in six weeks. So much blood had been taken from her, that the blood vessels had contracted MATERIA MEDICA. 537 in such a manner that they would hold very little blood ; and the heat being thereby so much diminished, the water filled the flesh, and what little blood there was rushed to her face, while the extremeties were cold. This produced a deceptive ap- pearance of health, and caused those who judo;ed by outward appearances to doubt whether there was any disease; so that she had not only to bear her own infirmities, but the reproach- es of her acquaintances. I kindled heat enough in the body to throw off the useless water, which gave the blood room to cir- culate through the whole system, instead of circulating, as it had done before, only in the large blood vessels ; and they, be- ing much extended by not having heat sufficient to give it mo- tion, has lead the doctors into the erroneous idea that there was too much blood, and a resort to the practice of bleeding, which reduces the strength of the patient, and increases the disease. There is no such thing as a person having too much blood, no more than there is of having too much bone, or too much muscle, or sinews ; nature contrives all things right. The blood may be too thick so as not to circulate, and is hable to be diseased, like all other parts of the body ; but how taking part of it away can benefit the rest, or tend in any way to remove the disease, is what I could never reconcile with common sense. After I had carried this woman through a full operation of the medicine, and got the heat to hold, so as to produce a natu- ral perspu'ation, she at once exhibited a true picture of her situ- ation. Instead of appearing to be so fleshy and well as she had done, she fell away and became quite emaciated ; but as soon as the digestive powers were restored, so that food could nourish her body, she gained her strength and flesh, and in a short time was completely restored to health. SPOTTED FEVER. I was about this time called to attend a woman who was ve- ry severely attacked with the spotted fever. The first notice of it was a pain in her heel, which soon moved up to her hips and back, and from thence to her stomach and head, so that in fif- teen minutes her sight was gone, and in less than half an hour she was senseless and cold. About this time 1 saw her, and examined well the cause of the disease. I was well satisfied it was the effect of cold having overpowered the inward heat. By confining her from the air, giving her Nos. 1 and 2, and keeping her in a moderate steam, she in a short time came to her senses, and the symptoms were exactly similar to those of a drowned person coming to, after having life suspended by be- ing under water. As soon as the perspiration became free, all pain ceased, and she was quite comfortable; in twenty-four 35 538 THE THOMSONIAN hours the disease was completely removed, and she was able to attend to her work. ANOTHER CASE. The same day I had another case, of a child which the doc- tor had given over. When I catne to this child it was sense- less, and i expected in a mortified state. I gave it the hotteet medicine I could get, with the emetic ; it lay about six hours silent, before the medicine had kindled heat pnongh to cause morion in the stomach and bowels, when it began to revive, and what came from it was black and putrid ; the bowels just escaped mortification. The child was soon well. These two cases were both cured in twenty-four hours time. REMARK ON SPOTTED FEVER. When the spotted fever first appeared in Portsmouth, the doctors had five cases, and all of them died. I had five cases, and all of them lived. Because my patients did not die, the doctors said they did not have the fever. In this they had much the advantage of me, for there could be no doubt of theirs all havmg it, as death was in most of the cases under their care on their side, and decided the question. I have had a great number of cases of the spotted fever under my care, and in all of them used the remains of heat as a friend, by kindhng it so as to produce heat enough in the body to overpower and drive out the cold ; and have never failed of success, where there W£is any chance of a cure. CAPT. TRICKEY's sickness AND DEATH. Some time this season I was sent for to attend Capt. Trickey, who was very sick. I examined him and was confident that I could not help him, and took my hat in order to leave the house. His family insisted on my stopping and doing some- thin^ for him, but I told them that I thought he was in a dying state, and medicine woiild do him no good. I told his son, that in all probability he would not be alive more than twenty-four hours, and that he had better go for some other help, for 1 could do him no good. 1 told the wife that 1 should give no medi- cine myself^ but as they had some in the house that they knew the nature of, she might if she chose give some ol it to her hus- band, which she did. Two doctors were sent for ; the first one that arrived bled him, and he soon breathed very short, and grew worse : the other doctor came, and said that his breathing short was in con- sequence of the medicine I had given him ; but by this he did not gain credit, for all the family knew to the contrary, and the woman soon after told me of his speech. The patient continu- ed till the next day about ten o'clock, and died. MATERIA MEDICA. 539 AGAIN CHARGED WITH MURDER. As soon as he was dead, the doctors and their friends spared no pains to spread the report in every direction that 1 had killed him. SUCCESS AND REMARKS. The circumstance of the death of Capt. Trickey was seized upon by the doctors and their friends, and the most false and absurd representations made by them through the country, with an intention of stopping my practice, by gettintT me indicted for murder, or to drive me off: but my friends made out a correct statement of the facts and had it pubhslied, which put a stop to their career for that time. I continued my practice, and had a great number of the most desperate cases, in most of which I was successful. The extraordinary cures I had performed, had the tendency to make many people believe that I could cure every one who had life in them, let their disease be ever so bad ; and where I attended on those who were given over as incurable, and they died, whether I gave them any medicine or not, the report was immediately circulated that they were killed by me; at the same time the regular doctors would lose their patients every day, without any notice being taken of it, REMARKS ON PRACTICE AND CURES. I could mention a great number of cases of the cures that I performed if 1 thought it necessary ; but my intention is to give the particulars of such only as will have the greatest tendency to convey to the reader the most correct information of my sys- tem of practice, without repeating any that were treated in a similar manner to those already given. I shall now proceed to give the particulars of one of the most important circumstances of my life, in as correct and impartial a manner as I am capable of doing from memory. [indictment for MURDER. After practicing in those parts through the season of 1809, 1 went home to Surry, where I remained a few weeks, and re- turned to Salisbury. On my way there I made several stops in different places where I had before practiced, to see my friends and to give information to those who made use of my medicine and practice. On my arrival at Salisbury, my friends inform- ed me that Dr. French had been very busily employed in my absence, and that he and a deacon Pecker, who was one of the grand jury, had been to Salem, to the court, and on their re- turn had said that there had been a bill of indictment found against me for wilful murder. They advised me to go off, and keep out of the way ; but I told them that J should never do 640 THE THOMSONIAN that, for if they had found a bill against me, the government must prove the charges, or I niust be onorably acquiued. About ten o'clock at night, Dr. French came to the place where 1 stopped, with a constable, and made me a prisoner in behalf of the commonwealth. 1 asked the constable to read the warrant, which he did. By this 1 found that Dr. French was the only complainant, and the justice who granted the warrant ordered me before him to be examined the next morning. French's abuse. While at the house, and a prisoner, Dr. French took the op- portunity to abuse and insult me in the most shameful manner, without any provocation on my part. He continued his abuse to me till between two and three o'clock, when he took his horse and went to Salem to get the indictment. After he was gone, I found on inquiry of the constable, that after he had been before the grand jury and caused me to be in- dicted, he came home before the bill was made out, and finding that I was at Salisbury, fearing that I might be gone, and he should miss the chance of gratifying his malicious revenge against me, he went to a brother doctor, who was a justice of the peace, before whom he made oath, that he had probable cause to suspect, and did suspect, that I had with malice afore- thought murdered sundry persons in the course of the year past, whose names were unknown to the complainant ; upon which a warrant was issued against me, and I was arrested as before stated, in order to detain and keep me in custody till the indictment could be obtained. ADVISED TO ESCAPE, ETC. In the morning I was brought before the said justice, and he not being ready to proceed in my examination, the court was adjourned till one o'clock, when I was again brought before him, and he said he could not try me till the complainant was present, and adjourned the court again until near night. The constable took me to his house in the mean time, and put me in a back room and left me alone, all of them leaving the house. When they came back, some of them asked me why 1 did not make my escape, which I might easily have done out of a back window ; but I told them that 1 stood in no fear of the conse- quence, having done nothing whereby I ought to be punished: that 1 was taken up as a malefactor, and was determined to be convicted as such, or honorably acquitted. Just before night. Dr. F''^nch arrived with a sheriff, and ordered me to be deli- vered up by the constable to the sherilT; and after Dr. French had again vented his spleen upon me by the most savage abuse that language could express, saying that I was a murderer, and MATERIA MEDICA. 541 and that I had murdered fifty, and he could prove it ; that I should be either hung or sent to the state prison for life. CONFINED IN A DUNGEON WITH A FELON, ETC. 1 was then put in irons by the sheriff, and conveyed to the jail in Nevvburyport, and confined in a dungeon, with a man who had been convicted of an as&ault on a girl six years of age, and sentenced to solitary confinement for one year. He seem- ed to be glad of company, and reminded me of the old saying, that misery loves company. I was not allowed a chair or a ta- ble, and nothing but a miserable straw bunk on the floor, with one poor blanket which had never been washed. I was put in- to this prison on the 10th day of November, 1809 ; the weather was very cold, and no fire, and not even the light of the sun or a candle ; and to complete the whole, the filth ran from the up- per rooms into our cell, and was so offensive that I was almost stifled with the smell. 1 tried to rest myself as well as I could, but got no sleep that night, for I felt something crawling over me, which caused an itching, and not knowing what the cause was, inquired of my fellow sufferer ; he said that it was the lice, and that there were enough of them to shingle a meeting- house. PRISON DIET, ETC. In the morning there was just light enough came through the iron grates to show the horror of my situation. My spirits and the justice of my cause prevented me from making any lament- ation, and I bore my sufferings without complaint. At break- fast time I was called on through the grates to take our mise- rable breakfast. It consisted of an old tin pot of musty coffee, without sweetning or milk, and was so bad as to be unwhole- some ; with a tin pan containing a hard piece of Indian bread, and the nape of a fish, which was so hard I could not eat it. This had to serve us till three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had about an equal fare, which was all we had till the next morning. RELIEVED BY A FRIEND. The next day Mr. Osgood came from Salisbury to see me, and on witnessing my miserable situation, he was so much af- fected that he could hardly speak. He brought me some pro- visions, which I was glad to receive; and when I described to him my miserable lodgings, and the place I was in, he wept like a child. He asked liberty of the jailer to furnish me with a bed, which was granted, and he brought me one, and other things to make me comfortable. The next day I wrote letters to my family, to Dr. Fuller, and to Judge Rice, stating to them my situation. 542 THE THOM SOMAN BED, ETC. SHARED WITH FELLOW-PRISONER. The bed which was brought to me I put on the old one, and allowed my fellow-sufferer a part of it, for which he was very- thankful. I had provisions enough brought me by my friends for us both, and I gave him what 1 did not want ; the crusts and scraps that were left his poor wife would come and beg and carry to her starving children, who were dependent on her. Her situation and that of her husband were so much worse than mine, that it made me feel more reconciled to my fate ; and I gave her all I could spare, besides making his condition much more comfortable, for which they expressed a great deal of gratitude. COKSULTATION, CONCLUSIOX, ETC. In a few days after my confinement, Judge Rice came to see me, and brought a lawyer with him. On consulting upon the case, they advised me to petition the Judges of the Supreme Court to hold a special court to try my cause, as there would be no court held by law, at which it could be tried, till the next fall, and as there could be no bail for an indictment for mur- der, 1 should have to lay in prison nearly a year, whether there was any thing against me or not. POLICY OF ENEMIES. This was the policy of my enemies, thinking that they could keep me in prison a year, or in all probability I should not live that time, and their ends would be fully answered. TIME FOR TRIAL. I sent on a petition, agreeable to the advice of my friends, and Judge Rice undertook to attend to it and to do every thing to get the prayer of the petition granted. He followed the bu- siness up with great zeal, and did every thing that could be done to effect the object. I think he told me that he or the law- yer, Mr. Bartlett, had rode from Newbury port to Boston fifteen times in the course of three weeks, on the business. At length Judge Parsons agreed to hold a special court at Salem, on the 10th day of December, to try the cause, which was one month from the day I was committed. My friends were very atten- tive and zealous in my cause, and every preparation was made for the trial. COLD WEATHER — BAD AIR — FRIENDS DEPART, ETC. During this time the weather was very cold, and I suffered greatly from that cause, and likewise from the badness of the air ui our miserable cell, so that I had not much life or ambi- tion. Many of my friends came to see me, and some were per- mitted to come into the cell ; but the air was so bad and the MATERIA MEDICA. 543 smell so offensive that they could not stay long. My friend Dr. Shephard came to see rae, and was admitted into our dun- geon. He staid a short time, but said it was so offensive that he must leave me ; that he would not stay in the place a week for all Newburyport. On thanksgiving day we were taken out of our cell and put in a room in the upper story, with the other prisoners, and took supper together ; they consisted of murder- ers, robbers, thieves, and poor debtors. All of us tried to enjoy our supper, and be in as good spirits as our condition would permit. The most of their complaints were of the filthiness and bad condition of the prison, in which we all agreed. Be- fore it was dark my companion and I were waited upon to our filthy den again. There was nothing in the room to sit upon higher than the thickness of our bed, and when I wrote any thing 1 had to lay on my belly, in which situation I wrote the Medical Circular, and several other pieces, which were afterwards printed. VISIT FROM SON-IN-LAW. After I had been in prison about two weeks, my son-in-law came to see me. I had before sent for him to come to Ports- mouth on some business, and on hearing of my being in prison he immediately came to Newburyport to see me. He seemed to be much more troubled about my situation than I was my- self CONSCIOUS INNOCENCE. I felt perfectly conscious of my innocence, and was satisfied that I had done nothing to merit such treatment; therefore my mind was free from reproach ; for I had pursued the course of duty, which I conceived was allotted tome by my Maker, and done every thing in ray power to benefit my fellow crea- tures. These reflections supported me in my troubles and per- secutions, and 1 was perfectly resigned to my fate. INDICTMENT READ, ETC. About this time, a lawyer came into the prison and read to me the indictment, which was in the common form, that I with malice aforethought, not having the fear of God before my eyes, but moved by the instigation of the devil, did kill and murder the said Lovett, with lobelia, a deadly poison, (fee; but feeling so perfectly innocent of the charges which the bill al- leged against me, it had very little effect upon my feelings ; knowing them to be false, and that they had been brought against rae by my enemies, without any provocation on my part. 04>4, THE THOMSON IAN REMOVED FROM CELL — EFFECT OF FIRE UPON HIM. On the morning of the day that was appointed for me to be removed to Salem for trial, I was taken out of my loathsome cell by the jailor, who gave me water to wash myself with, and I was permitted to take my breakfast by a fire, which was the first time I had seen any for thirty days, and could not bear to sit near it, in consequence of its causing me to feel faint. As soon as 1 had eaten my breakfast, the iron shackles were brought and put on my hands, which I was obliged to wear till I got to Salem. The weather was very cold, and the going bad, but we stopped but once on the way, the distance being about twenty-six miles. On our arrival, I was delivered over to the care of the keeper of the prison in Salem, and was con- fined in a room in the second story, which was more comforta- ble than the one I had left. TRIAL PUT OFF. 1 was soon informed that Judge Parsons was sick, and had put off my trial for ten days ; so I had to reconcile myself to the idea of being confined ten days more without fire. How- ever 1 was not without friends ; Elder Bolles and Capt. Russell came to see me the first night, and Mrs. Russell sent her servant twice every day, with warm coffee and other things for my comfort, for which 1 have always been grateful ; and Mrs. Per- kins, whom I had cured of a dropsy, sent for my clothes to wash against the day of trial. ATTENTION OF FRIENDS — PREPARATION FOR TRIAL. Many of my friends came to Salem to attend my trial ; some as witnesses, and others to afford me any assistance in their power. A few days before my trial. Judge Rice and Mr. Bart- lett, whom I had employed as my lawyer held a consultation with me as to the arrangements necessary to be made, when it was decided that it would be best to have other counsel, and Mr. Story was agreed upon, and engaged in my cause. I had also engaged Mr. Bannister, of Newburyport, to assist in the tri- al ; but he was of no benefit to me, and afterwards sued me for fifty dollars, at fifty miles distance, to put me to great expense. In order to be prepared for the trial, my counsel held a con- sultation together, and examined the principal witnesses in tho defence. Mr. Bolles, Judge Rice, and several others, gave great satisfaction as to the value and usefulness of the medi- cine, and the variety of cures that had been performed with it within their knowledge. Dr. Fuller, of Milford, N. H., was present, and made many statements in my favor, as to the va- hie of my medicine, and advised to have Dr. Cutler, of Hamil- ton, summoned, which was done. Every thing was done by MATERIA MEDICA. 545 my friends that was in their power, to assist me and give me a chance for a fair trial, for which I shall always feel very grate- ful. ARRAIGNED, PLEADS NOT GUILTY. On the 20th of December, 1809, the Supreme Court conven- ed for my trial, at which Judge Parsons presided, with judges Sewall and Parker assistant judges. The case was called about ten o'clock in the morning, and the chief justice ordered me to be brought from the prison and arraigned for trial. 1 was at- tended by two constables, one on my right and the other on my left, in which situation I was brought from the jail to the court house, and placed in the bar. The court house was so crowd- ed with the people that it was with much difficulty we could get in. After I was placed in the criminal seat, a chair was handed me, and I sat down to wait for further orders. Here I was the object for this great concourse of people to look at — some with pity, others with scorn. In a few minutes I was directed to rise and hold up my right hand, to hear the indictment read, which the grand jury had upon their oaths presented against me. I was then directed by the court to plead to the indict- ment, guilty, or not guilty; 1 plead not guilty, and the usual forms in such cases were passed through, the jury called and sworn, and the trial commenced. TESTIMONY OF LOVETT. The solicitor general arose, and opened the case on the part of the commonwealth, and made many hard statements against me, which he said he was about to prove. He stated that 1 had at sundry times killed my patients with the same poison. The first witness called on the stand on the part of the government was Mr. Lovett, the father of the young man that I was accus- ed of killing. He made a tolerable fair statement of the affair in general, particularly of coming after me several times before I could attend, though I think he exaggerated many things against me ; and 1 also thought that he omitted to tell many things in my favor that must have been within his knowledge; but there was nothing in his evidence that in the least crimi- nated me, or supported the charges in the indictment. DR. HOWE SWORN — LOBELIA — COURT SURPRISED. The next witness was Dr. Howe — called to prove that I had administered the poison alleged in the indictment. He stated that I gave the poison to the said Lovett, and produced a sample of it, which he said was the root of lobelia. The judge asked him if he was positive that it was lobelia ; he said it was, and that 1 called it coffee. The sample was handed round for the 546 THE THOMSONIAN court to examine, and they all appeared to be afraid of it: and after they had all satisfied their curiosity Judg^e Rice took it in his hand and ate it, which very much surprised them. The solicitor general asked him if he meant to poison himself in the presence of the court ; he said it would not hurt him to eat a peck of it, which seemed to strike the court with astonishment. CROSS EXAMINED. Dr. Howe was then called at my request for cross examina- tion, and Mr. Story asked him to describe lobelia, how it look- ed when s^rowing, as he had sworn to it by the taste and smell. This seemed to put him to a stand ; and after being- silent for several minutes, he said he had not seen any so long he should not know it if he should see it at this time. This so complete- ly contradicted and did away all that he had before stated, that he went oif the stand quite cast down. DR. cutler's testimony. Dr. Cutler was called on to inform the court what the medi- cine was, that Dr. Howe had so positively declared to be lobe- lia, and after examining it, he said it appeared to him to be marsh rosemary — which was the fact. So far, all they had proved against me was, that I had given the young man some marsh rosemary — which Dr. Cutler had declared to be a good medicine. FALSE SWEARING. Some young women were brought forward as witnesses, whom I had no knowledge of ever seeing before. One of them said that I crowded my puke down Lovett's throat, and he cried murder till he died. This was well known to be a falsehood, and that the story was wholly made up by my enemies, as well as what had been before stated by those women, for the purpose of tryine: to make out something against me. I had two unim- peachable witnesses in court, ready to swear that I never saw the young man for more than fourteen hours before he died, during all which time he was in the care of Dr. Howe ; but by not bavins: an opportunity to make my defence, in consequence of the government not making out their case agamst me, could not bring them forward. A GOOD WITNESS. John Lemon was the next witness brought forward by the commonwealth, and was directed to state what he knew about the prisoner at the bar. He stated, that he had been out of health for two years, being much troubled with a pain in his breast ; that he could get no help from the doctors ; that he ap- MATERIA MEDICA 547 plied to me and I had cured him in one week ; and that was all he knew about the prisoner at the bar. COURT IMPATIENT. By this time, Judge Parsons appeared to be out of patience, and said he wondered what they had for a grand jury, to find a bill on such evidence. The solicitor general said he had more evidence which he wished to bring forward. DR. FRENCH SWORN, Dr. French was called, and as he had been the most busy actor in the whole business of getting me indicted, and had been the principal cause, by his own evidence, as I was inform- ed, of the grand jury finding a bill against me, it was expected that his testimony now would be sufficient to condemn me at once; but it turned out, like tlie rest, to amount to nothing. He was asked if he knew the prisoner at the bar ; he said he did. He was then directed to state what he knew about him. He said, the prisoner had practiced in the part of the country where he lived, with good success, and his medicine was harm- less, being gathered by children for the use of the families. PROSECUTION FAILS. The judge was about to charge the jury, when the solicitor general arose, and said, that if it was not proved to be murder, it might be found manslaughter. The judge said, you have proved nothing against the man, and repeated, that he wonder- ed what they had for a grand jury. CHARGE TO JURY. In his charge to the jury, the judge stated that the prisoner had broken no law, common or statute, and quoted Hale, who says, any person may administer medicine, with an intention to do good ; and if it has the contrary efiect from his expectation, and kills the patient, it is not murder, nor even manslaughter. If doctors must risk the lives of their patients, who would prac- tice? He quoted also from Blackstone, who says, where no malice is, no action lies. ACQUITTAL. The charge being given to the jury, they retired about five minutes, and returned into court, and gave in their verdict of not guilty. REMARKS. I was thus honorably acquitted, without having had an op- portunity to have my witnesses examined, by whom I expected to have proved the usefulness and importance of my discovery 548 THE THOMSOMAN before a large assembly of people, by the testimony of about twenty-five creditable men, who were present at the trial, be- sides contradicting all the evidence produced against me. Af- ter the trial was over, I was invited to the Sun Tavern to sup- per, where we enjoyed ourselves for the evening. When we sat down to the table several doctors were present, who were so offended at my acquittal that they left the table. ATTENTIONS OF FRIENDS IMPAIRED HEALTH, ETC. The next day I went to Salisbury, and stopped with Mr. Os- good, where I was first arrested. Mrs. Osgood and a young" woman who had been employed by me as a nurse, assisted to clean my clothes and clear me of some troublesome companions I had brought with me from the prison, and when I had paid a visit to all my old friends, who were very glad to see me, 1 went to Portsmouth, to recover my health, which was very much impaired by being confined forty days in those filthy and cold prisons, in the coldest part of a remarkably cold winter. My friends attended upon me, and carried me through a regu- lar course of medicine ; but the first operation of it had but lit- tle effect, in consequence of my blood being so much chilled, and it was a long time before I could raise a perspiration that would hold. OBJECT OF THE DOCTORS. I am confident that I should not have lived through the winter in prison, and believe that this was their plan, for which purpose they had me indicted for murder, knowing that in that case there could be no bail taken, and that as there v;ould be no court at which I could be tried for nearly a year, I should have to lay in prison during that time, and that I should proba- bly die there ; or in any case, they would get rid of me for one year at least, whether there was any thing proved against me or not ; and in that time the doctors and their dupes would be enabled to run down the credit of my medicine, and put my practice into disrepute among the people. But 1 have been en- bled, by good fortune and the kind assistance of my friends, to defeat all their plans. ' JUDGMENTS. Most of those who have been instrumental in trying to des- troy me and my practice, have had some judgment befall them, as a reward for their persecutions and malicious conduct to- wards me. I was credibly informed that Deacon Pecker, one of the grand jury that found the bill against me, went with Dr. French to hunt up evidence to come before himself, in order to have rae indicted. A short time after I was put in prison, he MATERIA MEDICA. 549 had a stroke of the palsy, and has remained ever sinee [1822,] with one half of his body and limbs useless. Dr. French, one year after I was acquitted, was brought to the same bar at which I was placed, and convicted for robbing a grave yard of a dead body, which it was reported he sold for sixty dollars. He lost all his credit, and was obliged to quit his country. CALLED TO EASTPORT. About the first of June, 1811, I received a letter from East- port, Me., where I had been the fall before, and shown some of my mode of practice. Some of the people in that place were so well satisfied with it, that seven men had subscribed their names to the letter, requesting me to come there and practice in the fevers which prevailed in those parts. I left the care of my business at Portsmouth with Mr. Carpen- ter, my student, and immediately took passage for Eastport, where I arrived about the middle of June. I was very gladly received by those who wrote to me, and by those with whom I had become acquainted when there before. I agreed to prac- tice under the protection of those who had sent for me, until I had convinced them of its utility, to which they consented, and promised me all the assistance in their power. I was soon call- ed on to practice, and had all the most desperate cases that could be found, in all of which I met with very great success. FIRST CASES, CONSUBIPTION. The first cases I attended in presence of the committee were five desperate cases of consumption. These patients were all relieved in three weeks, and were all living this present year, (1831). BRUISED FOOT. While attending these people, I was called upon to attend a young man on board a vessel, who had his foot bruised to pieces by a block falling from the mast head. It heins done five days before 1 saw him, it was mortified, and the wliole body in con- vulsions. I took off three toes and set the fourth, and cured him in five weeks with the usual practice. ATTEMPT TO MURDER, AND CONSEQUENCES. While attending him, I had to pass a doctor's shop. A scythe was thrown at me, point first, about two rods. It passed be- tween ray feet, without doing any injury. In consequence of this assault, I sent word to all the doctors who had opposed me, that for the politeness with which they had treated me, I would compensate them by taking off the burden of being call- ed up at night, and thus breaking their rest, and would give 550 THE THOMSONIAN them a chance of laying in bed until noon, without being dis- turbed by their patients. CONFINEMENT. I was called on, the night following, to attend a woman in child-bed. 1 attended according to my promise, and let them rest; and if 1 had retiiained there, they miofht fiave rested un- til the present time, as 1 attended to all branches in practice. NUMBER OF DOCTORS, ETC. There were, I think, five practicing doctors on the island, among whom my success in curing the sick caused great alarm, and I soon experienced the same determined opposition from them, with all the arts and plans to destroy me and my prac- tice, that I had experienced from the same class of men in other places. 1 shall relate the particulars of some of the cases I attended ; but most of the numerous cases which I had under mv care were so nearly similar to those that have been already given, and my mode of treating them being about the same, that it will be unnecessary to repeat them, A CA,SE OF DROPSY. 1 was sent for to visit a Mrs. Lovett, who was the daughter of Mr. Delisdernier, at whose house I attended her. She had the dropsy, and had been under the care of one ot the doctors, till he had given her over as incurable. 1 went to see her, in company with the doctor, but we could not agree as to the cause and remedy. OPINIONS OF THE DOCTOR. I asked him several questions concerning the power of the elements, and the effect of heat on the human system. He an- swered, that the elements had nothing to do with the case. Af- ter giving him ray ideas on the subject, which all appeared to be new to him, I told him that the contest in this case was be- tween the fire and water, and if I could get heat enough in the body to make the water volatile, it could not stay there. He said that any thing warm would not answer for her. I then asked him how he thought the hottest medicine would do ; he said it would produce immediate death. I then told him, that if 1 did any thing for her, 1 should administer the hottest medi- cine I could give. UNWILLING TO ATTEND THE PATIENT. Finding there would be a disadvantage on my part in doing any thing for her, as the doctor and I could not agree, I left th© MATERIA MEDICA. 551 house. I was followed by the father and mother and the doc- tor, who all insisted on my returtiinff, but I told them that not- withstanding the doctor had given her ovw, if 1 was to attend her and she should die they would say that I killed her. OVERPERSUADED TO ATTE2VD. They promised, that let the consequences be what they might no blame should be alleged affainsr me; upon which 1 agreed that 1 would stop, on condition that two of my (rieuds should be present as witnesses to what was said, and see the first process of the medicine, which was assented to. and they were sent for and heard the statement of the doctor and family. AS OTHER WITNESS. A Capt. Mitchell, from New York, was also present and heard the conversation between me and the doctor, and was pleased with the principles that 1 laid down so much that he expressed a wish to be present and see the operation of the medicine, and staid accordingly. MANAGEMENT OF DOCTOR, NURSE, ETC. The doctor pretended to be going away till after I had given the first medicine, and appeared to be very busy going out and coming in, and had much conversation with Mrs. Lovcft, the husband's mother, who was the nurse. After the first medicine had done, which operated favorably, I gave directions what to do, and particularly to keep the patient in a perspiration during the night, and left medicine for that purpose. We then went home. ORDERS DISOBEYED — PATIENT WORSE. In the morning I called to see her, and to my surprise found her sitting with the window up, and exposed to the air as much as possible. On examination, I found that no medicine had been used. On enquiry, I found that the doctor had been in frequently to see her ; and on enquiry why they had not fol- lowed my directions, the nurse appeared to be very cross, and said she would not take any of my medicine. I told them that they had not killed her, but I did not thank them for their good will any more than if they had done it. LEAVES AND PERSUADED TO RETURN. I was about leavins: the house, as I found my directions would not be attended to by the nurse, but Capt. Mitchell was very urgent for me to continue. I told him that if he would attend upon her and see the medicine given and every thing done according to my directions, I would continue, to which he agreed. I left the patient in his care, and he attended her 552 THE THOMSOIVIAN faithfully through the day; at night I visited her, and found the svvellin- piied where the skin is off; to prevent which, mix with it some of the wash made of No. 3; at the time of applying the above, give some of the composition, especially when going to bed, and occasionally give about fifteen of the drops, shaken together, on loaf sugar. By pursuing this treatment one week this boy was entirely cured. AGUE IN THE FACE. The next case, which was the first we attended together out of his family, was a young woman who had the ague in her face. 1 showed him the whole process of curing this com- plaint, which was done by putting a small quantity of No. 2 in a cloth, and placing it between her cheek and teeth, at the same time giving her some of Nos. 2 and 3 to take, and in two hours she was cured. BAD CASE OF DROPSY. I was constantly with him in practice from February until June, during which time we attended many bad cases, with great success. A Mrs. Grover, who had the dropsy, came to his house to be attended. She had been given over by her doctor as incurable, and was so much swelled as to be blind, and her body and limbs in proportion. Mr. Smith undertook her case, under my direc- tion, and carried her through a course of the medicine daily for nine days, and then occasionally once or twice a week till she was cured. She was thus attended under my inspection for three weeks, and in four was entirely cured, for which she gave Mr. Smith about forty dollars. In this case I did a great part of the labor and he got the pay. About the third time of carrying her through a course of the medicine, I was absent. Her symptoms appeared unfavorable, and he was frightened ; a nurse woman, to whom 1 had given information, and who had more experience than he had, came to his assistance, and by using injections relieved her, and pre- vented mortification. BAD CASE, CONSTIPATION — DYSENTERY — CURED. Another case was of a man who came (o his house, who was in a declining way, and had taken a great quantity of physic before he came, which would not operate. On taking my medi- cine, as he began to be warm so as to cause motion in his bow- els, the physic he had before taken operated, and run him down with a relax; then the dysentery set in, and he suffered much with pain, and had discharges of blood. 1 gave Mr. Smith di- rections to use injections, to clear his bowels of canker and pre- 572 THE THOMSONIAN vent mortification, but he neglected it until I told him three days in succession. He then got alarmed and sent for me, but before I arrived he had given an injection, which had relieved the patient. He remained and was attended about three weeks, and went home in a comfortable state of liealth. He paid Mr. Smith about thirty dollars. BAD CASE OF RHEUMATISM. About this time a Mr. Jennings applied to Mr. Smith, having lost the use of one of iiis arms by the rheumatism. He had been attended by a doctor for more than nine nwnths. and had been given over as incurable. ARM PERISHED. His arm was perished, and he was in poor circumstances, having paid all he had to the doctor. He wanted relief, but said he could pay nothing for it unless he was cured, so that he could earn something by his labor. Mr. Smith asked me if 1 was willing to assist to cure him on these terms, to which I agreed. We carried him through a course of the medicine and steaming twice or three times a week for four weeks, when a cure was effected. The last time he was carried through was on election day, and he expressed a wish to go on the common in the afternoon, to which I gave encouragement. PEPPER SAUCE ITS EFFECT, ETC. The medicine was done about ten o'clock — he was then steamed and washed all over with pepper sauce. He complain- ed bitterly of the heat, and threw himself upon the bed ; I took a spoonful of good cayenne and put in two spoonfuls of pepper sauce, and gave it to him to take. This raised the inward heat so much above the outward, that in two minutes he was quite comfortable, and in the afternoon he went on the common. His arm was restored, and he was well from that time. He after- wards, as I have been told, paid Mr. Smith forty dollars for the cure. JOINTS OUT OF PLACE. A Mrs. Burleigh went to his house about this time, who had the rheumatism so badly that her joints were grown out of place, and I assisted in attending her. She had never taken much medicine, which made it the easier to cure her, as we had nothing to do but to cure the disease, without having to clear the system of poisonous drugs, as is the case with most of those who apply for relief in cases of long standing. She was carried through the course of medicine several times, and steamed. The last time I attended her, and gave the medicine three times, as usual, which raised a lively perspiration and a MATERIA MEDICA. 573 fresh color, showing: an equal and natural circulation, but did not sicken or cause her to vomit, as is the case most generally. I mention this to show that the emetic qualities of the medicine will not operate where there is no disease. She was then steam- ed and washed, and went out of doors, being entirely cured of her complaint. LAUDANUM TAKEN, About this time Ira Smith came home, after having been ab- sent about four years, but was not treated with that affection a child expects to receive in a father's house : he was sent off to find lodgings wlwre he could. About twelve o'clock he return- ed, not being able to obtain lodgings, and called up a young man who boarded with Mr. Smith — he took a phial and drank from it, and soon after fell on the floor. The young man being alarmed, awoke his father; and in- formed him of the circumstance, but before he got to his son he was senseless, and stiff in every joint. I was in bed in the house, and Mr. Smith came to me and requested my assistance, saying that he expected Ira had killed himself He showed me a phial and asked me what had been in it ; I told him it had con- tained laudanum. I got up as soon as possible, and on going down, met Mr. Smith and the young man, bringing Ira up stairs. REMEDY — RELIEF. I directed them to lay him on the hearth, and took a bottle from my pocket, which contained a strong preparation of Nos 1, 2, and 6 ; took his head between my knees, his jaws being set, and put my finger between his cheek and teeth, and poured in some of the medicine from the bottle. As soon as it reached the glands of his throat, his jaws became loosened, and he swallowed some of it; in five minutes he vomited — in ten he spoke — in one hour he was clear of the effects of the opium — and the next day was well. AGAIN TAKES LAUDANUM — DIES. About four years after, he became dejected, in consequence, as hefsaid, of ill treatment, went over to Charlestown, took a quantity of laudanum, was found near the monument sense- less, and was carried to the alms-house, where he died. A CASE OF CROUP — EFFECT OF PHYSIC. I went home to attend to my farm and get in my hay, after which I returned to Boston, and in the fall went to Cape Cod, and on my return to Boston I found Mr. Smith's youngest child sick with the quinsy, or rattles. He had done all he could and given it over to die. The women had taken charge of the child 574 THE THOMSONIAN after he had given it up, and had given it some physic. I told them they had done very wrong in giving physic, for it was strictly against my orders ever to give any in cases where there was canker. They observed, that there was no appearance of canker. 1 told them, it wonld never appear when they gave physic, for it would remain inside till mortification decided the contest. TREATMENT — RELIEF. I began with the child by giving No. 2, which caused violent struggles, and aroused it from the stupid state in which it had lain, until the moisture appeared in the mouth ; then g-ave some No. 3, steeped, and Nos. 1 and 2, to start the canker and cause it to vomit. ACCUSED OF CRUELTY. The women who were present accused me of the greatest cruelty, because I brought the child out of its stupid state, and restored its sense of feeling, by which the life of the child was saved. ACKNOWLEDGMENT. The next morning its mouth was as white as paper with canker ; they were then all satisfied that I knew the child's si- tuation best, and that I had saved its life. I considered the child so much relieved that the father and mother would be able to restore it to perfect health — left it in their care and went out of town. AGAIN GIVEN OVER TO DIE. I returned the next day about noon, and found that they had again given it up to die. Its throat was so filled with canker that it had not swallowed any thing for four hours. I was in suspense whether to do any thing for the child or not, but told the father and mother I thought ijf it was mine I would not give it up yet : they v/ished me to try. AGAIN RELIEVED TREATMENT. 1 took some small quills from a wing, and stripped them ex- cept about three quarters of an inch at the point, tied several of them together, which made a swab, dipped it in canker tea, and began by washing the mouth, then rinsing it with cold wa- ter ; then washed it vi^ith the tea again, putting the swab down lower in the throat, which caused it to gag, and while the throat was open put it down below the swallow, and took off scales of canker, then rinsed again with cold water. Soon as !t could swallow, gave some tea of No. 2, a tea spoonful at a time, and it soon began to struggle for breath, and appeared to be in great distress, similar to a drowned person coming to life. MATERIA MEDIC A. 575 CHILD AGAIN SAVED — CONFESSION OF FRIENDS. Ill struwlins; for breath it discharged considerable phlegm from its lio'se and mouth ; I then gave some more of the emetic with canker tea. which operated favorably; in two hours it was able to nurse, and it soon got well, to the joy of the father and mother— who said that the life of the child was saved by my perseverance. BAD MERCURIAL CASE — TREATMENT — CURE. Soon after this child got well, which was in the fall of the year 1817, Mr. Smith moved to Taunton. Previous to his re- moval, a man from that place, by the name of Eddy, applied to him to be cured of a bad humor caused by taking mercury. I assisted in attending upon him a part of the time. Mr. Smith began with him, and on the turn of the disorder the man and he got frightened and sent for me. He had been kept as hot as he could bear, with the medicine, for six liours, which increased the heat of the body sufficient to overpower the cold, the heat turned inward and drove the cold on the outside. This produces such a sudden change in the whole system, that a person unacquainted with the practice would suppose they were dying; but there is no danger to be apprehended, if proper measures are taken and persevered in by keeping up the inward heat. In such cases steaming is al- most indispensable ; for which reason 1 have been obliged to steam the patient in most cases where the complaint has been of long standing, especially when much mercury has been tak- en, as nothin? will make it active but heat. This man soon got well, and 1 returned home. INJURIES SUSTAINED. It has been my misfortune to meet with not only opposition in my practice, but to suffer many wrongs from some of those with whom 1 have had dealings, and this in many cases where those who have attempted to injure me were among those that I considered under obligations to me. LIBERALITY IN DEALING. In selling family rights, I have always been as liberal to pur- chasers as they could wish, particularly where I was convinced their circumstances made it inconvenient for them to pay the money down ; and I have been in the habit of taking notes, payable at a convenient time. This has occasioned me consi- derable loss; but in most cases the purchasers have shewn a disposition to pay if within their power — have treated me with a proper respect, and have been grateful for the favor. With these I have been satisfied, and no one has had reason to com- plain of my want of generosity towards him. 576 THE THOMSONIAN UNGRATKFUL RETURNS. There have been some, however, who have taken a different course, an " have not. only refused to comply with their con- tract, but have, notwithstanding^ they have continued to use the medicine, turned against me, and tried to do me all the harm in their power. Such conduct has caused me considerable vexa- tion and trouble. SUIT ON NOTE FOR A RIGHT. I put one of the notes in suit, and the action was tried before the Boston Police Court. The defence set up was, that the contract was void, in consequence of the failure of the patent ; and also, that there was no value received. The trial was before Mr. Justice Orne, and was managed by Mr. Morse for the plaintiff; and Mr. Merrill for the defendant. The Judge seemed unwilling to decide alone, and the case was continued for argument before the full court. The case was argued before the three judges, who all agreed in the opinion that a decision of the Circuit Court did not affect the patent right, but was a mere suspension, in consequence of an informality in the specifications, which did not debar me from recovering according to the contract. SECOND HEARING. After this decision, another hearing was had, and another at- tempt made to prove that the defendant had not been furnished by me with the necessary information to enable him to practice with safety, but in this he failed altogether. IMPORTANT TESTIMONY. In the course of the trial, a great number of gentlemen of un- doubted veracity were brought forward to prove the utility of my system of practice, who gave the most perfect testimony in its favor. Among the witnesses, an eminent physician of Bos- ton volunt..rily came forward, and gave a very fair and candid statement in favor of ils utility, the value of my discoveries, and the important additions 1 had made to the materia medica. TRIUMPHANT RESULT. The judge took several days to make up his judgment, and finally decided in my favor, giving me the full amount of my claim; thus settling the principle, that obligations given for fa- mily rights were good in law. This was the first time 1 had ever had a chance to prove the utility of my medicine and system of practice before a court of law — having always before been prevented by some manage- ment of the court. MATERIA MEDICA 577 INDEX, To the Historical Sketch of Saynuel ThomsoiiL Discoveries and Early Practice. ABUSE, where benefit rec'd, 505 by Dr. French, 540 rewarded, 568 Adversity, friendship in, 516 Ague in the lace, treatment of, 571 BIRTH and parentage, 493 of daughter, 495 second do. 496 third child, 497 fourth do. 498 Bleeding at the lungs, 509 Balance of power to be observed, 532 Bruised foot, 549 Barton, Dr., admission of, 558 Butternut, 560 COLIC, 49.5, 501, 502 Canker, 496, .507, 511, 520 Croup, 497,573, 574 Consultation about practice, 498 Cayenne pepper, 507 Child-bed fever, 510 Child saved, opinion of friends, 575 Compensation, none received, 511 Consumption, cases of, .503, 510, 521, 524, 526, .533, 534, 535, 549 Case, chronic nervous, Mrs. Rich- ardson, 512, cured, 513 Cancer, 510, 514, 565 how treated by dcotors, 514 Cut, bad case, cure of, 517 Cures, effect of, 521 wondered at, 522 Confinement, 550, 560 Confession, infamou?, 552 Caution, 567 Constipation, treated, 571 DOCTORS, disagreement among, 495 honest, 525 villany, 528 their object, 54S number of, §50 opinion of, 550 management of, 551 out of business, 554 threaten, 561 offended, 562 privileged to kill, 524 Diseases, common origin of, 506 Dropsy, cases of treatment, 510, 524, 525, 536, 550, 559, 571 Dysentery ,513, 520, 571 great success in, 520, 519 bad cases in Deerfield, 532 cure of, 519 Digestion, syrup for, 520 Depletion, remarks and treatm't, 536 EDUCATED Men, opinion of, 504 Emetics, 507 FAMILY Rights, liberality in, 575 Fever and ague, 516 Fever-sore, treatment of, 518 French, Dr., plot by, 523 Fits, 495, 513, 518 Freezing, treatment and cure, 563 simplicity of cure, re- marks, &c. 564 Fever, scarlet, 496 long, 497 observations on, 508 all kinds from same cause, 508 yellow, 508, 515, 521 treatment of, 515, 558 cured, 516 physic dangerous in, 530 two cases of, 511 tieated, 503 lung. 517 spotted 514 severe case cured, 537 very bad case of child, 538 remarks on, 538 violent case, treatment, 560 great success on Cape Cod, 566 several sick, treatment of, 56'j, 567 caution in attending, 567 great mortality of, 567 reappearance of, sent for in haste, 568 great success, 568 GOUT, how treated by doctors, 531 relieved, 531 Gratitude, 536 HEAT, internal, 507 INFLAMMATION, cold water for, 496 Investigation, talent for, 494 Ingratitude of cured patients, 509, 516, 576 friends, 510, 527 for benefits conferred, 555 Injuries sustained, 575 Instruction to Judge Rice, Stc, 530 Itch, 570 JOINTS out of place, 572 Judgments, 548 KNOWLEDGE, acquired by ex- periments, 50O LABOR, hard, commences, 493 Lobelia first used, 495 Laudanum taken, 573 relief from, 573 death caused by, 573 578 THE THOMSONIAN Law- suit, on account of a family riglit, 576 first lienring, 576 second hearing, 576 important testimony, 576 triumphant result, 576 MARRIAGE, 495 Measles, case and treatment, 500, 501 Medicine, efl'ect of, 513 Medical knowledge, value cf, 531 Murder, Thomson charged with, 532, 539 indicted for, 539 attempted on, 549 Mysterious actions of Mrs. Lov- ett, 553 Mysteries, unaccountable, 553 Medical students, anecdote of, 565 IVIarsh rosemary, 565 substitute for, 566 Mortality, great, 5'17 Mercurial sores, 575 treatment and cure, 575 NERVES, medicine for, 520 Nettle rash, case and treatment, 523 Nose, sore, dangerous, 561 OPPOSITION, violent, by Dr. French, 522 Orders disobeyed, 551 PATIENT, unexpected, 510 Physicians, blind confidence in, 500 eminent civility of, 505 alarmed, 527 Poisons, use of condemned, 504 Perspiration, effect of, 513 Poison, supposed case of, 514 Public sentiment, 517 Payment, usual, 513, 528 Practice, successful, 517, 521 and cures, remarks on, 539 in Portland, 559 extended, 562 its utility proved before a court of law, 576 Physic, consequence of, 530, 573 People, remarks of, 530 Pregnancy, over time, 559 Pepper vinegar, poisoned, 561 effects on patient, and cure, 561 Pipsissiway, useful in cancers, 566 Perished arm, 572 Pepper sauce, its effects in bath- ing. 572 QUACK, Thomson called, 509 ROOTS and herbs, gathering of, 49S Rattle-snake's oil, first used, 497 Remedy, general, 506 Rheumatism, 521,525, 572 Rickets, 533 Rush, Dr. his treatment of yellow fever, 558 Relax, case of, 560 Richardson, Mrs., a remarkable case, 512 cure. 513 SCALD-HEAD, ' 527 Steaming, first praticed, 496, 509 benefit of, 509 new method of, 511 when established, 567 by the doctors, 514 Small pox, its nature, 501 Sprains, treatment of, 520 Salt-rheum treated, 531, 533 sugar of lead used, 533 Sickness and death of Captain Tricky, 53S Salt-petre, dangerous poison, 562 remedy for, 562 Society, 569 Smith, Elias, agent, 570 Sick, treatment of, 507 THOMSON, Samuel, birth and parentage, 493 severe parental treat- ment, ^ 493 marriage, birth of first daughter, sickness, 495 Mrs., confinement, 2d child, 496 third child born, 497 medical skill appreci- ated, 497 not expecting to prac- tice, 498 second son born, — no midwife, 498 his own physician, 498 instruction to children, 498 third son born, &c. 499 severe sickness, 499 restored fifth case giv- en over, 499 success appreciated, 499 fifth son and 3d daugh- ter born, 499 diffidence, 503 consults about practice, 504 his ideas of his educa- tion, 504 determines to practice, 505 theory, 505 unremitted attention — improvement, &c. 508 his reasons for leaving home, 515 visits New- York, 515 returns home, 516, 522 collects medicine, 516 visits Vermont, 518 attends sick in Georgia, 220 at Salisbury Mills, and practices there, 521 persecuted, &c. 521 MATERIA MEDICA. 579 Thomson, S. returns to Salisbury, 522 charged with murder. 539 theory explained, 530 practical application of theory, 532 remarks on his success, 539 indicted for murder, 539 advised to escape, 540 confined in a dungeon, 5^11 fare in prison, 541 relieved by a friend. 541 sympathy for fellow pri- soner. 542 consultation — policy of enemies. 542 time for trial, bad air in prison, &c. 542 visited by son-in-law. 543 indictment read, 543 removed from cell — ef- fect of fire. 544 trial put off — attention of friends. 544 preparation for trial, &c 544 arraigned and pleads. 545 testimony, &,c. 545, 546 acquittal. 547 attention of friends, 54.8 health impaired, 548 called to Eastport, 549 trouble with nurse and doctor, 551 practice, societies, &.c. 552 returns to Portsmouth, 552, 554, 558 returns to Eastport witli I student, 552 Thomson publishes book of direc tions, enemies and friends, thoughts of a patent, goes to Washington, consults with Gov. Chit- tenden, difficulty in obtaining his patent, interview with Drs. Bar- ton and Rush, trial partly published, starts for Philadelphia, arrives at do. visits Washington, sent for in haste, practiced thirty years, his system, agent, &c. sale to Smith, dishones- ty, &c. Treatment, outrageous. Typhus Fever, VEGETATION, talent for in- vestigating, Venereal, first and second cases, easily cured, patient killed by doc- tors, Thomson's opinion of, relieved, WITCHCRAFT, remarks on, War declared, Witnesses sworn, surprise the Judges, false swearing of, good, 555 455 555 556 556 557 562 562 564 565 568 569 569 570 528 533 494 526 526 .^27 527 528 553 554 554 545 546 546 546 680 THE THOMSONIAN DESCRIPTION OF THE VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES USED BY SAMUEL TH03IS0N, TO SUSTAIN HIS SYSTEM OP VITALITY IN MATTER. We shall be as concise in our description of the different ve- getaJDle remedies used by Dr. Thomson as possible, knowing as we do, that the patrons of this work wish his experience, and not that of tlie regular physicians. We shall endeavor, there- fore, not to lumber the work with useless remedies, or with too many of those of others, but shall confine ourself mostly to our own experience, and to Thomsonian principles and treatment generally, without quoting as good authority those whose sys- tems of practice we profess to have passed long since in point of correct principles and practical success. Consequently, we do not wish to retrace our steps, and again pass over the battle- field, for the sake of the fight, as the victory has already been won, and the laurels acquired. For what, then, shall we contend? We answer, teach the people to respect themselves and their own judgment in rela- tion to medicine, and to keep clear of the ^l^^' vegetable and mineral poisons and their advocates, „r^ for the sake of bo- dily health and domestic peace. The remedies and treatment of the different diseases to which we are subject are made so plain, that any person of ordinary capacity can, by following the rules and directions in this work, practice at first in simple forms of disease successfully. And in the most violent cases with much better success than attends the practice of the most eminent physician of the old school, whose materia medica to cure the sick is composed of the most violent vegetable and mineral poisons — such as would destroy the most robust person in health, and such as the wicked have recourse to, to destroy the lives of others or to commit suicide. If arsenic, nitre, and opium, will kill those in health, when giv- en for the purpose of destruction, will they cure the sick, when given by a man of learning, on account of his diploma? And if red raspberry, witch-hazle, and sumac, are innocent substan- ces by nature, can they be made poisons, because administered by a man who does not understand latin, and has not obtained a diploma? I.oIm'Ii:! iiilhiia. ///t//ti/t I'r U'i7t/ fi^/'/iic,', /.'//I- /'/ii//// MATERIA MEDICA. 581 LOBELIA INFLATA— No. 1. Emetic Herb — Indian Tobacco — Eyebright^ (^'c. EMETIC, STIMULANT, EXPECTORANT, DIAPHORETIC. To cleanse the stomach, remove obstructions, and promote perspiration. Lobelia Inflata. Herba Semina. The herb and seed. — Calyx five cleft. Corolla irregular, five parted, cleft on the up- per side nearly to the base. Anthers united into a tube. Stig- ma two lobed. Capsule inferior or semi-superior, two or three celled, two valved at the apex. The lobelia inflata is a biennial, indiginous plant, usually from 12 to 18 inches in height, with a fibrous root, and a very hairy, solitary, erect, and angular stem, much branched about two thirds of the way. rising considerably above the summit of the highest branches. The leaves are scattered, sessile, acute, serrate, oval, and hairy. The flowers are disposed in numerous leafy terminal racemes, and supported on short foot- stalks. The segments of the calyx are linear and pointed. The flower, which is of a delicate bluish color, has a border labiate, the upper lip beinsf divided into two, and the lower into three acute segments. The pod is an oval, inflated capsule, crowned with the persistent calyx, and containing in two cells numerous very small brown seeds. The lobelia inflata is a very common plant, growing in pas- tures, on the road side, and in neglected grain fields, through- out the country. Its flowers appear towards the end of July, and continue to expand in succession until the occurrence of frost. When wounded or broken, the plant exudes a milky juice, possessing active emetic properties. All parts of the plant are possessed of medicinal activity; but the seed, leaves, and inflated capsules, are all that are used as medicine by Dr. Thomson. The plant should be collected in August or September, when the capsules have become a little yellow. Then the seed is ripe. The stalk should be separated between the leavs and the roots, and the herb carefully laid upon a sheet, thinly spread out to dry, in order to preserve the seed, leaves, and capsules. When thoroughly dried, take a straight stick and whip the herb, and the leaves and capsules are easily separated from the stalks, and the seeds are ejected from the capsules, all of wliich setde, leaving the naked stalks uppermost, which may be re- moved, and you have the herb and seed together. Now gather the four corners of the sheet, and the substance settles into the centre. Shake the sheet latterally several times, and you may then remove the leaves and capsules, and have the pure seed at 582 THE THOMSONIAN the bottom : or the seed may be sifted through a fine sieve, to separate it from the herb. The seed should be bottled close, and the herb may be kept in boxes, all of which should be dry. The dried leaves of lobelia hav^e a slight irritating odor, and when chewed, though at first without much taste, soon produce a burning, acrid impression upon the posterior parts of the tongue, and palate, very closely resembling that occasioned by tobacco, and attended in like manner with a flow of saliva, and a nauseous effect upon the stomach. The powder is of a green- ish color. The plant yields its active properties readily to wa- ter and alcohol; and water distilled from it retains its acrid taste. The lobelia contains a volatile oil, upon which its odor depends, and an acrid alkaline principle, to which its effects upon the system are probably ascribablc. The seed contains at least twice as much of this principle in proportion as the whole plant. Lobelia is an emetic, and, in small doses, a diaphoretic and expectorant. The leaves or capsules, chewed for a short time, occasion giddiness, headache, tremors, and ultimately nausea and vomitina;. When swallowed in full dose, the medicine ge- nerally produces vomiting, attended with copious perspiration, and a general relaxation. Its effects in doses too large, or too often repeated, are great anxiety and extreme prostration of strength, and the appearance of the patient is very alarming to those who are unacquainted with its operation ; but to the prac- titioner those symptoms are almost an every day occurrence, consequently it gives him no uneasiness for the safety of the patient. In two or three hours the patient is through with the operation, and possesses as much vigor, if not more, than im- mediately previous to the commencement of the course. It this mf'dicine does not operate as an emetic after being taken in rea- sonable quantities, in from three to five hours, it will pass off the same as any other harmless substance, and leave the person with a full flow of vigor and spirits, the same as if it had not been taken. Very unlike the tartarized antimony or ipecac, is the ope- ration of the lobelia inflata. Those articles, when taken to cause vomitinof, and foilmg to produce the desired effect, leave the patient with a distressing nausea, that is not got rid of ma- ny times for several days. Fatal effects are frequently the re- sult of taking tartarized antimony in too large quantities ; but safe and salutary are the effects of the lobelia, in almost every form that it can be used, even by the most inexperienced hand, if he but follows the directions for its use. The first knowledge I ever had of it, was obtained by acci- dent more than fifty years ago, and I never had any informa- tion whatever concerning it, except what I have gained by my MATERIA MEDICA. 583 own experience. A great deal has been said of late about this plant, both in its favor and against its utility as a medicine ; but all that the faculty have said or published concerning it, only shows their ignorance on the subject ; for there is very little truth in what they have stated concerning its medicinal properties, except where tliey admit it to be a certain cure for the asthma, one of the most distressing complaints that human nature is subject to. It is a truth which cannot be disputed, that all they have known about this article, and the experi- ments that have been made to ascertain its value, originated in my making use of it in my practice. In the course of my practice, a number of the doctors disco- vered that tlie medicme I made use of produced etfects which astonished them, and whicli they could not account for. This led them to conclude, that because it was so powerful in re- moving disease, it must be poison. This, I think, can be very satisfactorily accounted for. They have no knowledge of any thing in their system which is capable of producing a powerful effect upon the sick except what is poisonous, and therefore na- turally form their opinions agreeable to this erroneous theory. There is a power to preserve life, and a power to produce death, which of course are directly opposed to each other; and whatever tends to promote life cannot produce death, let its power be ever so great. In this consists all the difference be- tween my system of practice and that of the learned doctors. In consequence of their thus forming an erroneous opinion of this herb, which they had no knowledge of, they undertook to represent it as a deadly poison ; and in order to destroy my practice they raised a hue-and-cry about my Killing my patients by administering it to them. Some of the faculty even made oath that it was poison, and when taken into the stomach, if it did not cause immediate vomiting it was certain death. It is unnecessary for me now to point out the falsity of this, for the fact is pretty well known, that there is no death in it ; but on the contrary, that there is no vegetable that the earth produces, more harmless in its effects on the human system, and no one more powerfid in removing disease and pronjoting health. There is no mention made of this herb by any author that 1 have been able to find, previous to my discovering it, excepting Linnaeus, who has given a correct description of it, under the luune of lobelia infiata ; but there is nothing said of its medical properties ; it is therefore reasonable to conclude that they were not known till I discovered the fact, and proved the plant to be useful. When the faculty first discovered that I used this herb in my practice, they declared it to be a deadly poison ; and while per- secuting me by every means in their power, and representing 584 THE THOMSONIAN to the world that 1 killed my patients with it, they were very ready to call it my medicine, and allow it to be my discovery; but since their ignorance of it has been exposed, and they find it is going to become an article of great vakie, an attempt seems to beniaking to rob me of all the credit of causing its value to be known, and the profits which belong to me for the discove- ry — in which some who have been instructed by me are ready to join, for the purpose of promoting their own interest at my expense. Wliat is quoted in the Dispensatory, from the Rev, Dr. M. Culler, concerning this herb, is in general correct, particularly as it regards its being a specific for the asthma, though he la- bored under many mistaken notions about its effects when tak- en into the stomach. He says, "if the quantity be a little in- creased, it operates as an emetic and then as a cathartic, its ef- fects being much the same as those of the common emetics and cathartics?' In this he is mistaken, for it is entirely different from any other emetic known ; and as to its operating as a ca- thartic, I never knew it to have such an effect in all my prac- tice. And 1 certamly ought to know something about it, after having made use of it for more than forty years, and adminis- tering it in every form and manner in which it can be given, and for every disease that has come within my knowledge. It appears that all the knowledge he and other doctors have got of this herb's being useful in curing disease, particularly in the asthma, was obtained from me; for when I was prosecuted I was obliged to expose my discoveries, to show the falsity of the indictment. Dr. Cutler was broug'ht forward as a witness at my trial, to prove the virtues of this plant by his testimony — that he cured himself of the asthma with it. He says, the first information he had of its being good for that complaint, was from Dr. Dru- ry, of Marblehead. In the fall of the year 1807, I introduced the emetic herb, tinctured in spirit, for the asthma and other complaints of the lungs, and cured several of the consumption. In ISOS, I cured a woman in Newington of the asthma, who had not laiii in her bed for six months. I gatheied some of the plants, about the size of a dollar, bruised them, and tinctured them in spirits, gave her the tincture, and she lay in bed the first nio-ht. I showed her what it was, and how to prepare and use it, aiid by taking this and other things according to my di- rection, she enjoyed a comfortable state of iiealth for twelve years, and has not been obliged to sit up one night since. The same fall I used it in Beverly and Salem ; and there can be no doubt but all the information concerning the value of this arti- cle was obtained from my practice. MATERIA MEDICA. 685 After Dr. Cutler had ^r'ven his testimony of the virtues of this herb, and ihe doctors have become convinced of iis vahie, they^cotne forward and say it is ^ood niedicuie in skiH'ul hands. Who, I would ask, is more skilful tiian he who discovered it, and langht ilieni how to prepare and use it in curing one of the njost distressing compUiints known ? If it is a good medicine, it is mine, and i ameniiiled to the credit of brniijing it into nse, and have paid dear f >r it ; if it is poison, the doctors do not need it, as they have enough of that now. Dr. Thacher un- dertakes to make it appear that the fatal effects he tells about its producing, were owing to the qinmtity given ; and says I admi- iii>/- ( 'iiifrn/n' ,'><•/'/>■ MATERIA MEDICA. 691 der, and brought into market under the cognomen of red or Cayenne pepper. The markets are also measurably supplied by importation from Africa and from the East and West Indies. There is a variety of capsicum, of very small and exceedingly pungent pods or berries, which has recently been imported from Liberia, in Africa. Pulverized capsicum is generally more or less of a bright red, yellow, orange or straw color, which is subject to fade upon ex- posure to the light, and eventually to disappear. The aromatic odor is peculiar, and is stronger in the green, or new, than in the dried fruit. It is bitter in taste, pungent and acrid, produc- ing a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, which conti- nues for some time. Medical use. — Cayenne pepper is an active stimulant, when swallowed producing a severe sense of heat in the mouth and stomach, and a genial glow over the wiiole system, and is with- out narcotic effect. As a medicine, it is useful in cases of en- feebled and languid stomach, and is prescribed with happy ef- fects in most of the chronic diseases of our country. I never had any knowledge of Cayenne being useful as a me- dicine, or that it had ever been used as such, till I discovered it by accident, as has been the case with most other articles used by me. After I had fixed upon a system for my government in practice, I found much difficulty in getting something that would not only produce a strong heat in the body, but would retain it till the canker could be removed, and the digestive powers restored, so that the food, by being properly digested, would maintain the natural heat. I tried a great number of ar- ticles that were of a hot nature, but could fitid nothing which would h Id the heat any length of time. I made use of gin- ger, mustard, horse-radish, peppermint, butternut bark, and ma- ny other hot things; but they were all more or less volatile, and would not have the desired effect. With these, however, and the emetic herb, together with the aid of steam, 1 was ena- bled to practice with pretty oeneral success. In the fall of the year 1805, I was out in search of umbil, on a mountain, in Walpole, N. H. I went into a house at the foot of the mountain to enquire for rattlesnake oil ; while there, I saw a large siring of red peppers hanging in the room, which put me in mind of what I had been a long time in search of, to retain the internal heat. I knew them to be very hot, but did not know of what nature. I obtained these peppers, carried them home, reduced them to powder, and took some of it my- self, and foimd it to answer the purpose better than any thing else that I had made use of I put it in spirit with the emetic herb, and wave the tincture, mixed in a tea of witch hazle leaves, and found that it would retain the heat in the stomach 592 THE THOMSONIaN after piikinor, and preserve the strength of the patient in propor- tion. I made use of it in different ways for two years, and al- ways with good success. In the fall of 1807, I was in Newbnryport, and saw a bottle of pepper-sauce, being: the first I had ever seen. I bought it and carried it home, got some of the same kind of pepper that was dried, which I piit into the bottle ; this made it very hot. On njy way home, was taken unwell, and was quite cold. I took a swallow from the bottle, which caused violent pain for a few minutes, when it produced perspiration, and I soon grew easy. I afterwards tried it, and found that after it had expelled the cold it would not cause pain. From these experiments, I became coMviuced that this kind of pepper was much stronger, and would be better for medical use than the common red pep- per. Soon after this, 1 was again in Newbnryport, and made en- quiry and found some Cayeime, but it was prepared with salt for table use, which injured it for medical purposes. 1 tried it by tasting, and selected that which hud flir least salt in it. I afterwards made use of this article, and found it to answer all the purposes wished, and that it was the very thing I had long been ifi search of. The next year I went to Portsmouth and made enquiries con- cerniu2: Cayeime, and from those who dealt in the article I learned that it was brought to this country from D^*merara and Jamaica, prepared only for table use, ;mcl that salt wa.« put in to preserve it and make it more pnliiteaMe. 1 h-eciinie acquaint- ed with a French gentleman wlio had a brother in Drriiafara, and ni tde arransfejiients with him to.spiid to his brother and re- quest him to procure some, and have it piepored will soul s»lt. He did so, and sent on a box contaitjitig about eighty pounds, in a pure state. I sent also by many others, who were going to the places where it grows, to procurt^ all they could ; in con- sequence of which, large quantities wore iujpoitKj into Ports- month, much more than there was immediate d<^niand for. I was able to purchase but a small part of what w;is brought, and it was bought up by others on speculation, and sent to Boston. The consequence was, that the price was so much reduced that it would not bring the first cost, which put a stop lo its be- ins: imported, and it has since been very scarce. When I first began to use this article, it caused much talk among the people in Portsmouth and the adjoining towns; the doctors tried to frijjhten them, by telling them that I made use ofCayetme pepper as a medicine, and tltat if would bt.rn up the stomach and lungs as bad as vitriol. The people srenerally, however, became convinced by using it, that what the doetors said about it was falsC; and it only proved their ignorance of its MATERIA MEDICA. 593 medicinal virtues, and thfir malis^nity towards me. It soon carne into ;gfenerjil use, and the knowledge of its beinsf useful in curing disease was spread throuifh all the country. 1 made use of it in curinowel8, by removing the canker. Myrica Cerifera. Cera — Cortex. The wax and bark, — This is adioBceons, tetandrous plant. Aments,oh\oi\g. Ca^ lyx^ ovate scales. Corolla, none. Fem flower, purple and green. Styles, two. Drupe, one-seeded. This shrub is known by its wedge-shaped, lanceolate leaves, and by its lax aments, and its spherical naked fruit. The bayberry, or wax myrtle, is an aromatic hush or shrub, growing from three to ten feet in height, and is found in almost all parts of New-Kngland, and in some of the southern states. The fruit is closely attached to the stem and branches, grows in clusters, of a greenish color, and covered with a continjj of wax, which may be separated in hot water for use. The bark of the root possesses medical properties. It is acrid and astringent, and an emetic when taken in large doses. The roots should be dug in the spring before it puts forth its leaves, and cleansed from the dust, then pounded with a mallet or hammer, when the bark will peel from the root with very little trouble. It should be diied in a chamber or loft where it will not be exposed to the weather, and when perfectly dry, it should be ground or pulverised to a fine powder. It is an ex- cellent article, and its ^rade I think should be number three, in the class of useful medicines. This valuable article may be taken separately, or compound- ed with other substances, and is the best remedy for canker that I have ever found. It is highly stimulating and very pungent, pricking the glands, and causing the saliva to flow freely. It is an admirable article to cleanse the teeth and mouth, and to re- move the scurvy from the gums. If taken, about a tea spoon- ful of the fine powder in water once a day, for a few days in succession, it removes the most oflfensive breath, by correcting the secretions. It will also remove the water-brash — bad taste 598 THE THOMSONIAN in the mouth — faintness at the stomach, recent attacks of diar- rhoea, and general derangement of the bowels. Taken as snuff, it clears the head and relieves the headache, and operates as a sternutatory, causing violent sneezing. When the stomach is out of order, its operation is excellent as an emetic. For a dose, take a teaspoonful or more, in a little hot water, sweetened. The process of collecting the wax is simple. The berries are boiled in water, and the wax, melting and floating on the sur- face, is either skimmed off and strained, or allowed to concrete as the liquor cools, and is removed in the solid state. To ren- der it pure, it is again melted and strained, and then cast into large cakes. It is collected in large quantities in the New-Eng- land states, and exported to other parts of the country. Myrtle wax is of a pale greenish white color, more brittle than bees- wax, or a slight odor and bitterish in taste. It is about as heavy as water, and melts at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Medical tise. — This variety of was has been employed in this country as a remedy for relax and dysentery, and great benefit has resulted from its use in these complaints. The method was by administering the wax, either grated or powdered fine, in tea spoonful doses, in a mucillage, or syrup, repeated as often as necessary. It is occasionally substituted by druggists for bees-wax in making plasters, and is used in the preparation of tapers and candles. It is somewhat fragrant in burning, but emits a less brilliant light than lamp oil. The bark is com- pounded into composition and various other articles for canker. NYMPHJEA ODORATA.— No. 3, continued. White Pond Lily. ASTRINGENT, TONIC, BITTER. To clear the coats of the stomach and bowels of canker. Nympb^a Odorata. Flores — Radix. The flowers and roots. — Leaves, round, cordate, entire, sub-emarginate. Lobes, spreading asunder, acuminate, obtuse. Petals, equalling the four leaved calyx. Stamens, from sixteen to twenty, radiating in erectish lines. The white pond lily is an indigenous, herbaceous, perennial plant, growing in nearly all the states, in small sluggish streams and fresh water ponds. It is much celebrated on account of the beauty and delicious odor of its large white flower. Its root is large and fleshy when green, but becomes very light and spongy by drying. It is very astringent, and a strong bitter, and contains much tanning matter. Nyiii])liaea odorata. u MATERIA MEDICA. 599 The roots should be dug in the fall of the year, when the ponds are low. and washed clean, and split into strips and run upon strings or spread thin to dry, in the same manner that ap- ples are dried by the country people. After it has become tho- roughly dried, it should be pulverized fine, and preserved for use. From the astringent properties of this plant, I have placed it under the grand division of No. 3, and next in rank for its me dical virtues to the myrica cerifera, or bayberry. Medical use. — The tiyniphaea odorata is a valuable astrin- gent and antiseptic, useful in all complaints of the bowels, giv- en either in infusion alone, or compounded with other articles. A preparation may be made called the syrup of lilies^ in the following manner. Take a handful of the flowers, steep them moderately in a quart of water, over a slow fire, for an hour; then strain, and sweeten well with loaf sugar, grate m a little nutmeg, and add a half pint of brandy. This is an excellent article for children when teething, or in looseness of the bow- els. Mothers will find this an excellent remedy also for what is called the nursing sore mouth. A strong tea of the root is one of the best articles in my mate- ria medica for cleansing old sores, ulcers, and even fresh wounds and bruises. Compounded with bayberry, (myrica cerifera) witch-hazle, (hamamelis virginica) and red raspberry leaves, it is extensively used for enemas, or injections, in courses of medicine. In poultices, it is used to good advantas^e, prepared in the toUcwing manner. To a tea spoonful of the fine pow- der, add a gill of boiling water, a tea spoonful of slippery elm, (ulmus fulva) stir well together, then thicken with Indian meal, or what is better, (if they can be had) Boston crackers made fine. This poultice may be applied with great advantage to ulcers, old sores, biles, whitlows, and fresh bruises or cuts where there is a high state of inflammation, to reduce the swelling. In all cases it is an excellent sedative to ease pain, in form of a poul- tice. PINUS CANADENSIS.— No. 3, continued. Hemlock Tree. ASTRINGENT, TONIC, EXPECTORANT, DIURETIC. For canker, compounded. PiNUS Canadensis. Cortex. The bark. Leaves., flat, denticulate, two-ranked. Strobiles, ovate, terminal, scarcely- longer than the leaves. Tftis is the hemlock spruce of the United States and Canada. 600 THE THOMSONIAN Whfin fnll grown, it is often from seventy to one hundred and fifty feet high, with a trunk two or three feet in diameter, and of nearly the same size for two thirds of its lenjfth. The hranch- es are slender and dependent at tlieir extremities. Tlie leaves are six or eight lines in length, and are very numerous, flat, denticulate, and irregularly arranged in two rows. The ovate strohiles are longer than the leaves, and situated at the ends uf the branches. Ttie hemlock tree is abundant in the eastern states and the British provinces, and is also found in the mountainous regions of the midd e and western states. The bark is much used in the United Slates for tanning. Its juice is much less abundant than that of other species of the pine. In many of the trees which have begun to decay, the juice exudes spontaneously, and concretes upon the bark, by the partial evaporation of its essential oil. Thus encrusted, the bark is stripped from the tree, broken into pieces, and boiled in water. The gum melts and rises to the top of the water and is skimmed off, and is fre- quently further purified by a second boihng; it is then brought to market, in dark brown brittle masses, which exhibit small fragments of bark scattered through the substance. From this state it is purified by the druggists, by melting and strairijng it through canvas, sackcloth, or a fine sieve. Thus prepared, it is of a dark yellowish brown color, and becomes more so by ex- posure to the air. It contains resin, and a small portion of es- sential oil. This substance is known by the name oi hemlock gum. Medical use. — The bark is cleared of the epidermis, dried, pulverized, and compounded in various ways. See composi- tion. The hemlock gum maybe made emollient, by melting it and addmg bees wax and hog's lard or sweet oil ; and when reduc- ed to a proper consistency — not too soft — it may be used for strengthening plasters. And by adding a little capsicum, you make an excellent rheumatic plaster. By a still greater reduc- tion with lard, and the addition of a small quantity of bees wax and a little balsam of fir, it makes an excellent salve for cuts, bruises, or wounds, A tea made of the bousjhs is a diuretic, and is very strengthening to the kidneys and small of the back. The boughs may also be used as a substitute for hops in the preparation of small beer, and furnish an excellent addition to what is generally denominated root beer. The boughs may al- so be boiled down, and a thick resinous extract obtained, that may be used for the same purposes as the guio. Nl;illl'l' llllKlllilllli .l/iit\/i rmi limn/ . Xm f,iiriii/rr. MATERIA Mr:DICA, 601 STATICE LIMONItJM.— No. 3, continued. Marsh- Rosemary — Sea- Lavender. BITTER, ASTRINGENT, TONIC, AND E3I0LLIENT. For canker, tbrusb, sore throat, and dysentery. Marsh-Rosemary. Radix. The root. — CaZya:, on e-leav- -ed, entire, plaited, scariose. Petals, five, iSeed. one, superior. This is a maritime, indis^enoiis, perennial plant, growing on salt marshes, and has thick tufts of leaves, which are obovate, obtuse, entire, mucronate, smooth, and supported on long slen- der foot-stalks. The leaves are flat on the margin. The flow- er-stem is round, smooth, and a foot or more in length, and near its summit sending off numerous alternate branches, which terminate in spikes, and form altogether a loose panicle. The flowers are small, bluish purple, erect, upon one side only of the common peduncle, with a macronate scaly bract at the base of each — a five angled, five toothed calyx, and spatulate, obtuse petals. The marsh-rosemary grows in the salt marshes along the whole extent of the North American sea coast. It flowers in August and September. The root, which is the part used in medicine, is large, spindle shaped, fleshy, compact, and of a purplish-brown color. It is bitter, and extremely astringent to the taste. It contains large quantities of tannin and gallic acid, and some common salt. Water and alcohol extract its virtues. Medical uses. — Statice is powerfully astring-cnt, and in the New England states is much employed for medicinal purposes. It may be used with good advantage in most cases where any of the astringent articles under the head of No. 3 are recom- mended. Its most popular application by the inhabitants along the sea board is for aphthous and ulcerative affections of the mouth and fauces. It has been found highly useful in decoc- tion with red raspberry and sumac leaves, and a small quanti- ty of capsicum, and lobelia sufficient to vomit, for the cynanche maligna^ or putrid sore throat. An infusion of the roots of this plant with capsicum and witch-hazle leaves, and a small quantity of salt, is much esteemed as a gargle, by those who have used it for that distressino- complaint. A strengthening plaster, with a little cayenne added, snugly applied to the neck and covered with two or three thicknesses of flannel, is a very great assistant to the above medicine in that complaint. 39 St)2 THE THOMSONIAIt RHUS GLABRUM.— No. 3, continued. Sleek Sttmac. AST^RINGENT, KEFRIGEKENT, TONIC, To scour the alimentary canal of its viscid coating. Rhus Glabrum, Bacece — Folia — Cortex — Radix. The- Berries, leaves, bark and seed. — The calpx, five parted. Pe- tals, five. Berry, small, with on-e niici form seed. Of this genus there are several species which possess poison- ous properties, and should be carefully distinguished from that' here described.' In botany they are more particularly designat- ed under the Head o( toxicodejidroii. Rhus Glabrum. — This species of rhus, called smooth sumac, or upland sumac, is an mdigenous shrub, from six to fourteen feet high, with a stem usually much bent, knotty, and divided, into numerous branches, which are covered with a smooth, light grey bark. The leaves are situated upon smooth petioles, and consist of many pairs of leafets opposite, with an odd one at the extremity ; all of which are serate, lanceolate, acuminate, glabrous, green on the upper surface, but of a dusky white beneath. In autumn their color changes to red. The flow- ers are reddish green, and disposed in large, terminal, com- pound thyrses, which are followed by dense dusters of small crimson berries, covered with a very soft down. This shrub is found in all the northern and middle states, growing in neglected fields, along fences, and on the borders of woods, and on high mountains. The flowers appear in July and August, and the fruit ripens in the early part of fall. The leaves and bark are astringent, and much used m tanning mo- rocco leather, and in dyeing cloth. Excrescences are produced under the leaves, much resembling galls in character, and con- taining large quantities of tannin. These have been used as a substitute for imported galls, and are said to be preferable in- every respect. They may be collected with little expense, as they are produced very abundantly, especially in the western states. The bark, leaves and berries, are used in the Thomso- nian practice. The berries have a sour, astringent,, and not unpleasant, taste, and are often eaten, with no bad consequen- ces. Medical uses. — Sumac berries, bark and leaves, may be used as medicine. The first knowledge I had of the virtues of this tree was in 1807, when in Jericho, Vermont, attending the dysentery. I was much in want of something to clear the sto- mach and bowels of canker in that complaint. While in search of some vegetable substance suitable for that purpose, I acci- dentally tasted the sumac, and from the roughness imparted T S/iiA IT Srntt// suf/ir/ii I;iiii:iinelis xlr-K'niica. U'i/,/i //me/ . MATERIA MEDICA. 603 was at once satisfied it was the article 1 needed. I gathered a quantity, and on appHcation it more than answered my expect- ations ; and I have been in the constant use of it since. For medicine, the bark should be gathered when full of sap — the leaves when full grown, and the berries when ripe. They should be carefully dried, and when used as a part of No. 3, should be powdered, and the different parts used altogether, or alone. The bark of the roots, divested of the epidermis, or out- er coat, is considered almost a specific in the sore mouth at- tending inordinate mercurial salivation. The inner bark of sumac may be boiled in milk and used to good advantage in the bloody flux. Used in this way, it con- tains a mucillage, that will impart a soothing sensation to the bowels, that is very agreeable to the patient. By using a wine- glass of equal parts of gin and molasses or loaf sugar, while un- der the operation of the above preparation, the very best results may be anticipated. The gin will act as a nervine, and will quiet the bowels, and stop the distressed, forcing sensation downwards; and thus, while under this influence, the healing properties of the sumac and milk are left to act upon the irrita- ble coats of the bowels, and in many cases the force of the dis- ease is entirely broken before the antispasmodic properties of the stimulant have left the body. I have seen patients relieved from this distressing disease in a very short time by the above treatment, and by quieting the nervous system, they were com- pletely happy in mind, and relieved in body. I have also used the red raspberjy, witch-hazle leaves, and the Walpole tea [Cmnotlms Americanus) for the same com- plaints, and compounded it in the same manner and form. HAMAMELIS VIRGINICA.— No. 3, continued. Witch-H(xzle. PITTEFt, ASTRINGENT, DISCUTIENT, EXPECTORANT. To remove canker from the stomach and bowels. Hamamelis ViRGiNicA. FoUa — Cortex. The leaves and bark. — Leaves, obovate, acute, toothed, cordate, with a small sinus. Flowers in the fall, and perfects the fruit the next sum- mer. A shrub, from six to twelve feet high. Witch-hazle is an indigenous shrub, growing in almost all sections of North America, generally on stony places on elevat- ed ground, and frequently on the banks of streams, or borders of swamps. Its yellow flower is remarkable for its late appear- ance, which expands in September or October, and continues till late in the fall. The fruit, which resembles a hazlenut, ri- 604 THE THOMSONIAN pens in the followino^ autumn, and is frequently mingled on the same bush with the new blossoms. The bark has a sweetish bitter, pungent and astringent taste. Medical uses. — It is excellent as a discutient, applied to painful tumors, and other cases of external inflammation. It is used in the form of poultices, or as a wash in decoction, for hemorrhoidal affections and ophthalmia. The leaves possess the same qualities as the bark, and may be given in decoction, internally, for bowel complaints and hemorrhage. The seeds are black and shinmg externally, white, oily, and farinaceous within, but are less edible than the hazlenut. 1 was first made acquainted with the article as a medicine when quite young, and have continued its use through the whole course of my practice. Its value consists in its astringent, stimulating, and healing properties. A tea of the leaves maybe used freely and with great advan- tage, for bleeding at the stomach and lungs, as it is a powerful styptic. I have known several cases cured, by chewing the green leaves and swallowing the juice. In some cases the can- ker destroys the blood vessels, and hemorrhage and ulceration take place. In such instances, this article is calculated, if judi- ciously applied, to remove the purulent matter and keep the ori- fice cleansed while the sore is healing. I have made much use of a strong tea of the leaves for injections, and have found them serviceable in all complaints of the bowels. For the piles, bear- ing down pains, and other complaints common to females, this decoction, with the addition of a little of No. 2, is an excellent remedy, whether for abdominal or uterine difficulties. The medicine must be applied to the affected parts v;ith the appro- priate instruments. The bearing down pains are speedily re- lieved by such a course of treatment. Witch-hazle leaves may be used in connection with the other articles of No. 3, or they may be used alone as a substitute for the other articles, in all cases. The pulverized leaves, used as snuflf, are an excellent remedy for bleeding at the nose. RUBUS STRIGOSUS.— No. 3, continued. Red Raspberry. ROUGH, BITTER, EXPECTORANT, TONIC. To remoTC thrush, discuss ulcers, and cleanse sores. RuBUS Strigosus. Folia. The leaves. — The leaves un- armed, rigidly hispids ; leafets three, or pinnate-quinate, oval, at the base obtuse, acuminate, marked with lines, and white- downy beneath. Calyx, acuminate. Flowers, axillary, solita- i:- Rulxis stri^'osus. MATERIA MEDICA. 605 ry at the ends of the branches — white. Peduncles and calyx^ hispid. Berries, red, sweet. Ascines, very slightly attached. The red raspberry leaves and berries are the only parts of the plant used by me as medicine. When at Eastport, Me., in 1811 or 12, I was much in want of some article good for can- ker; so I had recourse to my nsnal method, of tasting and chewing, to ascertain the medical virtues of plants. 1 found that the leaves when chewed caused a rough sensation in the month, excited the salival glands, caused a free expectoration, and left the surface of the mouth moist, pliable, and the sense of taste as acute as ever. An article possessing such qualities, I have always found to be serviceable in all cases where canker medicine was required. I gathered a quantity of the leaves at the time and dried them, and have made use of them for can- ker and complaints of the bowels, with great success, ever since. For relax and bowel complaints of children, and in teething, it is the best remedy I have ever found. The tea giv- en in drink and by injections, generally affords immediate re- lief. Raspberry leaves may be used freely as a substitute for im- ported tea, (thea Chinensis) with no apprehensions of danger. It is the best thing for a wonan in travail of any article I know of. In such cases it should be given in strong tea, with a little of No. 2, sweetened. It will bring on the labor pains regular- ly, and reduce the irregular pains to order and regularity, thus affording rest to the patient in the intervals. If the pains are untimely, it will quell them. If timely and lingering, give more of the tea, with a larger quantity of No. 2, and umbil, or nerve powder. This will assist the natural functions of the bo- dy, and thus hasten the labor. And if this is given, in the inter- vals the patient will be quiet, and rest in the same proportion as the labor pains were severe. Thus the woman's strength and courage are kept up, and she is ready to meet the next attack, thus continuing till the child is born. Should a relaxation of the system be necessary before the child is born, in consequence of the size of the foetus, or of the thick set frame and close habit of body of the woman, add to half a cup of this tea as before mentioned, in which No. 2 and umbil have been put, a teaspoonful of brown emetic (the seeds of the lobelia inflata pulverized) and give the patient this, and if necessary an injection of the same preparation. Keep the woman covered as warm as may be comfortable, and these are the best forceps that were ever applied, to bring the head of a child through a contracted pelvis. After taking the lobelia as above directed, the muscular pow- er of the whole system is relaxed, and with the general relaxa- tion, lakes place that of the cartilaginous substances of the bones 606 THE THOMSONIAN of the pelvis, which diiate mechanically, and when the child is born they contract as retrularly to their places. The same is also the case with the uterus. All that is necessary after this medicine has prepared the patient, is for the midwife to direct the head of the foetus to and within the bones of the pelvis, by elevating or depressing, as the circumstances of the case may require. After the child is born, give it some of the raspberry leaf tea occasionally, sweetened, with milk. This will prevent the sore mouth, so much dreaded by mothers. The raspberry tea is also good as a wash for sore nipples. An excellent poultice for burns or scalds may be made, by taking a tea of this article, and thickening it with fine Indian meal, Boston or sponge crackers, made fine, with the addition of a little slippery elm. If the skin is off, by applying this poultice or washing with the tea, the smarting will be stopped. The red raspberry may be used with the other articles of No. 3, or it may be substituted for any of the others, or be used by itself, to good effect. Every family ought to have on hand a supply of the prepared leaves, as almost a universal remedy. CEANOTHUS AMERICANA.— No. 3, continued. Red-Root^ American, Walpole, Liberty., or New-Jersey Tea. ASTRINGENT, TONIC, E3I0LLIENT AND QUIETING. For dysen(ery, and soreness of the stomach and bowels. Ceanothus Americana. Folia — Radix — Semina. The leaves, roots, and seeds. — Leaves, ovate, acuminate, serrate, three-nerved, pubescent beneath. Panicles, axillary, long pe- duncles, sub-corymbed. The Walpole ox American tea, is a small, indiginous shrub, growing on pine plains, throughout the United States. The root is astringent, and imparts a red color to water. It is said to be useful in syphilitic complaints, in which it is given in the form of decoction, made in the proportion of one ounce of the green roots, well bruised, put into one pint of poft hot water. In some cases it is a purgative. The leaves were used during the revolutionary war as a substitute for tea. Medical uses. — The leaves and seeds of tliis plant, when bruised, or masticated in the mouth, are astringent and mucila- ginous. For the summer complaint, or looseness of the bowels in children, this is an admirable remedy, for which it is equal to any shrub in our materia medica. In taste, it somewhat re- sembles the Tkea Bohea, or bohca tea; and from its similarity to that article in its aromatic taste, it has been by some denomi- MATERIA MEDICA. ^OT '-Slated American Bohea. It may be used the same as the im- ported tea, with milk and sugar. It is a good remedy, with the addition of a Uttle Cayenne, employed as a gargle, for aphthous, inflammatory or putrid sore throat, and also in sore month. It is a tonic, and not only useful as n medicine, but is a cheap and ■healthy substitute for imp irted tea. For the dysentery or other cases of canker, the green leaves may be masticatt^d and swal- lowed in substance, or tliey may be stepped and the tea used to good advantage, whether green or dry. The leaves may be boiled in milk, sweetened, and used in dysentery, or relaxed stale of the bowels, and is an excellent remedy to remove any kind of soreness of the bowels, occasioned by too great an irritation of those parts. ASTER HYSSOPIFOLIUS— No. 3, continued. Cocash — Squaw- Weed — Starjlower. AROMATIC, STIMULANT, ASTRINGENT, ANTISPASMODIC For caaksr — but less used ihaii the precediDg articles under this bead. Aster Hyssopifolius. R thous ulcerations, or putrid sore throat, it answers as valuable a purpose as the other astringents — bayberry, vvitch-hazle, red raspberry, &c. It is considered as a valuable remedy in many parts oi the country, and much used by all Thomsonians who are acquainted with its virtues. For a dose, take a teaspoonful of the fine powder in a teacnp- ful of hot water, to which add a little Cayenn<5, and sweeten, with milk. It may be used instead of composition, or any of the canker remedies, while under the operation of courses of medicine. It may be simmered with honey and borax, and used for all inflammatory difficulties of the mouth and throat. It is good for old ulcers, which may be washed in a decoction of the roots. It is an excellent article to sweeten the mouth and breath, and to cleanse the teeth from impurities, by its rough cleansing pro- perties. Children that are teething, by taking a weak beverage made of this root, sweetened, and with milk, will remain healthy m the stomach and bowels. dUERCUS RlJBRA.~No. 3, continued. Black Oak, BITTER, ASTRINGENT, SLIGHTLY STIMULANT, TONIC, AND AROMATIC. For dysentery, hemorrhage, intormitteiits, and obstinate diarrhoea. Q,UERCus Rubra. Cortex — Glans iberica. The bark and acorns. — Leaves, long-petioled, obUmg, glabrous, obtusely sin- uate, lobes acutish, toothed, setaceous-mucronate. Caly-x, sau- cer-form, smoothisli. Acorns, sub-ovate, turgid. This valuable tree is indigenous to the United States, and is one of the largest of the American forest. It frequently attains the height of from seventy to one hundred feet. Its trunk is covered with a thick bark, of a dark brown color. The acorns are round, flattened at the top, and placed in a saucer-shaped cup. The bark of black oak is the most powerful bitter of any of the species, and may be distinguished by its coloring the saliva when chewed. Medical uses. — The bark of the oak is an astring-ent and feeble tonic, and may be used in fever, obstinate diarrficea, and scrofula. It may be compounded with bayberry, hrujiock, witch-hazie or raspberry, in the propoition of one fourlli, iuid used in all cases of canker, or for any of the purposes for which MATERIA MEDICA. 611 any article of No. 3 may be used; or as one of the ingredients of composition powders. The acorns, when ripe, may he pulverized and simmered in honey, with a little Cayenne or guiwer, and used for sore mouth, or inflammatory sore throat, and is also good for cliildren that are troubled with looseness of the bowels. The White Oak [qitercus alba) possesses nearly the same properties as the querciis rubra. The bark of both is valuable as medicine, and should be gaihered, dried, and pulverized for use, the same as other articles of the kind. The acorns may be gathered, when ripe, and prepared the same as the bark. SALVA OFFICIiVALIS.— No. 3, continued. Sage, TONIC, ASTRINGENT, AROMATIC, AND STIMULANT. To ease arterial and nervous excitement, and quiet tbe mental faculties. Salva Officinalis. Seininoi — Capsules — Folia — Can- lis. The seeds, whorls, leaves, and stalks. — Cali/.v, subcam- panulate, striate, and two-lipped, above thrne-toothed, below bi- fid. Corolla, tube widening at the faux, limb bilabiate, the up- per lip arched and emarginate, the lower, three-lobed, the late- ral segments narrower, the intermediate one larger and nearly round (sometimes crenale). The two fertile filaments transe- versely pedicellate. iSage is a perennial garden plant, from twelve to twenty inches high ; its flowering summit and leaves have a strong, fragrant odor, and a warm, bitter, aromatic, and somewhat astringent taste. It possesses a volatile oil which may be pro- cured by distillation with water, and contains considerable camphor. Medical Uses. — There are combined in sage a considerable degree of tonic and astringent powers, which are common to most aromatic plants. In form of a gargle, when combined with alum or borax, in vinegar, with cayenne and honey, it is an excellent remedy for inflammation of the throat and relaxa- tion of the uvula. In the Thomsonian practice, sage in con- nection with senna, has been used with ijood results. While the writer was in practice on the island of Nantucket, in 1822, the typhus fever was epidemic during the winter, and proved fatal to the greater part of those who were attended by the re- gular physicians. One family in particular, lost three of its members, all of whom were under a high state of mental de- rangement, from the first or second day after the attack. The 612 THE THOMSONIAN symptoms were pain in ihe head, back and limbs, with sore throat, and great anxiety and nervons excitabihty. The first lived seven d;iys, the second four, and the third eleven. The unremitted attention of two or three physicians, cotild afford no relief. After the decease ot the last child, the father re- marked, that shonld another member of his family be attacked, he should employ the botanic physician. In a few days, the eldest daughter was taken with precisely the same symptoms as the others, and much against her inclmation, we were called. As it was highly important for the safety of the patient that she should possess her mental f^iculties during her sickness, in order that we might know from herself the situation of her system, and as she was already inclining to derangement, our first object was to quiet the nervous irritability of the body, and relieve the distress in the head. '^I'o effect which, we took half an ounce of sage, half an ounce of semia, (cassia marilandica) and put the two articles into half a pint of boiling water, to which we added one teaspoonful of ginger. The articles were simmered together about twenty minutes ; then half the quan- tity was pourtid off and administered at a time, when cool enough to drink. We also applied to the neck an adhesive stimulating plaster, and put a bottle of hot water to the feet. The medicine operated, and in about three hours, the pain in the head was entirely gone, the nervous excitement was much reduced, and the patient felt quite comfortable. Tonics were next given, and in a (e\v days she was restored to health with- out at any time losing her senses. The same winter we at- tended five patients in that family, three of the typhus fever, and the case above mentioned is a fair account of the others. They all recovered to the great satisfiiction of their parents. I occasionally sfave a light emetic, and sometimes ordered an in- jection of milk, in which were cayenne and castor oil: this would entirely remove the stricture of the bowels. Cathartics and astringents were given in such proportions as to produce just a healthy motion of the bowels, consequently the head was clear, easy and comfortable. Wlien these two opposite medi- cines were given, in just proportions to correct the action, I found no danger of mortification, or of any other injury result- ing from the physic. In putrid difficulties, sage tea may be used with great advan- tage, as an antiseptic ; and if an aperient were to be used, it should be of oil and milk. This creates an agreeable sensa- tion, and renders the patient comfortable. In all cases of vio- lent diseases, attended with insanity, the bowels are generally the seat of the disease, attended with cold feet and a pressure of blood to the head. In sucfi cases, after using the proper reme- dies for the bowels as laxatives, bathe the feet in hot water, and ^ (liplonc )>l;il)r;i. />entioned, as it is a great corrector of the gall. It is an excellent gargle for sore mouth and throat. Every Thomsonian physician should keep a sup- ply for use. MARUBIUM VULGARE— No. 4, continued. Horehotmd. BITTER, TONIC, APERIENT, EXPECTORANT. For coughs, asthma, and bleeding or weakoesa of the lungs. Marubium Vulgare. lierha. The herb. — Horehound has a fibrous, perennial root, and several annual stems, which are erect, very downy, and from ten to sixteen inches high. This plant is a native of both Europe and America. In this country it grows spontaneously, along road-sides and in neg- lected fields. It flowers in July and August. The herb has a strong bitter taste, and rather an agreeable odor, which is much reduced by drying, and is nearly lost by being long kept. Its bitter taste is durable, and may be extracted by water or alcohol. Medical uses. — Horehound is a tonic and laxative, and may be given in such forms and quantities as to increase the excre- tions in the skin and kidneys. It is a valuable deobstruent, to remove obstructions, and is good in inflammation of the liver, jaundice, menstrual obstructions, phthysis, or consumption of the lungs, &.c. MATERIA MEDICA. 623 A tea made of the herb and sweetened with honey is a valu- able remedy for asthma, and other complaints of the lungs. It is an expectorant and stimulant. A syrup made of the herb will remove heaviness, and detach from the mucous membrane the tough cohesive phlegm, so difficult to eject from the lungs, and which reduces consumptive patients so rapidly. Candy made with horehound is an excellent article for people who have become hoarse, from whatever cause, or for those whose vital heat is so much reduced that the saliva, instead of retain- ing its natural consistency — nearly that of warm water — has be- come thick and adhesive. SYMPHYTUM OFFICINALE— No. 4, continued. Comfrey. SLIGHTLY ASTKINGENT, TONIC, AND BITTER. For female complaints, and weakness of the back and stomach. Symphytum Officinals. — Radix. The root. Comfrey is a perennial, exotic plant, cultivated in gardens for medical use. Its root, which is spindle-shaped, branches, and is frequently more than an inch thick, and ten or twelve long. It is smooth and blackish ; white, fleshy and juicy with- in. It becomes wrinkled by drying, and of a firm, horny tex- ture, and turns dark within. It has a mucilaginous, inodorous, and slightly bitter taste. Among its qualities are mucilage in abundance, and a little tannin. It is highly esteemed as a re- medy for female weaknesses, for which it iias but few equals. Its virtues are chiefly those of a stimulant, and it may be used as a substitute for marsh-mallows. In many cough mixtures it is one of the principal ingredients, and is much employed in pectoral affections, such as catarrh and consumption. It may be used in tea, made of the fresh or dried roots. This root yields a larger proportion of mucilage to water than the mal- lows. Medical uses. — Comfrey roots, after having been boiled soft, may be eaten with a very beneficial effect, by females who are troubled with the fluor albus. They are not only a valuable medicine, but are nearly as esculent as the potatoe. The tea, sweetened, is a good article for a weak or lame back. , Comfrey syrup. — Take a large handful of the roots, well cleansed, boil them twenty or thirty minutes in two quarts of soft water, pour off" the liquor, pulverize the roots, and work them through a fine sieve into the liquor, sweeten well with loaf sugar, grate in four nutmegs, beat up four egjjs and stir in when the syrup is cold; then add two quarts ojf best Madeira 624 THE THOMSONIaN wine, and preserve ; let it be shaken when used. Dose, from a fourth to half a glass, from four to six limes a day. This is one of the best syrups for weakly females I ever pre- pared. It is CTood for all cases of debility or consumption, and only needs a fair trial to establish its virtues. To Restore the Digestive Powers^ and give Tone to the Stomach and Boicels. AMYGDALUS PERSICA.— No. 5. Peach Tree. ANTHELMIC, CATHAKTIC, TONIC, AND STOMACHIC. To restore digestion and regulate the stomach ami bowels. Amygdalus Persic a. — Fructiis — Nuclei — Folia — Flores Cortex. The fruit, kernels, leaves, flowers and bark. — Serra- turesof the leaves all acute. Floioers, sessile, solitary, exotic. Most of us are well acquainted with the appearance of the common peach tree. Its characteristics are, its sessile, solitary flower, and ail the serratures of the leaves acute. Its native country is not certainly known, but it is generally supposed to have come from Persia. Probably in no other country it at- tains as great perfection in the quality of its fruit as in the United States. Among our summer fruits, peaches may justly be ranked as one of the first, for their grateful flavor and whole- some qualities. The peach abounds in sacch;iriue matter, that renders the juice liable to fermentation, the same as vinous li- quors. A liquor is distilled from them, called peach brandy, which is much used in the western states. The nut of the fruit contains a kernel, that much resembles, in appearance, proper- ties and nature, the bitter almond, for which they are, in the Thomsonian practice, substituted. The leaves, flowers, and bark, also, have the odor and taste of the bitter almond, from which a volatile oil may be distilled. The flowers, kernel, bark and leaves, are used in our practice. Medical uses. — The flowers and leaves are laxative, and a syrup made of them is good for indigestion and costiveness. Take one ounce of the flowers and steep them in a quart of wa- ter down to a pint and a half, sweeten it well with loaf sugar, add half a pint of 4th proof Jamaica rum, and stop it close in a bottle for use. If more strength is required, the leaves and ker- MATBRIA MEDICA. 625 nels may be bruised and infused with the flowers. Or, if the flowers are not to be had, the leaves, bark and kernels, or either of them, may be prepared alone. This is one of the best anthelmintics, or remedies for worms or disordered bowels in children, that can be prepared. It is also good for children when teething. And the same re- medies that are good for children, are good for adults in the same complaints. Dose, from half to a wine-glass full for an adult, and for child- ren a table spoonful — to be taken two or three times a day, before eating. Each family, if possible, should have a supply of this medicine. The leaves, used in decoction, are a gentle aperient, or laxa- tive, and are a great regulator of the digestive powers and cos- tive habits. It is also a sedative, or in other words it exerts a calm and serene influence throughout the system, and is calcu- lated to ease pain in the stomach and bowels. An extract, of a dark resinous color, may be made from the leaves or bark, that is much used as an aperient, in the form of pills, and may be usefully employed, on account of its adhesive properties, in compounding pills. An infusion of the leaves is good for irritability of the blad- der, vesica Mri?iaria, sickness at the stomach, and whooping cough, or pei'tussis. In this case, if the syrup does not afford relief, give from half to a pint, in the course of a day, of the strong infusion of the leaves, in small doses. The dried fruit, stewed in sugar, is an excellent article of diet, suitable for persons in almost any situation of health, and more especially those troubled with costiveness. The ripe fresh peach is the most healthy article of fruit to be found in this country, and may be extensively used with safety by any person who is fond of it, and more especially those who are diseased, as it has been recommended by us to numerous patients who have labored under various forms of disease, and who have used it freely without any injury. Children may eat them freely; and their anthelmic, or worm correcting proper- ties, cause them to receive no injury. If freely used by child- ren, they will seldom be troubled with disordered or costive bowels. We are fully satisfied that the amygdalus Persica, or peach tree, is one of the most extensively useful trees in the United States ; and its fruit is not equalled by that of any other, for its nourishing and correcting medical properties. In fact, the the peach tree would furnish almost a universal catholicon, so numerous are the ways in which its virtues may benefit the hu- man family. Persons of seventy years of age, who have al- ways been accustomed to the use of the different productions of 626 THE THOMSONIAN this tree, inform us that they never knew any injury to result from its use. This we consider conchisive evidence of its ma- ny virtues. PRUNUS VIRGINIANA.— No. 5, continued. Black Cherry — Wild, Rum, or Cabinet Cherry. TONIC, AROMATIC, ASTRINGENT, AND SLIGHTLY STIMULANT. To correct digestion, and restore tone to the stomach and bowels. Prunus Virginiana. BacccL — Cortex. The berries and barit. — Racemes, erect, elonorated. Leaves, oval-oblong, acumi- nate, unequally double-toothed, glabrous both sides. Petioles, generally bearing four glands. In open fields, the limbs of this tree spread out into an ele- gant oval top ; but in dense forests, it grows to a very great height, with a {ew contracted branches. The flowers are small, white, and collected in long erect racemes. They appear in May, and are followed by globular drupes, about the size of a pea, and when ripe, of a shining blackish purple color. The loild cherry is one of the largest trees of the American forest ; sometimes growing, on the banks of large rivers in the west, from seventy to upwards of one hundred feet high; with a trunk, from fifteen to twenty feet in circumference. But this tree in the eastern states, is of much less dimensions. In open grounds it is not so large as in the forest, but is more branched, often appearing with an elegant conical summit. The trunk is very regular in its shape and is covered with a black, rough bark, which is easily detached in thick narrow strips, and thus the tree may be distinguished, when the leaves are too high for inspection. This species of cherry abounds in all parts of the United States, but flourishes best in a rich soil and temperate climate. It is much valued for its wood, which is fine grained, compact, and susceptible of a high polish, is of a redish tint, which deep- ens with age. The fruit has a bitter, tonic, sweetish, and astringent taste ; and is sometimes used to give a flavor to spi- rituous liquors. The inner bark divested of the epidermis or cuticle, is the part used as medicine, and may be obtained from any part of the tree, but that from the roots is the best. The bark should be used when fresh from the tree, as it possesses more of the essential oil when green. Properties. — Wild cherry bark in the fresh state or when boiled in water, emits an odor resembling that of peach leaves. Its taste is agreeably bitter and aromatic, with the peculiar fla- MATERIA MEDICA. 627 vor of the bitter almond. It imparts its sensible properties to water, either cold or hot, producing a clear reddish infusion, re- sembling Madeira wine in appearance. Its flavor, as well as medical virtues are much injured by boiling, in consequence, partly, of the volatilization of the principle upon which they depend; and partly upon a chemical change, effected by the heat. An oil can be extracted from the fruit, leaves or bark, of a light straw color, volatile in its nature, and very closely re- sembling in its properties, the volatile oil of bitter almonds. Medical Uses. — The bark of the black cherry tree is one of the most valuable tonics among our indigenous remedies. It has also the power of calming irritation, and diminishing ner- vous excitability ; and is admirably adapted to the treatment of diseases in which a debilitated state of the stomach, or of the system at large, is united with local or general irritation. When taken in large quantities, it is said to diminish, perceptibly, the action of the heart. If the cold infusion be taken in large draughts daily for several days, it will reduce the pulsation about one third. This remedy is highly useful in consumptive complaints, scrofula and jaundice. In general debility, it has also been found advantageous; and is well adapted to cases of dyspepsia. It has been usefully applied in intermittent fever. It may be used in powder or infusion made with cold water. The cherries may be dried and kept for use. Black cherries may be used in the following manner: Take one pound of cherries in their natural state, well pulverized, a half pound of black poplar bark — let the bark be boiled in one gallon of water, strain, and sweeten it with loaf sugar; grate in two nutmegs, and add one quart of Jamaica rum, fourth proof; when cold stir in the cherries and put the contents into a jug, and then add two ounces of pulverized gum myrrh. Shake it well every day for a week and it is fit for use. Dose, from a fourth to half a wine glass, before eating. It is an ex- cellent tonic, and may be used in all cases of indigestion. Good for children in teething or bowel complaints ; regulate your dose according to their age. Again. — The pulverized cherries may be put into cold wa- ter and sweetened : or put half a pound of cherries into warm water and add some scorched Indian meal, and a little yeast. This makes a delicious beer to be used in hot weather. It must be kept in a cool place to prevent its souring. 628 THE THOMSONIAN AMYGDALUS AMARA.— No. 5, continued. Bitter Almond. BITTER, ASTRINGENT. Compounded to correct digestion, and strengthen the stomach and bowels. Amygd.\lus Amara. — Nuclea. The kernel. The Almond tree is trom fifteen to twenty-five feet high, and divides into numerous branches. The leaves stand upon foot- stalks, are about two and a half inches long, and half or three quarters of an inch broad, pointed at both ends, elliptical, mi- nutely serrate, and with the lower serratures glandular, and of a dark green color. The flowers are large, varying in color from red to white. The fruit is of the peach species, with the covering tough, dry, thin, and marked with a longitudinal fur- row, where it opens when ripe. The almond is found within this covering, or rough shell. Medical uses. — Bitter almonds, properly compounded, make an excellent tonic, and may be used for the same purposes as peach pits and cherry stones (see No. 5, syrup). This syrup is prepared as follows : Take poplar bark, and bark of the root of bayberry, of each one pound ; boil them in two gallons of water; strain off, and add seven pounds of sugar; then scald and skim, and add half a pound of peach meats, bitter almonds, or black cherry stones, pulverized. When cold, add one gallon of good brandy, and stir it well together. If put into different vessels, let the sediment be proportionally divided amongst it. This compound is a corrector of digestion, is good to strength- en the stomach and bowels, and restore health to the patients, and is also particularly useful in dysentery and the fluxes. In a relaxed state of the bowels, a tea of No. 3, used night and morning, and this syrup through the day, will generally restore the patient. By using these medicines occasionally, when ex- posed to dysentery, there is but little danger of taking the dis- ease. It would be well for every family to have this syrup on hand, ready for use, in case of any debility of the stomach and bowels. MATERIA MEmCA. 629 To prevent Mortification, and remove Colic, Dysentery and Rheumatism. BALSAMODENDRON MYRRHA — No. 6. Gutn Myrrh. AROMATIC, ASTRINGENT, TONIC, STIMULANT, AND ANTI- SEPTIC. To give tone to the stomach and bowels, and prevent mortification. Balsamodendron Myrrha. Succus concretus. The juice dried down. Myrrh, as we learn from history, has been used for medici- nal purposes, from the earliest ages of ihe world. But of the plant very little has been known, till within a iew years. Balsamodendron Myrrh is a small stunted tree, with a trunk which is covered with a greyish bark, and furnished with small, shriveled branches, with spines at the termination. The leaves of the tree are obovate, smooth, blunt — obtusely ternate and denticulate leaflets. The fruit is pointed longitudinally, fore- armed, of brown color, and at the base is surrounded by per- sistent calyx. The tree grows in Arabia, in dwarfish thickets. The juice, or sap, exudes by the heat of the sun, and dries up- on the bark. The India and Turkey myrrh are the varieties known in our market. That from India is said to be collected in Abyssinia, while the Turkey myrrh is brought from Arabia and Egypt. When of a good quality, it is of a bright reddish-yellow color, of a strong, peculiar, fragrant odor, and a strong, bitter, aromat- ic taste. It is very brittle, and presents shining surfaces when broken, which, when in large masses, are irregular. The Turkish myrrh is the best that is imported into this country. Medical iises. — Myrrh is stimulant and tonic, useful to the lungs, and strengthening to the uterus. It is employed as an emmenagogue to regulate the periodical turns of females, in de- bilitated states of the system, in the absence of fever. It is giv- en in chronic catarrh, in pulmonary consumption, and other affections where the secretion of mucous is abundant but too morbid to be easily expectorated ; in chlorosis, or green sick- ness, amenorrhoea, or obstruction of the menses, and the vari- ous affections of the uterine functions. It is also used for spongy gums, aphthnus, or thrush, sore mouth of children, and for unhealthy ulcers. It may be tinctured in alcohol, brandy, or Jamaica rum, in 630 THE THOMSONIAN the proportion of one pound of myrrh, pulverized, to a gallon of the spirits, and to this add two ounces of Cayenne, and two ounces of prickly ash seeds, and a quarter of an ounce of gum camphor, made line; put these articles into a jug, and let them be kept gently warm, being occasionally shaken, for two or three days. These drops are for external application, in such cases as rheumatism, bruises, sprains, and fresh wounds. Internally, for colic, dysentery, pain in the stomach and bowels, and for many other debilitating: complaints. The grains, after the drops have been removed, may be com- pounded and used in a great variety of ways, and to great ad- vantage. They may be taken and put into a kettle (the amount before mentioned), and add half a gallon of sweet wine ; boil them for ten minutes — this will decompose the particles of myrrh; pour off the wine, and add when cool a pint and a half of spirits: sweeten this, and you have an excellent article for a weak stomach, and looseness of the bowels. This syrup I have known, when given in doses of from one fourth to half a wineglassful, two or three times a day, to pro- duce an appetite when other bitter articles would not. It is al- so good for diabetes, or continued voidins: of urine. Take two large table spoonsful of the above mentioned grains and put them into wine, sufficient to make the mixture about the consistence of a poultice ; boil it two or three minutes, and the myrrh will absorb the wine, and the mass will become of a thick adhesive consistency. Let this be spread upon cloth or leather, and applied to a weak or lame back, a lame side, or weak Joints, and the most happy results may be anticipated. Myrrh is perhaps the most powerful antiseptic known. It has been celebrated for its preserving properties from the earli- est ages of the world. The scriptures inform us that myrrh was one of the constituents used in ancient times for embalm- ing the dead; and we have frequently seen specimens of its preservative powers, which have been removed from the cata- combs of Egypt, that were supposed to have been embalmed up- wards of three thousand years. If such are the preserving powers of myrrh on the dead, what must its effects be on the living? In 1832, it is well known, that we were scourged with the Asiatic cholera ; and one characteristic of the disease was the rapid decay of the solids as well as fluids of the body, passed off by frequent and copious aqueous discharges from the bow- els. Such was the rapid consumption of the body, that a fleshy person, in some instances, would be reduced almost to a skele- ton, and even unto death, in from twelve to eighteen hours. On examining the subject, we found that by some means the MATERIA MEDICA. 631 atmosphere was surcharged with a foreign substance, that we thought to be nitre, which destroyed in a great measure the ox- ygen, or vital principle of the air, and at every respiration the patient retained a quantity of this refrigerating or cooling gas, and threw off a proportionate quantity of the oxygen or vital principle, which deficiency was not made up ; and by these means the body rapidly lost its stimuUis or heat, and received in its stead this refri2:eratirig gas ; and as the warmth became re- duced at the seat of vitality, that from the extremities was call- ed in, and thus the Hmbs became cold, contracted and cramped. The secretory vessels were also contracted, and forced back the perspirable matter into the body, which passed rapidly off from the bowels in discharges somewhat resembling rice-water ; and at the same time the absence of heat in the extremities caused a contraction of the muscles and violent cramp, until in a short lime death usually closed the scene. In examining the subject I found, as I thought, the first diffi- culty in the atmosphere, by breathing which the patient could not gel that quantity of oxygen that was necessary for a healthy action ; consequently, some artificial means must be used to keep up the vital energy, and the rapid consumption of the flesh must be stopped by some preservative article. I therefore prepared the following compound : Pulverized myrrh, two ounces, dissolved in one pint of fourth proof Jamaica rum; to this add a fourth of an ounce of Cayenne, steeped in two or three spoonsful of boiling water ; and then to this add half a pint of molasses, and put it into a jug or bottle for use. And in its application my most sanguine expectations were realized. I gave from a fourth to half a glass, according to the circum- stances of the case. The necessary warmth was immediately restored to the vitals, and from them it spread to the extremi- ties ; perspiration was excited, a healthy action induced through- out the system, and thus the desolating disease was stayed. Such were the effects of this medicine in Montreal, where I first used it, that it was soon proclaimed in the public prints, from Canada to New-Orleans, and appeared to be a standard remedy on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, for this terrible dis- ease. The more this valuable article (myrrh) is examined, the more medical excellencies are discovered in its properties. This is the medical giant among the gums, balsams, and aromatics of the vegetable kingdom. 632 THE THOMSONIAN Antlsjyasmodics and JVcrvines. To procure rest for the nervous and arterial systems, when under great bo- dily or mental excitement, from disease or any other cause, and to induce re- freshing sleep, without the use of narcotics, such as opium, morphine, &c. — This head should commend itself to all persons of strong and determined pas- sions and weak bodies, or those of weak nerves and strong bodies. CYPRIPEDIUM. Ladies^ Slipper — American Valerian, or Nerve Root. ANTISPASMODIC, SWEETISH BITTER, SLIGHTLY TONIC, AND NERVINE. To quiet mental and nervous irritability, and procure rest. Cypripedium. Flores — Folia — Radix. The flowers, leaves and roots. Cypripedium candiditm (white ladies' slipper). The stem, leafy : leaves, lance-oblong ; lobe of the left style, lanceolate, obtnsish ; lip compressed, shorter than the lanceolate petals. Cypripedium, parvilflorum (common ladies' slipper). Stem, leafy; lobe of the style, trianpfular-oblonof, acute; outer petals, oblong-ovate, acuminate ; inner ones, linear, contorted ; lip shorter than the petals, compressed. Cypripedium jmhescens (yellow ladies' slipper). Stem, leafy; lobe of the style, triangular-oblo ig, obtuse; outer petals, oblong-ovate, acuminate; inner ones, very long, linear, con- torted; lip compressed, shorter than the petals. Cypripedium, spectahile (red or gay ladies' slipper.) Stem, leafy; lobe of the style, oval-cordate, obtuse; outer petals, broad-oval, obtuse; lip longer than the petals, split before, Cypripedium acaide (low ladies' slipper). Scape, leafless, one-flowered ; leaves, radical, in pairs, oblong, obtuse ; lobe of the style, round-rhomboid, acuminate, deflexed ; lip longer than the lanceolate petals, split before. There are six species of the cypripedium, or ladies' slipper, five of which we have thought worthy of a description in this work, as they all possess nearly the same medical properties, and may be gathered, pulverized, and used indiscriminately for the same complaints. The roots are the only part of the plant that is generally ('lIHipcrliiim jniliosreiis /.iitii/ y/r/'prr. Ainy root MATERIA MEDICA. 633 used, althouoh considerable medical virtues are found in the stalks and leaves. The roots are large, fibrous, and clospsly matted together, eacli fibre originatin;j in a solid root, parent, or centre, which may be found by parting the closely entwining members of this truly compact family. The main root puts forth several stalks, which grow about one foot in height, The leaves resemble the itch, or Indian poke-weed, or vera- trum viride, but are not as large. The sexual character of the different plants of this species is distinguished by the form and color of the flowers. The flow- ers of the female plant are red, red and white, and white. The red has but two leaves, which grow out of the ground and lean over to the right and left, from between which a single stalk shoots up, to the heiijht of from eight to ten inches, bearing on its top the flower, which is of a very singular form, and from which the sexual character of the plant is known. The red and white and white ladies' slipper grows only in swamps and marshy groimd, and is found to produce laro;er clusters of roots than the yellow, but in a similar form. The top of the yellow is similar to the red ladies' slipper, except the color of the flower. The yellow and red are the best for medicine. The root should be dug in the spring before the stalk starts (as it may be easily found by the dead stalk of the previous year), or in the fi^U, when the foliage is dead. Then the whole substance of the plant is concentrated in the root. If dug in the summer, when the sap is abroad in the stalk and leaves, the roots will nearly all dry away. When procured, it should be washed clean and carefully dried and pulverized, and sifted through a fine sieve, and preserved from the air, for use. Medical uses. — Tin's medicine is one of the most valuable nervines, or antispasmodics, known. I have used it nearly fifty years, and hav^e always found it to produce the most bene- ficial effects in all cases of nervous disease or hysterical affec- tions; in fact, it would be difficult for the Thomsonian practi- tioner to get along in nervous cases without this valuable ner- vine. It is an iimocent remedy, destitute of narcotic properties, and may be used in all cases of disease with safety, and is much better than opium, as it relieves the irritability by quieting the nervous system, whereas opium relieves by deadening in a great measure the natural excitable animal functions. After the operations of the nerve powder, the patients feel lively, cheerful, and happy, as if they had received a sub- stantial night's rest, after great fiiligue of both body and mind. Whereas the opium leaves the patient dull, heavy and prostrate, both in body and mind ; stupid in action, dull iii intellect, sick 41 634 THE THOMSONIAN at the stomach, and with an awful foreboding in the imagina- tion of an inexpUcable somethinj, that never had and never will have an existence this side of the grave; to relieve which, another dose of opium must be taken; and thus they continue to draof out a miserable existence, neither taking pleasure or com- fort themselves, nor suffering others to do so, and running gra- dually down, and finding relief only in death. Haifa teaspoonful of this medicine may be taken or given in a glass of hot water, sweetened, and the dose repeated if neces- sary ; or the same quantity niay be used in any of the six num- bers, or taken in the injections ; and where there are nervous symptoms it should never be dispensed with. FERULA ASAFETIDA.— Antispasmodics conti- nued. POWERFULLY ANTISPASMODIC, SLIGHTLY ASTRINGENT, EX- PECTORANT, AND GENTLY LAXATIVE. To quiet nervous imtability, relieve spasms, hvsteria, cramp, convulsions; — regulates and comforts the mind. AsAFETiDA. — The root of asafetida at full size is as large as a man's leg, tapering, and perennial ; at the top there are nu- merous strong fibres; externally black — internally white, and abounding in an excessively fetid, milky juice. The leaves spring directly from the root, and are from seven to ten in num- ber, about two feet in length. They are bipinnate, smooth, with the leaflets alternate, sinuate and lobed, sometimes lanceo- late, of a dark green color, and of an exceedingly feiid smell. The stem rises from the midst of the leaves, and is luxuriant, herbaceous, ^from five to ten feet in height, and about three inches in diameter at the base, smooth, striated, round, erect, simple, and terminating in large convex umbels. The flowers are light yellow, the seeds are of a reddish color, oval, flat, and foliaceous. The leaves are said to differ much in shape, and the character of its fetid product, according to the soil on which it is cultivated. It is a native of Persia, and flourishes most abundantly in the mountains. The inhabitants of that country are said to eat it when young and tender, and sheep eat it gree- dily. The old plant is the most productive, and it is not considered worth gathering unless it is four or five years old. When the leaves begin to fade, the earth about the top of the root is re- moved, and the leaves are twisted off and are thrown with other vegetable substances over the root, to protect it from the heat of the sun. After a few days, the summit of thu root is cut off transversely, and the juice, which exudes, is collected ; and then another thin slice is taken off, and the juice is agam preserved. MATERIA MEDICA. 635 This course is continued till the root is exhausted, wliich is ge- nerally in six or eio-ht weeks. The sun is as mu-cli as possible ■excluded from the root while the process of gathering is going OR, The juice when collected is dried in the sun. One drachm of the juice fresh from the root will diffuse a more powerful effluvia through a close room than five hun- ■dred pounds of the article as generally used. The gum be- comes softened by heat without becoming fluid, and is very dif- ficult to pulverize. It is inflammable, and burns with a bril- liant lively flame. Its virtues are extracted by alcohol, and form a tincture, which when put into water turns it white. The odor of asa- fetida depends upon the oil, which may be extracted and sepa- rated by distillation, in water or alcohol, when it is of an ex- ceedingly offensive taste, bitter and acrid. The active princi- ple IS in the volatile oil and the resin. Medical uses. — Asafetida is a powerful antispasmodic, a mo- •derate stimulant, feebly laxative, and an efficient expectorant. It is employed on account of its antispasmodic properties, in the treatment of hypochondriasis, hysteria, convulsions, spasms of the stomach and bowels, nervous disorders which accompa- ny nervous dibility, To cleanse the bowels, give tone to the stomach, and for dropsy. Rhamnus Cathauticus. — Bacca. The berries. The buck-thorn is a middling sized shrub, from ten to twelve feet in height. The leaves are situated on footstalks, ovate, and veined. The flowers are in clusters ; small, green, peduncles with a calyx four cleft, and four small petals, placed in the male flower back of the stamens, which are the same in num- ber. The berry is four-seeded. Tliis shrub is a native both of Europe and America, growing wild in the country. It flowers 660 THE THOMSONIAN in May and June, and the fruit is ripe in September, and are about the size of a pea, rounded, somewhat flattened on the summit, smooth, black and shining, with four seeds. Their taste is bitter, acrid and nauseous. Medical uses. — The berries and expressed juice are actively purgative. They are apt to create nausea and vomiting. In their operation as a cathartic they will create griping pain in the bowels with dryness in the mouth and throat. They are by many considered a good hydragogue cathartic in dropsy, for which purpose alone they should be used. Senna, castor oil, and butternut are far superior to the buck-thorn berries, but they can be used when the other articles cannot be had. This article should not be used in case of a relax, dysentery, or where there are any symptoms of mortification. For other Cathartic substances, see cayenne (capsicum) 590 ; populus (poplar) 515 ; bitter root (apocynum) 618, 619 ; bar- berry (berberris) 617 ; peach (amygdalus) 624. Diuretics. The articles under this head should strongly commend themselves to all such invalids as are afflicted with stranguary, gravel, or difficulties of the kid' neys and bladder, also (oi dropsy and female obstructions. FRAGARIA VIRGINIANA, Wild )Strawberri/. DIURETIC, TONIC, DIAPHORETIC, AND ASTRINGENT. To be used for stranguary, gravel, or difEculties of the kidneys. FractAria Virginiana.— i^n/c^w*, Folia, Caulis, Radix. The fruit, leaves, stalk and root. The cali/x inferior, ten-cleft, five of the segments alternately smaller. Petals five. Recep- tacle of the seed ovate and deciduous, becoming a berry. iSeeds even. The wild straioherry vines are creeping, herbaceous plants, often sending out filiform radicant stems in all directions, which diminish the quantity of flowers and fruit; leaves ternate very rarely digitate-, by cultivation sometimes simple stipules adante to the petioles ; flowers terminally corymbose, some- times dioecous, receptacle esculent. The wild strawberry is too well known to require a more minute description. It is common in almost every meadow, on high grounds^ in pastures, &c., and is known by almost (''llllllll il|Kinil(: (oiiiinr/i r/iiri:s MATERIA MEDICA. 661 every person in the country, if for nothing else, for its delicious fruit. Medical uses. — The strawberry vine and fruit is diuretic, gently astringent, diaphoretic, moderately tonic and stimulant. Its diuretic properties are mo&t prominent and useful. Take a handful of the leaves and the more of the fruit the better and steep in a quari of hot water ten or fifteen minutes ; let it set to be used when cold. Let this be used as constant drink m case of gravel or any ulcers or urinary difficulty of the kidneys or bladder. Those afiiicted with gravel or stranguary should eat plentifully of the green fruit, or if not in the season of it the dry fruit or preserves. The following preparation should be kept on hand for use in violent attacks of stranguary or difiiculty of making water. A Diuretic Compound. Fill a jug as full as it can be crowded of the strawberry vines, leaves, roots, and fruit, if any; then pour into the jug as much good Holland gin as it will hold, having added to each gallon of gin two pounds of scalded honey. Let it stand two weeks, and it is a powerful diuretic. Dose from half to a glass three or four times a day. If you have not a sufficient quantity of the strawberry vines, add with them equal parts of clivers, hemlock boughs, or juni- per tops and berries. These articles may be used alone in si- milar form as the strawberry vines, always remembering to use the clarified honey to sweeten the compound. GALIUM APARINE.— Diuretics continued. Clivers — Cleavers. A POWERFTTL DIURETIC, STIMULANT,^ DIAPHORETIC, AND EMMENAGOGUE. To be used for stranguary, gravel or dropsy, as prepared. Not to be used in diabetes. Galium Aparine. — Semina, Folia, Caulis, Radix. The seed, leaves, stalk and root. The stem limber, scabrous back- wards. Leaves in about eights, lance-Unear, mucronate, his- pid above, margin and keel prickly. Branchlets nearly sim- ple, about three flowered. Fruit, hooked, bristled. The clivers is an annual plant very common in the Unite£^ States, growing in cultivated open fields, along fences, by the border of woods, &.c. It has a bitter, herbaceous, and some- what acrid taste, and is destitute of odor. The expressed juice is aperient, diuretic, and antiscorbutic, and has been used in dropsy, scrofula, and scorbutic eruptions. 662 THE THOMSONIAN Medical uses. — The juice has proven useful in scorbutic eruptions, for which two ounces may be taken three times a day. The herb when green, prepared in the form of ointment or infusion, may be usefully applied to scorbutic difficulties or swellings upon the surface. It may be made into a strong tea and be freely used daily as a beverage, by those troubled with calculous ulcers, gravel, or any urinary ditficulty. It is also useful in dropsy, as it operates as a hydragogue, a gentle ape- rient and diuretic; it is also very useful for tho^e who are troubled with costiveness and torpidity of the bowels. Syrup for Stranguary and Dropsy. Take of clivers, parsley root, juniper berries, and flax seed, each four ounces ; bitter root one ounce ; pulverize separately very fine ; take tliree gallons of pure new sweet cider direct from the press, and heat it moderately in a kettle till the scum rises, v/hich remove and then let it boil ; put in your pulveriz- ed articles and let them boil together for fifteen or twenty mi- nutes, then set it off and add while yet hot two ounces of gin- ger and four pounds of good boiled honey; when cold put it into a stone jug, and add one quart of the best Holland gin. The ingredient should be preserved with the liquor. This syrup may he taken from a fourth to a wine glass full at discretion. It is good for all cases of dropsy, gravel, stran- guary, or obstructed perspiration, or female obstructions. This article ought to be kept constantly on hand. Its properties are hydragogue, diuretic, stimulant, diaphoretic, and with females ^mmenaofoffue. Not to be used in diabetes. LACTUCA ELONGATA.— Diuretics continued. Wild Lettuce. diuretic, antiscorbutic, moderately antispasmodic, diaphoretic, and narcotic. For complaints of the kidneys and bladder, dropsy, scorbutic difficulties, and constipation of tlie bowels, Lactuca Elongata. Herba. The herb. — Receptacle, na- ked. Calyx, imbricated, cylindrical, with a membranous mar- gin. Pappus, simple, stipitate. The wild lettuce is an indigenous, biennial evergreen, with a^slender stem, and leaves from the size of a cent to that of a dollar, and much resembling the common lettuce. It grows in deep shady woods, and may generally be found in the same kind of soil and locations as pipsissewa. The leaves, when MATERIA MED[CA. GQ3 wounded, exude a milky juice, in which the virtues of the plant consist. Medical uses. — The juice is a sedative, narcotic, and gene- rally laxative, powerfully diuretic, and sli<^htly diaphoretic. It is an excellent remedy for the universal dropsy, operating as a powerful hydragogue, if compounded with bitter root, in pro- portion of four ounces of the green lettuce to one of bitter root, pulverized and infused in half a gallon of spring water; adding Holland gin suflicient to prevent its souring. This tea may be taken clear, or made palatable with milk and sugar. Take a glass from three to six times a day, or till it operates powerfully as a cathartic. The roots of the lettuce may be dried, and pulverized wilh equal quantities of pipsissewa, and used, a teaspoon ful of the mixture in a glass of hot water three times a day. This is good for all scorbutic complaints, or bad humors of the blood. Sim- mered in lard or fresh butter, it is good for old sores and ulcers, and by adding a quantity of cayenne while simmering, it makes an excellent ointment for rheumatic pains, stiff neck, croup, the quinsy, sprains, and swellings of any kind about the joints. APIUM PETROSELINUM.— Diuretics continued. Parsleij. niURETIC, APERIENT, AROMATIC, CARMINATIVE. AND SLIGHTLY STIMULANT. For dropsy, gravel, and obstruction of the liver aud kidneys. Apium Petroselinum. — Folia, Radix. The leaves and root. This plant has a round, branching, annual stem, with a bi- ennial root, which rises about two feet. The plant contains an essential oil, to which it owes its medical virtues, as well as its use in culinary purposes. The seed, herb and root, are all possessed of strong diuretic properties, and have an aromatic taste. The root is long and slender, white externally, and marked with close wrinkles ; internally white and fleshy, the phh yel- lowish. It has a sweetish, aromatic taste, is slightly bitter and ionic. The green plant should be used for medical purposes. Medical uses.— The whole plant is powerfully diuretic, and gently aperient ; useful in nephritic difliculties, and dropsical habits. It may be used in the form of infusion, or compounded with bitter root and golden seal, with the addition of spirits to preserve it, when it makes an excellent bitter. 664 THE THOMSONIAN A COMPOUND SYRUP. Take of parsley roots, tops and seeds, half a pound, the same quantity of dandelion roots and herb ; of juniper berries a fourth of a pound, and of bitter root one ounce ; pulverize all the arti- cles well together, and boil in two gallons of water down to six quarts; strain off, and press the grains, then add one quart of Holland gin, one gallon of fresh new cider as soon as it has fer- mented, three pounds of boiled honey, two ounces of good gin- ger, and two ounces of prickly ash seeds. Stop it tight in a stone jug, and shake it three or four times a day for a week, and it is fit for use. For difficulties of the kidneys or bladder, or dropsy, and cold feet and hands, or irregularities in the menstrual discharges, and for constipation of the bowels, this will prove a valuable article, whenever used. LEONTODON TARAXACUM.— Diuretics con- tinued. Dandelion. DIURETIC, TONIC, APERIENT, AND HYDRAGOGUE. For dropsy — to correct the liver and digestive organs. Leontodon Taraxacum. Folia, Radix. The leaves and root. Calyx, double. Receptacle, naked. Pappus, stipitate, plumose. Scape, one-flowered. Leaves, runcinate. This plant is naturalized, and is a genus of five species indi- genous to Europe. The leontodon is a perennial, herbaceous plant, with a fusi- form root. The leaves are long, pinnatifid, runcinate, with toothed divisions, smooth, and of a dark green color. The flower stem rises six or eight inches high, or more, from the midst of the leaves. It is naked, erect, simple, smooth and hol- low, and terminates by a large yellow flower, which closes at night and expands in the morning. The calx is double, smooth, with the outer scales bent downwards. The florets are ligu- late, numerous and toothed at their extremities. The Recepta- cle is punctate and convex. The seed-down stipitate and at maturity is so light and feathery as to be easily blown away with the least breath of air with the seeds attached, and is thus transplanted from one soil to another. The plant has a milky, bitterish juice, diffused throughout all its parts which exudes when it is wounded. When very young the leaves are blanch- ed or beautifully white. A full grown and fresh root is fre- quently more than a foot long and as thick as the little finger. MATERIA MEDIC A. 666 slender, round and tapering, full of a milky, bitterish juice, of a brown color outwardly, but white within, having a cord run- ning through the centre. When dry, it is much wrinkled, shrunk and brittle, and on being broken presents a shining, re- sinous fracture. It has a sweetish-bitter, herbaceous taste. It yields its medical properties to boiling water. Medical uses. — The dandelion is diuretic, tonic, and aperi- ent, and has a direct action upon the liver and kidneys, excit- ing them, when languid, to action. It is most applicable to he- patic diseases, and derangement of the digestive organs gene- rally. In chronic inflammation of the liver and spleen, in cases of deficient biliary secretions, and in dropsical affections of the abdominal viscera, it is capable of being very beneficial, if pro- perly applied. From experience we can speak decidedly in its favor. It is usually given in the form of extract, decoction, or syrup. Four ounces of the green root, or two of [the dry, may be boiled in a quart of water, down to a pint, and a wineglassful be given six or eight times a day. Syrup op Dandelions. — Foi' Dropsy or Stranguary. Take of fresh gathered dandelions, root and top, one pound, (or if dry, two pounds,) of dwarf elder, green, two pounds, (or if dry, a pound and a half,) one pound each of green strawberry and peach leaves, of green parsley, root and top, half a pound; bruise all these articles thoroughly, and put them into four gal- lons of water, and simmer them down to three. Strain off and sweeten with good sugar, put it into a clean kettle and simmer till the scum rises and then remove it. Then take half a pound of pumpkin seeds, three fourths of a pound of water melon seeds, four ounces of juniper berries, and two ounces of bitter root; pulverize fine and add them to the syrup when it com- mences to boil, which it should continue to do for about five minutes after they are added ; then set off, skim it, and add one gallon of the best Holland gin. Dose, from a fourth to a glass, several times a day. If this does not start the water, it is doubtful whether any thing will. It is a powerful hydragogue, diuretic, diaphoretic, and moderately stimulant. It will operate more effectually, if the patient be in bed, and perspiration excited by taking stimu- lants, and by having at the feet a steaming stone or jug of hot water. While under this operation, great care should be taken to prevent catching cold. 43 666 THE THOMSONIAN JUNIPERUS COMMUNIS.— Diuretics continued. Juniper. DIURETIC, ANTISCORBUTIC, SLIGHTLY STIMULANT, AND TONIC, For all difficulties of the kidneys, stranguarj', gravel, calcalas, and dropsy. JuNiPERus Communis. Bacca — the berries. Leaves, in threes, spreading, macronate, longer than the berry. The juniper is an evergreen shrub, usually small, but often attaining to the height of ten or twelve feet, with numerous and spreading branches. The leaves are small and narrow, much longer than the fruit, sharply pointed, of a deep green color, spreading, and attached to the branches in threes. It has a glo- bular berry, formed of the fleshy scales of the aments, and has three angular seeds. The shrub is indiginous, and grows in New Jersey, from whence the berries are brought to market, but are not as strong as those brought from France and Italy. The berries impart their virtues to water and alcohol, and are much used by distil- lers in making Holland gin. Medical uses. — The berries are the only part of the tree used as medicine, and are a stimulant and diuretic. When exten- sively used, it creates a disagreeable sense of irritation in the urinary passages. The berries are used to assist more power- ful diuretics in cases of dropsy. They have also been used in scorbutic and cutaneous diseases, and as a tonic in correcting digestion. Juniper may be taken in infusion. Bruise two ounces, and put it into a quart of boiling water and steep it for half an hour; when cool, make it a constant drink, unless bad effects should result from its excessive use; which will be felt, if any, in the urethra or urinary passages. A STRONG DIURETIC SYRUP. Take of juniper berries, poplar bark, and water melon or pumpkin seeds, each half a pound, hemlock boughs one pound; bruise all the articles together, and boil them in two gallons of pure new cider for half an hour ; strain off, and sweeten with boiled honey ; then add half a pound of green roots of horse-ra- dish, half a pound of pulverized mustard seed, and half a gal- lon of best Holland gin. Let it stand in a stone jug for two or three days, being often shaken, when it is fit for use. Dose, a glass two or three times a day, or at discretion. It will start an active circulation and perspiration through the whole body, and its diuretic properties will operate admirably in all cases of dropsy, stranguary, gravel, and irregular men- struation. MATERIA MEDIC A. 667 Wor a Beer — Pat the five ingredients first mentioned in the foregoing preparation into four gallons of water, steep for two hours, strain off" and press out the hquor, sweeten with molas- ses, and when blood warm add half a pint of yeast. Let it work thoroughly, and it is a valuable drink to be used in all difficulties for which the preceding compound is recommended. The horse-radish and mustard may be added at the time when the yeast is, tf convenient. Note. — Hemlock boughs and poplar hark possess strong diuretic properties, and maybe used wheu the other articles cannot be had. [See pages 599 and 615.] Mucilaginous Substances, FOR CATAPLASMS, OR POULTICES— VALUABLE EEMEDIES. CHEREVISI^ FERMENTUM. Yeast. ANTISEPTIC, DEMULCENT, MUCILAGINOUS, AND STIMULANT. To be used as a cataplasm upon all inflammatory sores, bruises and sprains, and to prevent mortification. Yeast is a frothy substance, made of hops by bakers to raise their sponge previous to baking, and by brewers for the fer- mentation of beer. It rises with a white frothy appearance on the top of beer, and is also produced by vinous fermentation. Medical uses. — Brewers' yeast has been highly applauded as a remedy for mortification, on account of its antiseptic pro- perties. It has been successfully employed in contagious dis- eases, in yellow, bilious, spotted and typhus fevers, and all other febrile complaints attended with putrefaction. In cases of high febrile excitement, a yeast poultice is often beneficial, if applied to the bowels. It may also be used in cases of fractured limbs, sprained joints, and putrid sores and ulcers, to great advantage. In cases of broken limbs or sprained joints, where the inflam- mation is high, it exerts a very soothing effect: for which pur- pose spread a poultice and apply it completely around the injur- ed part, and the pain will very soon be relieved. As a poultice, it may be combined with sponge crackers or slippery elm. Yeast may be taken for the dysentery, to the amount of two or three ounces hourly, mixed with a little cayenne, when the bowels are in a putrid state, by doing which, and placing & poultice on the patient's bowelij, many lives have been saved. ^6S THE THOMSaNlAN This is a remedy that should be remembered by every famify. Fresh yeast may be mixed with charcoal pulverized and ap- plied to putrid sores, or may be taken inwardly, when there is danger of mortification either in body or limb. IJLMUS FULYA. SUjipery Elm — Red Elm. EMOLLIENT, TONIC, DEMULCENT, AND NUTRITIOUS. Internally for dysentery, &c., externally for iuflanunation. Ulmus Fulva. Liber — the inner bark. The branches., sca- brous, whitish. Leaves ovate-oblong, acuminate, nearly equal at the base, unequally serrate, pubescent both sides, very scab- rous. Buds tomentose, with very dense yellowish wool. Flow- ers sessile. It may always be known by chewing the bark, which is very mucilaginous. The slippery elm is a lofty tree, from fifty to one hundred feet high, and a native of the American forest. It is often found in the northern states, but flourishes best west of the Alleghany mountains. The inner bark is whitish, and is the only part used as medicine. Medical uses. — Slippery elm bark is an excellent mucilagi- nous substance, applicable in all cases where this class of me- dicines may be used. It is a valuable article in dysentery, diarrhoea, and diseases of the urinary passages. It has been employed in leprous and herpetic eruptions, probably from its great demulcent properties. It is highly nutritions, aud we are told that people have actually subsisted on it for some time, without any other food. The inner bark should be carefully and thoroughly dried, and pulverized as fine as wheat flour. If for internal use, mix a teaspoonful of it with as much sugar, add a little cold water and stir them well together, and then add hot water enough to reduce it to the desired consistency. This is an excellent re- medy for putrid sore throat, after having used No. 3, to clear away the canker. The elm sooths the sores, and produces a comfortable sensation. Make it of a sufficient thinness, and it is one of the best of drinks to be used constantly by the sick. Slippery elm is much used in the Thomsonian practice for poultices, for which purpose it has not its equal. POULTICES. Put one tablespoonful of fine ginger into half a pint of hot water, then stir in Boston or sponge crackers that have been riate riimis I'lihii. MATERIA MEDIC A. 669 relied or pounded fine till it is about as thick as molasses ; then stir in gradually a tcaspoonful of fine slippery elm, and if this does not make it thick enough, add more of the crackers. If it is to be used in a high state of inflammation, add two table- spoonfuls of soft soap and one of fine salt. This poultice should be kept moist by occasionally adding a teaspoontul of warm water on the outside, for if the inflamma- tion is se high as to dry the poultice the pain will increase. Leaviiig out the soap and salt, and using milk instead of wa- ter, it is one of the best of poultices to be applied to burns, felons and old sores, as it will ease the pain almost immediately. The poultice prepared as last mentioned, with the addition of a little of the pulverized root of yellow lUy, is an excellent application to draw out the pain from all kinds of ulcerations, mercurial and venereal sores, and will allay inflammation and irritation at once. It is the best application for a swelled or caked breast; in which case let the liquor be brewers' yeast, first putting the iily root and slippery elm into a little hot water, to extract the strength, and then into the yeast, after which add the crackers and gipger. A poultice ought to be changed as often as once in twelve hours, or oftener if there is much inflammation. Let them al- ways be kept moist by the application of hot water or milk and water. By this course the inflammation will be soon reduced. This poultice should be remembered in all cases of burns, scalds and freezing, as it afi'ords relief immediately on its appli- cation. OSMUNDA REGALIS. Bnck-Horn Brake. MUCILAGINOUS AND TONIC. For dyseotery, or any soreness of the intestinal canaL OsitfUNDA Regalis. — Radix — the root. Frond bipinnate, terminating in several racemes, very branching, and without hairs. It grows on damp ground and meadows. The main root is in shape of a horn, about two inches long. Medical uses. — The root of the buck horn brake is a valua- ble article in dysentery, or a sore, tender state of the stomach and bowels. Steeped in hot water and sweetened with loaf su- gar, with the addition of Holland gin sufiicient to preserve it, it makes an excellent article to be used in the cases above men- tioned, and is also good for female wealcnesses and general de- bility. 670 THE THOMSONIAN Mucilaginous Syrup, for Weakly Females. Take the piths of the roots of buck-horn brake, bruised; pnJ them irjto a stone pot and add water, either cold or hot; beae with a spoon until it is of the consistence of the white of an tgg. Pour off. and to one ga' Ion add two pounds of white su- gar, one quart best brandy, two ounces of pulverized caraway- seed, and one glass of the volatile tincture. Use.^-For weak, nervous patientSj or wmnen in child bed. SESIMUM ORIENTALE Beune Plant. MUCILAGINOUS, TONIC, AND EMOLIENT. For dysentery, disordered bowels with children when teething: — in poultices, for burns, frozea limbs, whitlows, biles, old sores of any kind, and good to allay inflammation. Sesimum Orientale. Folia, Oleum Seminum — the leaves, and oil of the seeds. The henne plant of the United States is a branching, annual plant, from four to five feet high, having opposite petiolate leaves, varying in their shape considerably. Its flowers are reddish white, and stand upon short peduncles near the inser- tion on the angle of the leaves with the stalk. It grows princi- pally in the southern states. The seeds are parched by the ne- groes, and used as food. Medical uses. — The seeds and leaves yield a fixed oil, of a mucilaginous nature, which is very useful in all diseases of the bowels. It has a sweetish taste, is inodorous, and somewhat resembles fresh sweet oil, and may be used as a substitute for it in all cases. It is an excellent article to soften the skin, to re- move cracks from the hands or any part of the body, and for chafes, especially with children. The leaves possess an abundance of gummy matter, which they readily impart to water, forming a very rich mucilage, which is much used as a drink at the south in complaints where demulcents are useful, such as cholera infantum, catarrh, diar- rhoea, dysentery, and all difficulties of the kidneys and urinary passages. Two of the leaves, beat rapidly in half a pint of cold water, make it very mucilaginous, in which way it is usually prepar- ed for internal use. If the leaves are dry, they must be put in- to hot water. The pulverized leaves, with the addition of sponge crackers and a little ginger, wet with warm water, make an excellent poultice for burns, and all kmds of infl.uuinatory sores.. MATERIA MEDICA. 671 ALTH^A ROSEA. Hollyhock. MUCILAGINOUS. In poultices — or internally as a demulcent ALTHiEA Rosea. Flores—Xhe flowers. The stem erect. Leaves rough, heart-form, five to seven-angled, crenate. This plant is cultivated in gardens for its beauty, as well as medical properties. Medical uses. — A tea of the hollyhock flowers may be era- ployed in inflammation of the mucous membrane or soreness of any part of the alimentary canal. It also forms the mucilagi- nous part of the conserve of hollyhock, or bread of life. The leaves pulverized may be substituted for slippery elm in poul- tices. TRIFOLIUM PRATENSE. Red Clover. DISCUTIENT, stimulant, AND DEMULCENT. For cancers, and other scorbutic difficulties. Trifolium Pratense. Flores, Folia — the flowers and leaves. Stalk ascending, smoothish. Leaflets ovate, sub-en- tire. Stipules awned. Spikes dense, ovate. Lower tooth of the calyx shorter than the tube of the corol, and longer than the other teeth. It is too well known to need a further descrip- tion. CANCER PLASTER, Take a brass kettle that will hold eighteen or twenty gallons and fill it with the heads of red clover, pressed close together, with some heavy substance on the top to keep them down, and pour in water till the clover is covered. Boil it one hour over a lively fire, then strain off, and press out all the liquor from the clover. Fill the kettle again with fresh clover, boil in the liquor that was obtained from the first boiling, for the same length of time, and strain off as before, then simmer it over a slow fire till it is about the consistence of tar, when it is fit for use. Great care should be taken not to burn it, as that destroys in a great measure its virtues. Medical use. — This salve is adhesive, emollient, and anti- styptic, ijood for old sores, cancers, sore lips, (fcc. When used, it should be spread upon a piece of split bladder, or on the mem- branous covering of suet, lard, or tallow. 672 THE THOMSON IAN ARUM TRIPHILLUM. Wild Turnip — Wake Robin. MUCILAGINOUS, EXPECTORANT, STIMULANT, AND ANTISPAS- MODIC. For all difficulticB of the lungs, asthma, raising blood, bronchial afiections of the throat, or of the mucous membraoe. Arum Triphillum. Radix — the root. The wild turnip has a tuberous perennial root, which sends- up in the spring a large colored spathe, flattened and bent at the top like a hood, and supported by an erect, purplish scape. The spathe has within it a club-shaped spadix, variegated, round at the end. At the base it is surrounded by the stamens, the female organs being below the male. The spathe, spadix, and germs, are converted into a bunch of scarlet berries. The leaves stand on long sheathing foot-stalks, and are composed of leaflsts, paler beneath than on their upper surface, and in time becoming glaucous. There are several varieties of the arum, known by the dif- ferent color of the spathe, which in one is white, in another dark purple, and in a third'green. This plant is a native of the United States, growing in swamps, along ditches, and in shady places. All parts of the plant are stimulating, but the root is the only part used as medicine. The root is roundish, and flattened at the top and bottom, and is covered with a loose, wrinkled, blackish epidermis. Internally it is white and solid. The fresh root has a slight odor and is very stimulating, creating when chewed a burning sensation in the throat and mouth, which lasts for some time, and leaves a sense of sore- ness. The stimulating quality of the root is extremely volatile, and is entirely destroyed by heat. The root becomes in a great measure inert when dried. It may be preserved for medical use, fresh for a year, if buried in dry earth or sand. Medical tises. — The wild turnip in its fresh state is a power- ful stimulant and local irritant, possessing tlie power of stimu- lating the secretions of the lungs and skin. It is an excellent thing for, pain in the bowels and colic. Its pectoral properties have proved highly beneficial in coughs, consumptions of the lungs and asthma, for which we have used it for more than forty years. The root should be dried, pulver- ized, and used as directed under the head of cough powders, or it may be given in honey, in the syrup of preserves, or in any other saccharine matter, or it may be made into a paste with honey or syrup, and used in form of candy, by letting the sub- stance dissolve gradually on the tongue, so as to diffuse its warmth through the mouth, and thus used is good for apthous sore mouth and throat. MATERIA MEDICA. 673 VALUABLE COUGH DROPS. Take six ounces of dried wild turnip, well pulverized, stir it into one pint of cold water, infuse it till the knobs, or small ac- cumulations of the powders, are well mingled with the water, then pour on half a gallon of boiling water, and a heaped tea- spoonful of fine cayenne pepper, half a gallon of molasses, half a gallon of Jamaica rum, one pint of the tincture of lobelia and the juice of half a dozen best Sicily lemons. This is a very valuable article for coughs, raising of blood, asthma, croup, or any difficulty of the lungs. A small vial of these drops should be carried by those who are affected with a cough, and about half a teaspoonful taken at a time whenever there is an irritation in the throat, or an in- clination to cough. This will keep the throat and lungs under a continual stimulation or excitement, by which means expec- toration will become easy. It will also relieve pain in the side and breast, or colic pains ; and is a valuable remedy for many other complaints of the chest besides coughs. Powerful Aromatics and Tonics. The following articles are some of the most powerful aromatic, astringent, and tonic substances, combined in the same article, with which M'e are ac- quainted. They are valuable remedies for a great variety of diseases, such as female weaknesses, and for weak and debilitated patients, when stomachic and tonic remedies alone are wanted to give action and strength to the digest- ive system, and speedy and permanent health to the body. In all cases where the disease has not reached its crisis, aromatic, astringent or tonic remedies, should be used but moderately, in form of syrups or cordials, to give strength to the system, as they are liable to increase and aggravate the disease if giv- en freely. This should be remembered by the practitioner. EUGENIA CARYOPHYLLATA. Clove Tree. This is the name of the tree that produces the clove. It grows in the East Indies and the Molucca islands. The clove, which is the calyx, has a strong, agreeable smell, and a bitter- ish, hot taste. Cloves are the most powerful of all arorhatics. Medical uses. — Cloves may be used with other articles, not only to cover a disagreeable taste, but by their heating nature are in many cases very serviceable. They are usually em- 674 THE THOMSOJIIAN ployed in preparincr the composition powders. They may be used to advantage in fever and a,s:ue. They will usually re- lieve the toothache, by applying a little of the oil on cotton, or by chewing a clove, and keeping it by the affected tooth. MYRISTICA MOSCHATA. Nutmeg Tree. This is the tree which produces the nutmeg and the mace. The tree grows in the East Indies. The nutmeg, myristica, nucleus, is aromatic, anodyne, sto- machic, and astringent. Medical uses. — Nutmegs may be used in diarrhoea and dy- sentery, where their astringent property often renders them ser- viceable. They may also be employed in all cass where any of the aromatics are useful, and are most beneficial in syrups for patients who are weakly. MACE, Is the middle bark of the nutmeg. When dried, it is of a lively yellow reddish color ; its qualities are nearly the same as those of the nutmeg, but it is less astringent. It may be boiled in milk, and is very useful for patients who are weak and debi- litated. Medical uses. — Mace may be used instead of nutmeg, and is to most people more agreeable. MYRTUS PIMENTA. Allspice Tree. The fruit of the spice tree is moderately warm, of an agreea- ble flavor, much resembling that of a mixture of cloves, cinna- mon and nutmegs. Medical uses. — Allspice may be compounded with bitters and powders, to give them an agreeable taste. It is also slight- ly a stomachic. Boiled in milk, it is good for children with the bowel com- plaint while teething, also for relax and dysentery, and for weak- ly femafes, if it is made into syrup. MATERIA MEDICA. 675 LAURUS CINNAMOMUM. Cinnamon. This is the name of the tree which affords the cinnamon; bark. Cinnamon bark is one of the most grateful of the aro- matics. It has a moderately pungent taste, accompanied vvitli a considerable degree ot sweetness. Medical uses. — Cinnamon is a good cordial, carminative and restorative, useful to be mixed with the diet of the sick. It is also good to compound in spice bitters, &c., and will check vo- miting, and sickness at the stomach. It may be used in sub- stance, pulverized, in decoction, or in form of essence. Like the preceding articles, the cinnamon is good for diarrhoea and dysentery, either compounded in syrup, boiled in milk, made into a tea, or chewed in substance. A VALUABLE AND POWERFUL AROMATIC COMPOUND, For Weak, Debilitated Patients, either Male or Female. Take of cloves, nutmegs, unicorn root, and golden seal, each two ounces; of mace, allspice, cinnamon, gum arabic, and red oak acorns, divested of their shells, each four ounces, cayenne pepper half an ounce ; pulverize them all very fine together, then put them into two quarts of boiling water, simmer and stir them well together; then add half a gallon of good Jamaica rum, one gallon of good port wine, four pounds of loaf sugar, and two pounds of buck-horn brake and one pound of green comfrey, both well cleansed and pulverized ; put these articles all into a jug together, stop it tight, and let it be shaken two or three times a day for a week. Take from a tablespoonful to half a fflass. Females cannot find an equal to this powerful aromatic tonic, for weakness of the back, side or stomach. Be careful of the strength of this remedy. It maybe too powerful for many who are very weakly ; in such cases com- mence with half a tablespoonful, and increase the quantity as the patient can bear it. For fiuor albus, or any other fernak; weakness, this remedy is unrivalled. Note. — If this compound is found to be too strong, add one quart more of Jamaica rum, and half a gallon of port wine. The strength may thus be increased or diminished, to suit the circumstances of the case. 676 THE THOMSONIAN Balsams. PINUS BALSAMEA. Fir Tree — Balsam Tree. BALSAMIC AND HEALING. For cougfes, affections of the lungs, and both internal and external soreness. PiNus Balsamea. — Leaves flat, emarginate or entire, gla- cous beneath, sub-erect above, recurve-spreading. Cones cy- lindric, erect. Brads abbreviated, obovate, long-mucronate, sub-serrulate. The fir tree grows wild in the American forests, preferring damp cold swamps. Medical uses, — The balsam fir is a transparent liquid, which collects in blisters on the trunk and branches. It has a plea- sant odor, and is slightly bitter. It may be profitably employed as a plaster on wounds or cuts, as it is very healing. A decoc- tion of the bark or the balsam may be used in all cases of in- ternal soreness, such as dysentery and affections of the lungs. It is peculiarly serviceable in cholera infantum, and is one of the principal ingredients of the yellow salve. COPAIFERiE OFFICINALIS. Balsam Copaiva. This is the name of a tree sfrowinof in Brazil, from which the balsam of copaiva is obtained. When fresh, this balsam is a colorless fluid, but in time it acquires a yellowish tinge. It is of an agreeable smell, and bitterish biting taste, which is very permanent on the tongue. Medical uses. — This msy be used for the same purposes as the fir balsam, but is not as good. It has been much employed in the venereal, and in diseases of the urinary organs. For a dose, take from six drops to a teaspoonful. Antacids. FOR SOUR STOMACH OR HEARTBURN. The articles under this head should commend themselves to all persons 'that are troubled with a deranged state of the stomach and digsstive organs 5 and especially to high livers and epicures who gratify their taste rather than the convenience of the stomach and organs of digestion. The consequences are a sour stomach, flatulency, dyspeptic affections, gout, corpulency, arterial «nd nervous irritability; all of which are produced for the want of order and regularity with regard to diet, rest and exercise. MATERIA MICmCA, 677 The following articles are used in the Thompsonian practice to correct aci- dities of the stomach, and facilitate the operation of emetics, while giving eourses of medicine. SOD^ CARBONAS. Carbonate of Soda. This article is obtained several ways, but principally from plants growing on the seacoast. It is procured by lixiviation from the ashes of the burnt plants. None but those that grow on the sea shore can produce it. The alkali thus produced is more or less pure, according to the nature of the plant from which it is obtained. But the greater part of it is a sub carbo- nate of soda. To procure pure soda, make a solution of the pure carbonate and boil it with half its weight of pure lime, and after it has subsided pour off the pure lye and evaporate it in a clear iron or silver vessel till the liquid flows quietly like oil ; then pour it upon a polished iron plate, and it concretes into a hard white cake, which must be immediately broken in pieces and corked tight in bottles. Carbonate of soda is a white salt, of a disagreeable alkaline taste. It dissolves very readily in water, but is nearly insolu- ble in alcohol. It is incompatible with acids, and earthy and metalic salts. Medical uses. — Carbonate of soda is an antacid and resol- vent ; useful in diseases which cause acidity of the stomach, such as dyspepsia, gout, or any other affeetion produced by ir- regulariry or intemperance in eating. It may be given in form of powder or solution. Dose ; the powder may be given in doses of from a fourth to half a tea- apoonful and the solution in about three times the quantity. MAGNESIiE. Magnesia, Pure magnesia is a very light, white, inodorous powder, of a feeble alkaline taste. Carbonate of Magnesia sometimes occurs as a native mine- ral, but is more usually manufactured. It can be produced from the bittern of salt works. To make pure magnesia : expose carbonate of magnesia in an earthen vessel to a red heat, for two hours, or till the addi- tion of vinegar will produce no effervescence. ^8 THE THOMSONIAN Medical uses. — Magnesia may be employed as an antacid and laxative, in dyspepsy, sick headache, gout, and all com- plaints accompanied with sourness of the stomach or costive- ness of the bowels. It is given in form of powders. Dose, from ten grains to a teaspoonful. This remedy is very useful for females in utero- gestation, to correct the acidity of ihe stomach attendant upon such a state, and has a tendency to keep the bowels regular from its gently laxative properties. POTASSiE CARBONAS IMPURUS. Pearlash, or tmjjure Carhonate of Potassa. Pearlash is of a white color usually tinged with blue. It has a burning alkaUne taste but no smell. It is soluble in water. Pearl and potashes are procured from wood by lixiviation and subsequent evaporation. Medical uses, — A solution of pearlash may be used instead of any of the other alkalies, but is more corrosive. It may be prepared for use similar to lime, and taken in about half the quantity, or let the strength be reduced to the ability of the sto- mach to bear it. POTASStE bicarbonas. tSalccratus, or Bicarbonate of Potassa. This article is the same as the preceding one, only reduced to a greater degree of purity. It is usually in the form of white chrystals, having the form of flat irregular prisms. It is perfectly inodorous. It is solu- ble in water but not in alcohol. Medical uses. — It may be given in solution, formed by add- ing to it four limes its bulk of cold water, for acidities of the stomach and in all cases where any of the alkalies are recom- mended. Dose, from a tea to a table spoonful. CALX. Lime. Lime is a colorless substance, inodorous, and of a disagreea- ble alkaline taste. It may be prepared in the following man- ner : Take of limestone, (Carara marble,) or oyster shells well cleansed in hot water, any desired quantity j pulverize MATERIA MEDICA. 679 and heat in a crucible over a hot fire for one hour or till the carbonic acid is entirely driven off, which may be known by the addition of a little acetic acid; if no bubbles of gas pass off it is sufliciently heated. To form lime into a solution for use : add one ounce of lime to one quart of pure soft water, stir them well together, cover the vessel and let it stand for three hours. Keep the solution together with the undissolved lime, in a bottle closely corked from the air. Lime water is antacid, tonic, and astringent. Medical uses. — It is useful in acidity of the stomach, diar- rhosa, and in some cases of the gravel. By giving it in milk its disagreeable taste is entirely covered. It is an excellent wash in case of scald head or any other putrid or ulcerous sores. Dose, from one to three tablespoonsful. Important to be remembered. N. B. — If at any time any of these alkalies should be taken by accident or design, in such strength as to create great dis- tress in the stomach, they can be neutralized in a moment by taking a small draught of vinegar or cider. Those in the habit of using them should always keep in mind this corrective prin- ciple. CAUSTICS. AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON FEVER SORES AND INFLAM- MATORY SWELLINGS GENERALLY. In the treatment of boils, felons, whitlows, or any inflamma- tory gathering, where, on account of its being deeply seated or the firm texture of the skin, the matter is with difficulty brought to the surface, caustics are often servicable ; but in- stead of using corrosive or poisonous substances, a little punk or slow match, the size of a pea, if burnt upon the centre of the diseased place, answers every purpose ; after which apply a softening poultice to ease the pain and promote suppuration. The method of performing this operation is as follows : Take several pieces of cloth, wet with cold water, bits of an old hat, or something of the like, let a hole be cut through them the size of the puncture you wish to make, and apply them to the affected part ; then fill the hole with a piece of punk and set fire to it. If once burning does not make the puncture deep enough, repeat it till it does. Then apply a poultice and the relief is certain and almost immediate. This is the safest and mildest caustic that is in use. Warts may also be cured in the same way. 680 THE THOMSONIAN The indications that show the necessity of this treatment am an excessive distress, extension and high inflammation and a want of perspiration in the diseased parts. In all gatherings of an inflammatory nature where the matter escapes with diffi- cuhy to the surface, we can testify to the beneficial results aris- ing from the use of this caustic, followed by the application of a softening poultice, from our own experience, having em- ployed the same treatment on ourself in case of a fever sore. N. B. Before applying this caustic let a cord or handkerchief be tied very tightly around the limb on both sides of the sore, to prevent as much as possible the pain from being communi- cated beyond where the application is made. By so doing it causes but little pain. Simj^le Substances. Having thus far given the most important articles in our practice, we sub- join some simple remedies, which may be profitably used in many cases, and which may be substituted for the more important ones when they cannot be obtained. Simple Emetics. VERBENA HASTATA. Blue and White Vervain. SLIGHT EMETIC, BITTER TONIC, AND COUNTER POISON. For an emetic, in decoction. For poison, boiled in milli. Verbena Hastata. Herba — the herb. Erect, tall. Z/cat'e^ lanceolate, acuminate, gash-serrate; low- er ones sometimes gash-hastate. Spikes linear, panicled, sub- imbricated. This herb grows very common in neglected fields, pastures, &c. Medical uses. — Vervain is'good as an emetic, and in that re- spect ranks next to lobelia. The two may be mixed, or the vervain may be used alone when lobelia cannot be had. Ma- ny bad cases of consumption have been cured by this article. It is also a good counter poison. MATERIA MEDICA^ -681 EUPATORIUM PERFOLIATUM— Emetics continued. Thoroughioort — Boneset. MILDLY EMETIC, SUDORIFIC, TONIC, AND EXPECTORANT. For cougbs, and other complaints of the lungs. EupATORiuM PerfoL'Iatum. Herha — the herb. Leaves S'eerf naked, i^eares two-pinnate. Leaf- lets subulate, three-parted. This herb grows in old pasture lands, by the road side, and among rubbish. Medical uses. — Mayweed is good to be taken at night on go- ing to bed, to raise a perspiration, and assist in throwing off a cold. To aid it, let a hot brick or stone be put to the feet. Let it be taken in form of tea, as hot as it can be borne. ANTHEMIS NOBILIS.— Stimulants continued. Camo7nile. MILD TONIC, strengthening TO THE STOMACH, AND DIU- RETIC. Useful to restore lone to the digestive organs, and increase the appetite. Anthemis Nobilis. Herba, Flores — the herb and flow- ers. Leaves two-pinnate. Leaflets three-parted, linear-subu- 686 THE THOMSO>'IAN late, sub-villose. Stem branching at the base. Gives out a fra- grant odor. Camomile is cnltivated in gardens, as well for its agreeable odor as for its medical properties. Medical uses. — Camomile is good as an external application for sprains, bruises, callouses, corns, shrunk sinews, &,c. It is a pleasant bitter, good for the stomach, and for bowel com- plaints. For external application, let the herb be bruised and applied warm, or used in tea as a wash ; for internal use, take it in form of decoction — both herb and flowers. CHRYSANTHEMUM PARTHENIUM.— Stimu- lants continued, Feverfew. A MILD TONIC, AND CORRECTOR OF DIGESTION. To be used the same as camomile. Chrysanthemum Parthenium. Herba — the herb. The leaves petioled, compound, flat. Leaflets ovate, gashed. Pe- duncles branching, corymbed. Stem erect. Medical uses. — Feverfew is stimulating, and removes ob- structions from the urinary passages. It is also serviceable in hysterics and all female obstructions. It should be taken in de- coction, either alone or with camomile. The whole herb is used. Simple Tonics, BETULA LENTA. Black Birch — Spicy Birch — Cherry Birch. tonic, mildly astringent, and stomachic. To strengthen digestion, and for all complaints of the bowels. Betula Lenta. Cortex — the bark. Leaves heart-ovate, sharp-serrate, acuminate; nerves and petioles, pilose beneath. Scales of the strobile glabrous, with obtuse equal lobes, having elevated veins. This is a large tree, common in the American forests. Its bark is very sweet scented. Medical uses. — Black birch bark, in decoction, is useful in MATERIA MEDICA. 687 all complaints of the bowels, and in all cases of obstruction. Made into a syrup, with peach meats or cherry stone meats, it is an excellent article to promote digestion, and to use as a ge- neral lestarative. PANAX QUINQUEFOLI A.— Tonics continued. Ginseng, TONIC, NERVINE, MILDLY STIMULANT, AND A SIALOGOGUE, Used in nervous dibility, either alone or combined with other articles of like quality. Panax QuiNauEFOLiA. Radix — the root. Root fticiform. Leaves ternate, quinate. Leaflets oval, acuminate, petioled. serrate. Ginseng ^rows common in most parts of the United States, especially in Vermont. It is found in deep shady forests. This is the Chinese panacea. Medical uses. — This may be employed as a tonic nervine, in all cases of debility. The best form of administering it, is the pulverized root in decoction. It maybe given in combina- tion with other nervines, where such articles are needed. It also has some action on the salivary glands. Dose, from a half to a teaspoonful, at discretion. ANGELICA ARCHANGELICA,— Tonics conti- nued. Archangel. TONIC, BITTER, AND BALSAMIC. To correct and strengthen digestion, and remove cainker. Angelica Arch angelica. Herba — ^the herb. This is a biennial plant, with the odd terminal leaf lobed. Archangel grows among grass in wet lands, and by the side of fields. It is from four to twelve inches high, with small leaves, and has a bur which contains a seed at each joint of the stalk. There are two kinds, that look much alike but are dif- ferent in taste. The one is of a bitter, the other of a rough and balsamic taste. Medical uses. — Both kinds of the archangel may be used to- gether, in decoction or syrup. The bitter corrects the bile, and the rough removes the canker. Either or both kinds may be profitably used, where articles of like properties are needed. 6*^8' THE THOMSONIAN INULA HELENIUM.— Tonics continued. Elecampane. TONIC, AND EXPECTORANT. To be used in weakness at the lungs,, coughs, and consumption. Inula Helenium. Radix — the root. Leaves claspin^^ ovate, rugose, toumentose beneath. Scales of the calyx ovate. This is a common plant, growing wild along the road side, and in neglected places. Medical uses. — A syrup made of the root is an excellent ar- ticle for a cough, or any debility of the lungs. Its tonic and expectorant qualities united render it a useful article in such cases. VERBASCUM THAPSUS.— Tonics continued. Mullein. TONIC INTERNALLY, AND EXTERNALLY REDUCES SWELLING, AND RESTORES CONTRACTED SINEWS. Used mostly as an external' application. Verkascum Thapsus. Semina. Folia — the seeds and leaves. Leaves decurrent, downy both sides. Stem generally simple, though sometimes branched above. Flowers in a cy- lindric spike. Mullein is a very common plant, growing on poor, sandy soil, along the road side, &-c. It is from two to four feet high. Medical uses. — The leaves bruised and applied warm are a good application to swellings and contracted sinews. An oil is also obtained from the seeds, which is good for the same pur- poses. It may be usefully employed compounded', as a genial strengthening plaster. OROBANCHE UNIFLORA.^Tonics continued. Birth-Root — Squaiv-Root. TONIC, astringent, AND STYPTIC. For slight cases of debility, bleeding at the lungs, and female complaints. Orobanche Unifloka. Radix — the root. /S'ca/Je naked, one-flowered. Calyx without bracts. Corol recurved. It is about three inches high, of a yellowish white color. Medical uses. — Its astringent and styptic qualities render it useful in cases of bleeding at the lungs or nose ; for the first of • MATERIA MEDICA. 689 which let it be taken in decoction, and for the last, in the form of snufF, made from the pulverized root. It may be used in cases of debility, and is said to have been employed by the In- dians in child birth. CENTAUREA BENEDICTA— Tonics continued. Blessed Thistle. TONIC AND BITTER. To strengthen and assist the digestive organs. Centaurea Benedicta. Folia — the leaves. Leaves se- rai-decurrent, tooth-spinose. Calyx with branched spines. It is cultivated in gardens, for medical purposes. Medical uses. — It is a good corrector of the bile and restorer of digestion. It may be given in decoction, or the leaves may be dried and pulverized and given in substance. The hitter thistle much resembles the above, and may be employed for the same purposes, and in the same way. ASARUM CANADENSE.— Tonics continued, Canada Snake-Root. TONIC, STIMULANT, AND AROMATIC. To give tone and strength to the stomach. AsARUM Canadense. Radix — the root. Leaves kidney- form, in pairs. CaZy:?; woolly, deeply three-parted ; divisions sub-lanceolate, reflected. It grows throughout the United States, in woods and shady places. Medical uses. — Canada snake-root may be used as a tonic in all cases of debility. It may be given either in decoction or powders. POLYGONUM PUNCTATUM— Tonics continued. Smartweed — Water Pepper. TONIC AND STYPTIC. To strengthen the digestive organs, and stop uterine hemorrhage. Polygonum Punctatum. Herba — the herb. Stamens eight — styles three. Leaves lanceolate, glabrous. Stipules 690 THE THOMSONIAN lax, glabrous, ciliate at the apex, spotted. Spikes filiform, weak, somewhat nodding. Brads remotely alternate. This is a very common plant, growing on poor, uncultivated lands. It is from one to two feet high. Medical uses. — Smartweed given in decoction is a gentle to- nic, but is chiefly useful to prevent uterine hemorrhage — for which purpose let it be ffiven in a strong tea, made palatable with milk and sugar. The same may also be given in injec- tions, per the vagina. Simple Bitters, ARTEMISIS ABSYNTHIUM. Wormwood. BITTER, TONIC. To create an appetite, and assist dige§tioi>, Artemisis Absynthium. Herha — the herb. The stem branching, panicled. Leaves hoary: radical ones triply pinna- tifid, divisions, lanceolate, toothed, obtuse; cauline ones two- pinnatifid or pinnatifid, divisions lanceolate, acutish ; floral ones undivided, lanceolate. Wormwood is abundant in the eastern states, growing by the road side and in neglected places. Medical uses. — Wormwood is a good bitter, to create an ap- petite and assist the digestive organs. It may be given in de- coction or in the form of tincture. It is also an excellent article to apply to a bruise or sprain. TANACETUM VULGARE.— Bitters continued. Tansey, A STIMULATING BITTER. For stranguarj', female complaints, &c. Tanacetum Vulgare. Herba—Xhe herb. Leaves doubly pinnate, gash-serrate. It has a very strong odor, and a bitter and somewhat aromatic taste. It grows wild in highways, and is cultivated in gardens. Medical uses. — It is used in decoction, which is good for weakness in the back, strangnary, hysterics, and female weak- nesses. The green leaves bruised are a good application to sprains and swellings. MATERIA MEDICA. 691 INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF DISEASE, AND THE PREPARATION AND USE OF MEDICINE. Practitioners of medicine should have some fixed principles by which their conduct should be guided in time of sickness, and we have thought it advisa- ble to lay down a few simple rules, to be observed by those who have no bet- ter guide. To our seniors in experience and practice, of course, we bow with due de- ference, and yield the palm to their superior medical knowledge in all matters pertaining to practice, so far as the health and welfare of community are con- cerned. In that respect, being sensible of our inability to compete with them successfully, we must therefore stand subject to their correction. But as to our experience, such as it is " give we unto you." J. T. RULES TO BE OBSERVED BY THE PRACTITIONER, IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE. 1. At the commencement of an attack of disease, the first thing to be brought to mind should be, what has caused the attaclc, and how should it be treated, and how removed. The " ways and means" cause much trouble and speculation with the patient, who should ever be alive to the best means for his future wel- fare. 2. One of the fundamental principles in the Thorn sonian practice is, that all diseases originate from the same cause, directly or indirectly — that is, from the deranged state of the fluids of the body, by the absence of heat, or loss of vitality ; which produces an over pressure or excess of circulation to the head, and a proportionate deficiency in the feet. This creates derangement in the organs of sense, and a proportionate want of action with the digestive apparatus, by which the bowels become constipated, and the evacuations of the body are much obstructed, for want of the requisite action and equilibrium in the fluids, and the conse- quent order attendant upon such a state of things. 3. This derangement having been produced by the loss of vitality, or taking cold, and the consequent absence of heat at the lower extremeties, and an excess at the head in the same degree, to bring about an equili- brium properly through the system, or to establish order where there is naught but disorder, is what we wish. To restore warmth to the feet and reduce the pressure upon the brain, by correcting digestion, promot- ing perspiration, and removing obstructions from the stomach, bowels, and their dependencies, is the proper mode to effect this object. 4. The best method yet discovered is a thorough Thomsonian course of medicine, when properly administered, which creates a healthy circu- lating medium in the lower extremities, equal with that of the head, and thus produces order and regularity both in body and mind. 5. The first knowledge with a practitioner should be to understand the principles or cause of the derangement, disease, or loss of heat ; and se- 692 THE THOMSONIAN condly the proper course of treatment to bring the deranged parts to or- der by restoring the vitality, or heat, by the loss of which the whole man has become diseased. 6. There is no immediate danger in any case where the veins on the patient's hands and feet are full. This is the surest test by which a prac- titioner may determine whether or not his patient is doing well. Or a long and regular respiration will indicate the same state of the body, as well as a regular pulse. DIRECTIONS FOR EQUALIZING THE CIRCULATION Through the system, which must be done in all cases of disease, to restore the patient to health. In the first place, put the feet of the patient into water as hot as can be borne, increase the heat by adding water of a higher temperature until a co- pious perspiration is started on the forehead and in the palms of the hands; the patient may be in the bath if thought necessary; this will afford some relief. Then take brown emetic, cayenne, composition, and nerve pow- der, of each one teaspoonful, put them into one pint of boiling water and let them steep for ten minutes; sweeten with molasses, and let half the quantity be given as an injection, as hot as it can be borne, and let the patient retain it as long as possible. This will turn the excitement from the head downwards and sickness at the stomach will be produced. Then give a table spoonful of the tincture of lobelia and a small quantity of cayenne, in some simple tea, and if this does not produce sufficient vo- miting repeat the dose. The vomiting will be easy, the veins in the hands and feet will be fill- ed, the head, in consequence of the equalization of the circulation, will be relieved, and the whole system will become quiet and easy. Let these directions be strictly followed, and by so doing I hesitate not to say, that three fourths of the attacks of disease — such as colic, dysen- tery, quinsy, croup, pleurisy, head-ache, liver complaint, &c. — might immediately find relief. Let every practitioner lay up these remarks as valuable truths, to be observed in all cases where there is disease or derangement in the system, in attempting to afford relief or perform a cure. Order must be brought about in the body by an equalization of the flu- ids, and it matters but little how that is effected — whether by a course of medicine, steaming, bathing the feet in hot water, an emetic, or stimu- lating with hot liquor, hot medicines, or any other course which will ef- fect this relief on the system. To accomplish this successfully in the greatest number of cases is what constitutes the eminent physician. STEAM OR VAPOR i;ATH. Steaming is an important part of the Thomsonian practice. Many cases which prove too stubborn for the medicine unassisted by the vapor bath, are through its agency relieved. In all diseases where the vital heat has become so far exhausted as not to be rekindled by the administration of medicine, steaming is indispensably necessary. In all cases of sus- pended animation, a gentle bath and bathing the feet in hot water, should be immediately resorted to. In cases of falls and bniises, or accidents of the like, this treatment rarely if ever fails of alTording relief. It is also useful in preventing sickness as well as in curing it. When a person has taken a severe cold, and disease is rapidly getting MATERIA MEDICA. 693 • hold of the system, a thorough steaming, as heremafter directed, will fre- quently tlirow off the disorder. Always remember while givmg the va- por bath, to keep up the internal heat, to prevent faintness ; ibr which pur- pose give a tea of cayenne, or of any other warming or stimulating article, with occasionally wetting the patient's face and breast in tepid water. The most convenient and effectual way to administer tlie bath is to liave a box constructed for that purpose. The following plan is perhaps as good as any Let the box be in the form of a closet, two feet four inches deep, two feet six inches wide, and six feet high. It should be elevated i'rom the floor about six inches, by the means of blocks or legs. Let the bottom be made tight and in form of a sink, with a vessel underneath to receive the condensed water. The door may be five feet and a half high, and one foot ten inches wide, with a hole for ventilation (before which let a curtain be drawn) six by nine inches, about four feet from the bottom. Let the top be boarded tight, and at the bottom, immediately above the sink, let a portable floor, or a board eighteen or twenty inches wide, be supported by means of elects fastened to the sides of the box, under wliich let the steam pass in by means of a lead pipe. This portable floor will break the volume of the steam, cause it to as- cend on all sides of the patient, and prevent its burning his feet. But where a box cannot be had, the following method may be adopted. . Have three or four stones or bricks heated, and let the patient sit in a chair, undressed, with a blanket around him, to confine the vapor and shield him from the air; then place a two gallon kettle with a concave bottom, with about one quart of water, between the feet inside of the blanket — put in one of the heated stones, and as soon as that begins to cool put in another, which contmue to do till the patient is sufficiently warm, which will usually be in from ten to fifteen minutes. The patient may stand during the operation in this way, instead of sit- ting, if able. But when too weak either to stand or sit over the steam, it may be administered in bed, by heating several bricks, wrapping them in wet cloths and placing them around hmi. Or a better plan is, to have a frame made, to place over the patient's body to elevate the covermg, and then pass (he steam into the bed by means of a pipe. The method of producing the steam, in order to administer the bath in the first and last mentioned ways, may be as follows : Have a tin or cop- per boiler constructed in forai of a cylinder, in such a manner as for the heat to pass up through the centre, and to be perfectly air tight except one tube by which to put in water^(to which a tight stopper may be adapt- ed,) and another for the steam to pass out at, on which a pipe must be closely fitted, and from thence passed to the place where you desire to have it. The boiler may be filled with water, and placed on a stove or furnace. As soon as the water commences boUing, the steam will pass out of the tube and through the pipe to any place desired. The tempera- ture of the steam will be regulated by that of the fire over which the boiler is placed, and must be adapted to the patient's strength and ability to bear it. TREATMENT OF DISEASE. In all cases where the patient has little or no appetite, and is declining in health and strength for the want of support, simple treatment, such as tonics, stomachics and soothing medicines, ought to be used; but if they fail to answer the purpose, it is evident that the system is laboring under serious difficulties, and that the patient will not find relief until the ob- structions are removed, perspiration made free, and digestion regulated. 694 THE THOMSON I AN In such cases, the articles that afforded nourishment in health produce excitement and irritation in the stomach, di.tre^s in the head, and a ge- neral derangement througliout the internal vi cera, the arterial and ner- vous system, and a feveri h excitement on the surlace. To remove this, we point out the following phiin and s-imple mode by which all curable forms of di ea-e may be treated iucce, sfully, and the patient restored to health. There h no danger attending the operation of the medicines, as in the regular practice; therefore if one course of medicine U given more than was actually neces aiy, no injury will result to the patient, and the time and medicine is all that is lo t. How important, then, that thorough treatment should be observed, when s-.o momentous an object as the life and health of the patient is concerned. TO BE REMEMBEUED. In all cases where there i^ inflanmiation or a concentration of febrile excitement to any particular point, ibr in tance a srprained joint, distress in the head, inflammation of the -lomach and bowels, &c., the cour e of medicine will remove the ob. truction by equalizing the fluids throughout the system, by which means llie patient will find immediate relief, thus confirming the principle of the unit of disease. If such concentra- tio« of excitement be cau-ed by morbid matter being received into the system by means of a foetid atmos})here, bad food or putrid water, one course may not be sufficient to exclude all the morbid poi on from the secretory vessels, the evidence of whicli will be tlie want of an appetite, sickness at the stomach, weakness in the limb-, and a febiiie excitement. If so, courses should be repeated at suitable intervals of time, until these symptoms pass away, and by the ciiculation through llie body being equalized a healthy action is restored; the appetite beccmes gocd, the digestive organs perform their natural function-, and the ; leep i-; quiet. Courses of medicine may be successfully employed to remove disticss and ease pain, and to make the patient comfortable in all cases of uhit- loics, felons, biles, brmses, or any other excessive inflammafoiy con- centration of the fluids of the body where relief cannot be found from any other course of treatment. First, soak the affected part in lye made of liard wood ashes, then ap- ply a poultice made of flax seed, or yellow lily, or made of bread and milk, which should be kept moirt while under the operation of the course. This will relieve the distress and bring the sore to a cri is, and i , jierhaps the surest way to relieve the patient. It is expected that all simjde means will be tried before the course is resorted to. It should be remembered that all diseases are brought on by derangement of the fluid- of the body, and that all diseases can be cured by restoring order ard reijTlarity to said fluids. Courses of medicine will effect this, if pioperly administer- ed and attended to in season. Where tbere is distress there is disorder and a derangement of the fluid;, and consequently a restoration of order and an equalization in the system, will afford relief. In reading this work, do not forget this important principle; that all diseases herein mentioned are brought about by a decreas*^ or deiange- ment of the vital fluids by taking cold or the los:- of animal waimth. And that the name of the complaint depends upon what part of the body has become so weak as to be affected. If the lungs, it i^ consnmptirn, or the pleura, pleurisy; if the limbs, it is rheumatism, or the bowels, clio- lic or cholera morbus. But after all, these different diseases are caused by the partial loss of vitality or warmth, and all may be removed by a re-toration of the viial energy, and removing the obstructions which the disea e has generated. It is thought by some that unless the physician know the name wliich MATERIA MEDICA. 695 has been given to the disease by others^ he cannot treat it successfully. If he cannot readily call to mind the variety of names so profusely lavish- ed by the reo;ular physicians upon the different forms of disease it will not prevent his medicine from having- a beneficial effect, nor prove that the physician has not valuable practical knoioledge, which is after all the true philosopher's stone of which the patient is in pursuit. Is it right to infer that because a man cannot command all the names that have been written by other {)eople, as liable to errand as frail as him- self, that he cannot by practice, know the use of medicine or the nature of disease : or because he cannot give the respective bones, muscles, li- gaments and vessels of the body their appropriate names, he cannot cure the colic or dysentery. When our pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth the aborigines brought them long golden ears, of a vegetable substance, which they had never seen or heard of before, neither had the great or learned men of their father land, and we are told that they were kept from starvation, were nourished and rendered comfortable through a long dreary winter by the support this vegetable substance afforded, furnished by illiterate savages. Now shall we deny that these people were nourished and supported by this valuable plant, because they did not know that it was Indian com, and because ii was furnished by those illiterate savages, who knew not the meaning of a diploma and had no knowledge of the Greek or Latin lan- guages? Impossible!! The virtues and nutriment were in the corn, and the true science in the matter was in having the knowledge of it. In this respect the savages were scientific and the pilgrims were the quacks, notwithstanding their boasted knowledge in other respects. Give us more practical knowledge and less theorizing; more of true science and less speculation. To remove the infirmities of our fellow men, give us more innocent vegetable substances and less poisons. Then shall we be led to rejoice over the bounties of Providence, in filling the soil with innocent remedies that the poor suffering- sons of humanity may there find an anti- dote for every bodily ill. COURSES OF MEDICINE. No. 1. First — To prepare for the course, let the patient take a dose of com^ position, or No. &, in herb tea, hot, then go into the bath and put his feet into hot water; raise the heat of the bath to about 100 or 110 deg. Fahrenheit. After a lively perspiration starts, and the veins have become full upon the feet, hands and temples, and the pulse much quickened, say to 95 or 100 per minute, take a quart cup of cold water and add hot water to it until its temperature is about that of the surrounding atmo- sphere; then open the door of tlie bath, and have the feet taken out of the pail, and pour your water over the head and shoulders, completely drenching the whole surface of the body and limbs. Then let the patient step out of the bath and be rubbed with a coarse napkin or towel. The indications of a healthy action now are, full veins on the extremities and a lively red ap'pearance in the flesh throughout the system. Noav let the patient go into a warm bed, with a hot stone, brick or jug of hot water at his feet. Secondly. — Take two ounces of No. 3, or canker tea, and put it in a quart bowl, and pour upon it one pint of boiling water; let it steep about ten minutes, strain off three gills, and when hot add two teaspoonsful of brown emetic, one tea^poonful of cayenne, one teaspoonful of nerve powder, and if it is a putrid ca-e, one tablespoonful of No. 6; sweeten it with molasses or sugar. Pour off a wineglass fall of this comp- 696 THE THOMSONIAN ound, and give it to the patient as soon as he is in bed, and then let half a pint of the same compound be given as an injection. Let two or three wineglasses more be given with about half a tea- spoonful of emetic in each, at intervals of fifteen minutes, if that given first does not operate sufficiently. While under the operation of the course, let the patient drink freely of a tea made of spearmint, pepper- mint, pennyroyal, or summersavory, and also of milk porridge or crust coffee, which will nourish and invigorate the body. Thirdly. — In from three to six hours the patient will generally be through with vomiting and the stomach settled : then let bim take a second bathing precisely similar to the first ; let him stay in ten or fifteen minutes, remembering to shower with the tempered water on coming out. Let the surface of tlie body be mbbed thoroughly and then apply to it some cold whiskey and water, to completely close the pores, and the pa- tient may then dress and wash his hands and face in cold water, and if the stomach and bowels have been thoroughly cleansed, he will feel com- pletely well. Fourthly. — Let the patient take of the bitters No. 4, or syrup No. 5, to restore the digestive organs, and his health is soon restored. This course may be repeated if thought advisable, but it is the most powerful one that is usually administered. Course No. 2. In case of inflammatory sore throat, quinsy, rattles or croup, take a dose of composition, cayenne, or No. 6., then take a bath as in course No. 1. Bathing the feet alone will answer, if the bath cannot be handily applied : then give one fourth of a glass of tincture of lobelia, after which give an injection as prepared in course No. 1. or the brown emetic may be put into a boiling hot tea of composition, witchhazle, or red raspberry leaves. This will change the field of excitement from the upper to the lower extremities, and will also turn the pressure of blood in like manner from the head, lungs and neck to the bowels and feet. In all cases of difficulties or inflammation about the region of the lungs or head, the injection should be made sweet with molasses to loosen the bowels, and very stimulating with No. 2, and sufficiently powerful with brown emetic to cause the patient to vomit, and should contain also a teaspoonful of nerve powder, or instead thereof two teaspoonsful of the tincture of asafetida, to quiet the neiTous system while under the ope- ration. Repeat the tincture by the stomach, if the injection does not cause sufficient vomiting, and immediate relief will be the result, unless the patient is very low, or beyond the reach of medicine. After the medicine is done operating, the steam may be applied as in course No. 1 ; the body bathed with whiskey and water, and the feet and legs with stimulating liniment. Put a stmiulating plaster about the neck, with the sides notched, so that it may extend to the edge of the chin, and over this put one or two thicknesses of flannel to keep the neck warm. The same plasters may also be applied to the feet to good ad- vantage. This treatment turns the circulation so completely to the lower extremities that relief is almost instantaneous. In the recent state of the disease this treatment soon brings the difficulty to a crisis, and the patient recovers with verj^ little trouble. In cases of croup or rattles, cloths wet with hot whiskey and water wrung out and applied to the bowels as hot as can be bonie, and often changed, are a great assistant to the other treatment in restoring the lost heat or vitality by absorption. With such practice we have relieved many cases of violent disease of the chest and head, and tliese dii'ections should be remembered and fol- lowed by all in similar cases. MATERIA MEDICA. 697 Course No. 3. There are various forms in which the emetic may be given. A light course may be given a child ; by first bathing the feet in hot water and giving freely of penny royal, spearmint, pepper mint, or summer savory tea, with the addition of a little cayenne and lobelia tincture. Then to a cup of the hot tea add half a tea-spoonful of cayenne, the same quanti- ty of^ brown emetic, and a tea-spoonful of the tincture of asafoetida, and give it as an injection. It vrAl produce copious vomiting, take the dis- tress from the head, and produce immediate relief. After the operation the body of the child may be bathed thoroughly with whiskey and water about blood warm. Put on clean, warm, dry clothes, and place the little patient in bed, and it will feel much relieved and refreshed. If the stomach is so weak or irritable as to reject the cayenne or eme- tic, given as above dii-ected, let the patient drink herb tea untU the sys- tem becomes moist with perspiration, then give the emetic in form of pills, or in honey, any kind Of sweet meats, preserves or syrup, or in weak pearlash or saleratus water; in any of the mint teas or simple drink ; or it may be given in toddy, sling, beer or cider. It may also be taken in lemonade or orange juice and m a great variety of other ways. If the patient is determined not to take the emetic, he may be de- ceived by preparing it in one of the above forms, and not know that he has taken it untill it begins to operate. Then by giving the herb teas or composition, a thorough course may be had without much trouble. But if the child detects the taste of the emetic when mixed with these articles, let him taste of some of the drinks made pleasant, just sufficient to produce a desire for more, then put in your emetic, unnoticed by the patient, and let them harry to drink it before the taste is detected, or they have a chance to know what it is. Course No. 4. Let the patient take of composition or herb tea'tili an easy perspiration is started, then administer half a dozen emetic pills; they will gradually dissolve, and the secretions will take up their emetic properties and nau- sea will be continued for some time before vomiting takes place. If the operation is not sufficient, an injection as directed in Course No. 1, may be administered, or instead of brown emetic, the tincture may be substi- tvited, and if thought advisable a half dozen more pills may be taken. This will generally answer the purpose. After the medicme has done operating, take a vapor bath as directed in Course No. 1, remembering if the circulation is not good m the extremities, to bathe the feet in hot water, and then apply to the feet and legs the stimulating liniment. The proper application of these courses of medicine, in the various forms of disease to which man is subject, we consider the key-stone in the grand arch and superstructure of the Thomsonian system of practice ; for without the lobelia, cayenne and the vapor bath, the grand bulwark of the system would be wanting. These valuable articles stand in the front and foremost rank to oppose all attacks, stages and forms of disease to which frail humanity is subject. ALKALIES To remove acidity and sweeten the stomach, before, at the time and after the operation of the Course of Medicine. STONE-LXME, OR LI31E MADE OF OTSTER-SHELLS, PEARLASH OR SALERATUS. Take half a pound fresh burned lime and put it into two cpiarts of good, clear, soft water, let it slack and stand twenty-four hours, being stirred 45 698 THE THOMSONFAW three or four times during the first six or eight hours. Then remove the scale from the surface and bottle what wUl run off clear for use. Take from half to a glass two or three times a day. If it is too strong, reduce it with water. Pearlash or saleratus may be used in the same way. If at any time too much alkali is taken and distresses the stomach, it may be neutralized immediately by drinking a little cider or vinegar, and the stomach preserved from injury. These counter substances, or irritants, should ever be kept in mind by the physician fer the benefit of the patient •when using either. ENEMAS, OR INJECTIONS. In order to remove a disease, the medicine raust be applied to the part' where the cause originated. Therefore, when the bowelk are concerned, either directly or indirectly, in producing the disorder, whatever it may- be , injections are very important. Where an evacuation of the bowels is all that is necessary, a tea of cay- enne, made very sweet with molasses, will answer every purpose. But in cases Avhere a course of medicine is requisite, the most usual manner of preparing one to be used at that time, is to make a strong tea of com- position No. 3, red raspberry or witch hazle leaves; strain it, and while hot add half a teaspoonful of cayenne, tw© tablespaonsful of molas- ses, and when cool enough to be administered, add a teaspoonful of nerve powder and the same quantity of the tinctare of lobelia; and if there is danger of mortification, add a tablespoonfal of No. 6. In cases of ex- ceeding pressure, or great distress in the head or breast, add to the injec- tion as usually prepared, from one to three teaspoonfuls of brown emetic, (pulverized lobelia seed) and bathe the feet in hot water and liniment. In case of dysentery, or any local disorder of the bowels, such ailicles- ought always to be put into the injections as are useful in such disorders, if given by the stomach. When the uterus or urinary passages are affected, injections may be given to these parts by means of the appropriate sjTinges. Tlie quantity to be irsed as an injection of the bowels should be from a giU to a pint. Syringes of all sizes, and for all the different purposes, should be kept on hand by every practitioner. For those who are costive, a little molasse-s and water, with the addi- tion of a small quantity of cayenne, will be very serviceable. Or instead of that, a tea made of ginger, pennyroyal, spearmint or peppermint, may be sweetened with molasses and used, and by adding cayenne and lobe- lia a course of medicine may be given. A little warm saap-suds will fre- quently answer a good puipose in removing costiveness, and create quite a natural action of the bowels. Note. — In all cases of pressure in the eyes, head, breast or lungs, in- jections should be used, and the feet bathed if necessary, as it shows a deranged or disordered state of the bowels, and; consequent want of cir- culation in the feet. MATERIA MEDICA. 699 iMEDICAL COMPOUNDS, Preparations of Emetic. No. 1.— LOBELIA INFLATA. 1. Take of the leaves of lobelia inflata, finely pulverized, one teaspoon- ful, in warm water sweetened, or in a tea of red raspberry leaves, or any tea proper for removing canker, with prepared composition, cayenne, or hot drops, as a stimulant. The dose is to be repeated tiU the desired ef- fect is produced. This preparation is for the less violent attacks of disease. TO PREPARE LOBELIA SEED WITH SUGAR. 2. Take of the seeds of lobelia, finely pulverized, one pound, and one pound of white sugar — pulverize them well together (the sugar being de- signed to absorb the oil); then add a quarter of a pound of nerve powder, half a pound of cayenne, and one g-allon of improved rheumatic drops. Dose, two teaspoonsful for an adult, in a gill of bayberry or composi- tion tea. TO PREPARE THE LEAVES AND PODS. 2. Separate the leaves and pods from the stalks, pulverize and- sift them; to be preserved from the air. For a dose, take a teaspoonful, in a wineglassful of warm tea made of cayenne, or No. 6, or spearmint, peppermint or penny-royal tea, sweet- ened, or instead, the same quantity of any of the siniple or canker teas. Repeat the dose at intervals of fifteen or twenty minutes till sufficient vo- miting* has been produced. If the patient is very weak, or in case of a child, the liquor should be strained, and the dose moderated according to the circumstances and age. TO PREPARE THE TINCTURE. 4. Take the green herb, in any stage of its growth, (if the plants are small take the roots also) pound them fine, and put them into an equal quantity of fourth proof spirits; let it saturate thoroughly, then strain and press out the liquor, to be preserved closely bottled for use. Good vinegar or pepper sauce may be substituted for the spirits. This is an effectual counter poison, either internally or externally applied. It is good in asthma, consumption, and all complaints of the lungs. For a dose, take a teaspoonful once in twenty minute?, if the first does not have the desired effect. By adding a little cayenne, and in neiTous cases a small quantity of nerve powder, its operations will be more ef- fectual. TO COMPOUND THE THIRD PREPARATION. 5. Take of the lobelia seeds and cayenne, each two ounces, finely pul- verized, and one ounce of nerve powder, and put them into a pint of No. 6, shake them well together, and preserve it closely corked for use. 700 THE THOMSONIAN This is for the most violent attacks of disease, such as tetanus or lock- jaw, hydrophobia, drowning, fits, spasms, and all cases of suspended ani- mation. In all cases where the jaws are set, pour this into the mouth, between the cheek and teeth, and the muscles will relax and the mouth will soon come open. It goes through the system like electricity, giving heat and life to every part. EMETIC PILLS. 6. Take an ounce of the extract of peach leaves, poplar or butternut bark, one teaspoonful of cayenne, half an ounce of pulverized lobelia seeds, two teaspoonsful of nerve powder, and a few drops of the oil of pennyroyal, spearmint, or peppermint; mix the solid articles well toge- ther, and form into a mass with the extract. If too soft, add more of the lobelia and nerve powder; if too hard, add more of the extract. Then make it into pUls. They may be taken, from two to six at night, on go- ing to bed. They are good to cleanse the stomach of morbid matter, to cure sick headache, colic, flatulency, &c. Take from six to twelve, and drink some warm herb or ginger tea, and they will operate smartly as an emetic. This is about as easy a way as a lobelia emetic can be taken. PREPARATIONS FOR CHILDREN. When emetics are given to children, the doses must be regulated ac- cording to their age. The best general directions are, to steep a tea- spoonful of the pulverized herb in a teacupful of hot water, with a little ginger, strain and sweeten, and give of it a teaspoonful once in ten mi- nutes till it operates. If the tincture is used, a teaspoonful of it may be put into a wineglass of hot water, and then taken as above. In giving mediciiie of any kind to children, much depends on the discriminating judgment of the practitioner. Note. — The tincture of lobelia is one of the best remedies in use for the bites of poisonous insects or reptiles; also for inflammations, cuts, bruises, old ulcers, &c. Put three or four thicknesses of cloth upon the wound, and keep it constantly wet with the tincture, and occasionally let a teaspoonful be taken inwardly, if sick at the stomach. Stimulants. No. 2.— CAYENNE PEPPER, Capsicum Baccatum, and Frutescens. These are active stimulants, and the best things known to raise and re- tain the natural heat of the system. They are powerfully stimulating substances, but act only in accordance with the laws of life. They cleanse the salivary glands, promote perspiration, and remove obstruc- tions. A decoction of cayenne will cure the colic or cholera morbus, re- move cramp, or pain in the stomach and bowels, in the last of which it is excellent for children, boiled in milk; and should always be used in courses of medicine. [See page 590.] MATERIA MEDICA. 701 RED PEPPER— Capsicum Annuum. C03IM0N GARDEN PEPPEK. This is a stimulating* substance, next in value in that respect to cay- enne, for which it may be substituted, when that cannot be procured. [See page 593.] BLACK PEPPER— Piper Nigrum. This article is a gentle stimulant, and when necessary may be substi- tuted for the above. Boiled in milk, it is a good remedy for relax and dysentery. [See page 596.] GINGER— Zingiber Officinale. Ginger is a stimulant, useful to be employed in all cases as a substitute for the above articles, Avhen they are not to be had. It answers a good purpose, used instead of composition in giving courses of medicine, when cayenne cannot be obtained. It is good in all pulmonary affections. The root may be chewed as a substitute for tobacco, and is very useful for bleeding at the lungs, asthmatic difficulties, flatulency, pain in the side, or distress from food. [See page 594.] After having given courses of medicine, great care must be observed to prevent taking cold, and to keep up the internal heat so as to maintain perspiration, which can be done by giving occasionally a little of No. 2, either alone or combined in the composition powders; and courses should be occasionally administered, if necessary, until all symptoms of disease have disappeared. 'It is better to apply more courses than are wanted, than that one should be neglected that is necessary. Be vigilant in the use of the medicine till out of danger. Astringents. No. 3.— THE DIFFERENT ARTICLES. BAYBERRY— Jfi/nca Cerifera. This is an excellent remedy for canker, and is good for derangement of the stomach and bowels. By using it as a dentifrice, and drinking a little of the tea occasionally, it will cleanse the teeth and gums, and pre- vent an offensive breath. A strong tea of this article will remove the ad- hesive matter from the mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines, and create an appetite. Taken with the emetic, it is very useful to re- moke canker. It is an excellent sneezing snuff. [See page 597.] WHITE POND LILY— NympJuBa Odorata. An excellent article for derangement of the bowels, and is good for canker in any of its forms. Made into syrup, it is useful for children in looseness of the bowels or while teething, and will sweeten the mouth, and cleanse old ulcers. A syrup may be made of the flowers that is use- ful for nursing sore mouth, with mothers as well as children. [See page 598.] This article it would be well for every family to keep on hand. 702 THE THOMSONIAN HEMLOCK — Pinus Canadensis. The boughs in decoction are excellent for strengthening the back and kidneys. This infusion has been used as a constant drink in bilious coun- tries, and in this way those who have employod it have avoided the dis- eases incident to such places. By boiling the boughs, they yield an extract which may be profitably employed in the form of plasters. The bark is a good astringent, which may be used for canker, either alone or compounded with any of the articles under this head . The gum may be used instead of rosin in strengthening plasters, and made thin by the addition of lard and a little cayenne, is very useful for rheumatism or weakness of the back. MARSH 'ROSFMAUY—Statice Limonium. Is veiy good for sore mouth, throat, and all cases of canker. It is much used along tlie sea board for thrush, and difficulties of the stomach and bowels. Care should be taken that it is not too drying to the glands of the mouth and throat. [See page 601.] This may be used compounded with bayberry or witch hazle leaves in courses of medicine, or for injections and as a drink for canker. SUMAC— i2/ius Glabrum. This is an astringent valuable in dysentery, and may be used the same as bayberry, for which it may be substituted in courses of medicine and all cases of canker. It may be compounded with witch hazel, and used generally where canker medicine should be employed, especially for children. The berries may be compounded with red raspberry leaves, to be used in the courses of medicine, and for canker. [See page 602.] WITCH RAZEL—Hamamelis Virginica. In decoction, it is useful for bleeding at the lungs, stomach or bowels, and in snufif, for bleeding at the nose. This valuable article maybe used in giving courses of medicine alone, or compounded with sumac or red raspberry. It is very serviceable in dysentery, relax, or any other com- plaint of the bowels or stomach. Chewing the leaves alone is good for sore mouth. A wash made from them* is excellent to cleanse old sores and dry up ulcers in various parts of the body. [See page 603.] RED RASPBERRY— /?u6us Strigosus. Red raspberry leaves are an excellent substitute for imported tea. The decoction is a valuable remedy for canker in courses of medicine, for which purpose it may be used instead of other articles vmder this head. It is good for sore mouth; and made into a poultice it is a first rate article for scalds, freezes, old sores, &c. A tea made of the leaves may be used to great advantage during hot weather. It braces up the body, and keeps off faint and languid feelings. Women, for some time previous and during the time of delivery, should keep on hand and make free use of this tea. The fruit is wholesome and nutritious. [See page 604.] LIBERTY TEA— Ceanothus Jlmericana. This plant is mucilaginous, and one of the best articles in use for sum- mer complaints, and is also good for sore mouth and throat. It is an excel- lent tonic, and has been usefully substituted for imported tea. It should be gathered and preserved, to be used in the complaints incident to child- MATERIA MEDICA* 703 yen. It is a great regulator of the bowels, and used in tea as a constant drink is valuable for dysentery or relax. [See page 606.] COCASH — JsUr Hyssopifolius. Cocash is good for vertigo, nervous affections, and coldness of the ex- tremities. It may be profitably employed as a remedy for canker. If bruised and put into gm, it makes an excellent bitter, useful in rheuma- tism and nervous affections. People in vicinities where it grows should •gather it for use. In bilious countries it is an excellent article to prevent fevers and bilious complaints. [See page 607.] AVENS 'ROOT—Geum Virginianum. This article is good in canker or general debility, and may be usefully Substituted for chocolate. It may be used as a constant drink in putrid complaints to advantage. In ague countries, if constantly employed, it will prevent bilious complaints, as well as a disordered state of the bow- els. It is a good substitute for Peruvian bark. Its tonic powers are well known to the people in the neighborhoods where it grows. It should be preserved. [See page 608.] CRANESBILL — Geranium Maculatum. It is good in cholera infantum, hemorrhage of the lungs or bowels, and in all relaxed debilitated conditions of the body. This article is much like avens root, witch hazel, red raspberry and sumac, and may be used in like manner. It is very useful, simmered in honey, for sore mouth or 'complaints of the bowels. A quantity of this root should be gathered and kept on hand by those who cannot obtain bayberry bark, to be used for 9i.milar purposes. [See page 609.] BLACK OAK— Quercus Rubra. Useful in fever, diarrhoea, scrofula, and all cases of canker. The acorns simmered in honey are good for sore mouth and throat. Care should be taken that this article is not given too strong, as it may create too great an astringency upon the glands of the mouth and throat. It may be re- duced in its astringent properties by the use of sage, avens root or cranes- bill, which possess nearly the same qualities, bat are not so strong astrin- gents. [See page 610.] SAGE-^iS^aZwa Officinalis: Sage is an excellent article to quiet nervous and mental excitement, and prevent putrifaction. It is good for worms or bowel complaints in children. It is also a valuable article to clear the head, when used in connection with senna — half an ounce of each in half a pint of hot water, with a teaspoonful of ginger. This will afford great relief to the head as soon as it operates. Simmered with borax and honey, it is an excellent wash for sore mouth in children, and for women in uterogestation. Its trial will prove its virtues. Sage should be presei-ved for family use. fSee page 611.] COMPOUNDS OF NO. 3,— FOR CANKER. 1. Take equal parts of bayberry and white pond lily root, pulverize fine, and mix well together. Steep one ounce in a pint of boiling water, and let it be well sweetened, and add a little cayenne. Of this, give for a dose a wineglassful, and repeat it at discretion. If a nervous case, add 704- THE THOMSONIAN half a teaspoonful of nerve powder, and from one to two teaspoonfuls of asafetida. 2. Take sumac, red raspberry and witch hazel leaves, with marsh- rosemary, of each an equal quantity; let them all be finely pulverized and well mixed. In case of an attack of cold add a little of No. 2. To be taken the same as the preceding^. These articles may be used in course, and separately if necessary. 3. Take red raspberry, avens root, and marsh-rosemary, of each equal quantities, tinely pulverized ; mix the articles well together, and they make an excellent cankeT remedy, and one that is higlily useful in diar- rhoea, and all relaxed states of the bowels. For a dose, take a teaspoonful, m a wineglassful of hot water, sweet- ened. 4. Take cranesbill and witch hazel, equal quantities of each, and half the quantity of black oak bark, well rossed, dried, pulverized and mixed. This may be used in the same way and for the same purposes as the one next preceding. Add a little golden seal, and it makes an excellent bit- ter. 5. Take of sage, cocash and liberty tea, each one pound, pulverize and mis. This is an excellent article for all derangement of the bowels, especially where it is attended with nervous or mental excitement. Take for a dose, a teaspoonful, in half a teacupful of hot water, repeat- ed as often as the circumstances require. 6. Take hemlock, black oak and baybeny barks, of each an equal quantity; let them all be finely pulverized and well mixed. This is a powerful astringent, to scour the canker from the glands and mucous membrane of the whole alimentary canal. Dose, a teaspoonful, in a half pint of hot water, sweetened. This must not be used too freely, and may be tempered with either of the preceding articles that possess less astringent power. These different compounds may be used in courses. N. B. In all compounds for canker or cold, a little cayenne should be added, as it renders the medicine much more effectual; and the patient should be, when the medicine is used, kept warm in bed, or shielded from the air by an over-coat or blanket. These compounds are veiy valuably, and should be kept on hand by all who use Thomsonian medicme. In taking these medicines, great' , care should be observed to keep from taking cold, and recovery is gene--^"*' rally very rapid. Let the patients always drink freely of milk porridge or other nourish' ^ ment while using these medicines, if they have an inclination to eat; but never force the appetite, as nature will regulate her own work. By forc- ing the appetite, you generate disease. Bitters. No. 4.— THE DIFFERENT ARTICLES. B ALMON Y— Chelone Glabra . This is a bitter of the first order. It corrects the secretions of bilie, creates an appetite, and gives health and activity to the digestive organs [See page 613.] MATERIA 5IEDICA. 705 GOLDEN SEAL — Hydrastis Canadensis. This article is an excellent bitter tonic, to be used for dyspepsy, and all derangements of the digestive organs. [See page 613.] POPLAR— PopuZtts. An excellent remedy for indigestion and costlveness, and is also good for urinary difficulties, in combination with hemlock boughs. The buds and small twigs may be used in decoction for womas, or disordered bow- els. [See page 615.] BARBERRY— ^eriens Vulgaris. This is a good bitter to correct the gall and regulate digestion, and will also remove costiveness. It is gently laxative. [See page 617.] BITTER ROOT— ^pocj/num Canabinum. It will remove costiveness, correct tlie secretions of gall, and remove obstructions in the whole alimentary canal. In dropsical cases it will operate as a hydragogue cathartic. [See page 619.] UNICORN ROOT— jiletris Ferinosa. Unicom is a valuable tonic, and may be employed for the same pur- poses as the other articles under this head. It is peculiarly serviceable in female weaknesses and nervous debility, and is an excellent article for cough and pain in the side. [See page 620] BOXWOOD— Comus Florida. It increases the animal warmth, strengthens the digestive organs, and obviates female weaknesses. [See page 621.] GOLD THREAD— Cop< is Trifolia. This article is a tonic which may be substituted for golden sealer bar- berry; and its astringent properties render it peculiarly serviceable for sore mouth or throat, when used with honey and borax. [See page 622.] HOREHOUNI>— il/aru6iwm Vulgare, This herb is valuable as a tonic, and may be used to great advantage in coughs, consumptions, and general debility. [See page 622.] * COMFREY— Sj/mp/iyfitm Officinale. A tonic, good in all cases where mucilaginous medicines are useful, but more especially m female weaknesses. [See page 623.] COMPOUNDS OF No. 4. 1 . Take balmony, baybeiTy and poplar bark, each equal parts, pulver- ized and well mixed. To one ounce of tliis compound add a pint of boil- ing water and half a pint of spirits. Dose, half a wineglassful three or four times a day. To the above add one teaspoonful of cayenne for every ounce of pow- der, and it makes a good hot bitter. 2. Take of golden seal half an ounce, poplar bark one ounce, black cherry bark two ounces, nerve powder a fourth of an ounce, and half a teaspoonful of cayenne; let them be pulverized and well mixed. To an ounce of this powder add half a pint of boiling water, one ounce of loaf sugar, and one pint of best Holland gin. Dose, from half to a wineglassful, at discretion. 706 THE THOMSONIAN 3. Take of balmony and poplar each two ounces, bayberry half aft ounce, black birch four ounces; pulverize and mix well together, then work in a fourth of an ounce of cayenne and two pounds of sugar. Take a teaspoonful of this compound night and morning, in a little hot water; or an ounce of it may be put into a gill of boiling water, to which add one pint and a half of good gin, or West India rum. Dose, half .a wineglass, two or Ihree times a day. SPICE BITTERS. 1. Take of fine poplar bark one pound, balmony seven ounces, bay^ berry four ounces, ginger four ounces, cayenne one ounce, cloves three ounces, golden seal three ounces, sugar two pounds, and let them be well mixed. 2. Take of poplar bark ten jwunds, bayberry and balmony each two pounds, golden seal and cl<»ves each one pound, cayenne half a pound, and sixteen pounds of sugar. Let these articles all be made fine and well mixed. Put a tablespoonful of this compound with four ounces of sugar into a quart of boiling water. Take a wineglassful of this three times a day before eating. This is a good bitter. Or a teaspoonful of these powders with one of sugar, may be taken in a cup of hot water; or one ounce may be scalded in half a pint of hot water, and put into a quart bottle, which may be filled with good Malaga wine. Prepared in this way, it is an excellent bitter for weak patients. WINE BITTERS. Take one part of balmony and five of poplar bark, boil in water suf- ficient to strain fi-om one pound two and a half gallons of water, to which add three and a half pounds of white sugar, and two and a half ounces of nerve powder while hot, strain and add three and a half gallons best Malaga wine and one quart each of the tincture of meadow fern and prickly ash seeds. 2. Take five pounds of poplar bark and one of balmony, boil them in 15 gallons of water, then add while hot, twenty pounds of sugar and one pound of nerve powder. Strain off and add four gallons of fourth proof Jamaica rum or brandy, twenty gallons of best Malaga wine, and one gallon each of tincture of meadow fem and prickly ash bark. When cool put it into a banel and it is fit for use. Dose, from half to a wineglassful three times a day. RESTORATIVE AND RELAXING BITTERS. Take one quart of beef's gall, one gallon best Holland gin, and one gallon molasses; mix and shake them well together. Dose, a wineglassful at night or at discretion. ASTRINGENT BITTERS. Take of bayberry two pounds, of golden seal and ginger each one pound, cayenne and cloves each two ounces; all finely pulverized, sifted and well mixed. For dyspeptics with relaxed state of the bowels. Dose, a teaspoonful in hot ^vater sweetened. DYSPEPTIC POWDERS. Take of cayenne four ounces, golden seal half a pound, poplar bark four pounds and brown sugar eight pounds : let them all be made fine and well mixed, and then add one ounce of essence of pennyroyal, to be well incorporated with the other articles. This is good for distress occasioned MATERIA MEDICA. 707 by food, for colic, flatulency and to remove faintness at the stomach. A teaspoonful may be taken in a cup of hot water, in boiled milk, wine, or when more convenient in a glass of cold water, or it may be eaten dry. It will remove chills, ague and cramps from the system, and is a a very valuable article to be kept on hand for use. WOMAN'S FRIEND. Take of poplar bark five pounds; unicorn, cinnamon, golden seal, and cloves, each half a pound; four ounces of cayenne and eight pounds of sugar. Let them all be made fine and well mixed. This is an excel- lent article in female weaknesses, to prevent abortion and to be used at the cessation of the menses. A teaspoonful may be taken in a gill of hot water. To Restore Digestion, No. 5. THE DIFFERENT ARTICLES. PEACH TKEE—Amygdalus Persica. This is an excellent article in a great variety of cases, among which are weakness of the digestive organs, disordered bowels, sickness at the stomach, for children when teething, and for worms. [See page 624.] BLACK CHERRY— Prtmws Virginiana. This is one of the most valuable articles among our tonic remedies, and it also has the power of calming irritation and diminishing nervous irrita- bility. [See page 626.] BITTER ALMONB—j^mydalus jimara. Good in all cases of debility of the stomach and bowels. It may be used alone, or in combination with other articles. [See page 628.] COMPOUNDS OF No. 5. SYRUP FOR WEAKLY PATIENTS. Take one pound each of the roots of elecampane, spicknard and com- frey, and half a pound of box-wood flowers; bruise them well together in a mortar, boil in two gallons of water one hour, strain and add while hot half an ounce of golden seal, two ounces of dyspepsy powders, four oun- ces of prickly ash seed, four ounces of gum arable, the same quantity of allspice, two ounces of slippery elm bark, all finely pulverized, and eight pounds of loaf sugar; to this add one gallon good Holland gin and half the quantity of Madeira wine. Stop it tight in bottles for use. Dose, from a fourth to a wine-glass full two or three times a day. This is good for all female weaknesses, and is very strengthening to the loins and back. SYRUP FOR WEAKLY FEMALES. Take a large handful of green comfrey roots well cleansed and bruised; boil them in two quarts of water, strain off and press out the liquor, then grate in three nutmegs, add one ounce of dyspeptic powders, one pound of raisins pulverized, six pounds of loaf sugar, one pint of brandy and two 708 THE THOMSONIAN quarts of Madeira wine. When cool add six eggs that have been beaten fine, and let it be well stirred together. This is a valuable article for female weaknesses. Dose, a wine-glass full three or four times a day. SYRUP FOR DYSENTERY. Take of bayberr)' bark and sumach leaves each one ounce, and boil in two quarts of water, one hour, strain off and add half an ounce each of golden seal and cloves, and when cool one pint of rheumatic drops. This is an excellent article for looseness of the bowels and indigestion. Dose, from one to four table spoonsful three times a day. SYRUP TO STRENGTHEN THE STOMACH AND BOWELS. Take one pound each of poplar bark and bayberry, boil them in two gallons of water, strain off and add seven pounds of good sugar; then scald and skim it, and add half a pound of peachmeats or the same quan- tity of cheny-stone meats, pulverized. When cool add a gallon of good brandy, and keep it in bottles for use. Dose, half a wine-glass full two or three times a day. This is an excellent article to strengthen the stomach and bowels and restore weak patients, and is particularly useful in dysenterj'. It is a good preventive as well as remedy for relax, dysenteiy, cholera mor- bus, &c. MUCILAGINOUS SYRUP. Take the pith of the roots of buckhom brake, bruised; put them into a stone pot, and add water, either cold or hot; beat them with a spoon un- til it is of the consistence of the white of an egg. Pour oflf, and to one gallon add two pounds white sugar, one quart best brandy, two ounces caraway seed pulverized, and one glass of the volatile tincture. Use, for weak nervous patients and child-bed women. SYRUP FOR DYSENTERY, OR RELAX. Make a strong decoction of baybeiry, or in want thereof sumach, or marsh rosemary; sti-ain, and wliile hot add to a gallon of the decoction two pounds of brown sugar. When cold add three pints of hot drops, (or enough to prevent its souring.) If necessary, add more of the hot drops when taken. DYSENTERY SYRUP. Make a strong decoction of equal parts of fine bayberry and sumach leaves. To one gallon of the decoction add two pounds of sugar, which has been dissolved, boiled and skimmed; one ounce of golden seal, and half an ounce of cloves. When cold add three quarts and a half rheu- matic drops. Dose, from a tablespoonful to a wineglass two or three times a day. SYRUP FOR RELAX, OR SUMMER COMPLAINT. Take of poplar bark, black cherry bark, of the gi-een root, and balmo- ny, each one pound; of golden seal and hops, each half a pound; boil these mgredients in eight gallons of water, and strain off; then scald and add twenty-five pounds of white sugar; take off the scum, and add while liot, a pound of cloves. When cool, add two gallons of rheumatic drops. Dose, for an adult, from half to a wineglassful, at discretion. ANTIDYSPEPTIC RESTORATIVE. Take of poplar bark five pounds ; of golden seal and ginger, each two MATERIA MEDICA. 709 pounds; ofbalmony, umbil, cloves, unicom, cinnamon, and cayenne, each one pound; of white sugar fifteen pounds; let them all be pulveriz- ed and well mixed. Dose, a teaspoonful, in a tumbler of hot water, sweetened. For Wixe Bitters — Take an ounce of the above powders, scald them in a half pint of hot water, put them into a quart bottle, fill it with best sweet Malaga wine, and add sugar at discretion. Dose, from half to a wineglassful, three or four tunes a day. ANTIDYSPEPTIC CONSERVE. Take one pound of fresh blossoms of hollyhock, or of dry ones moist- ened to the same consistence as the green, pound them well together in a mortar ; then add four pounds of white sugar — pound until a paste is formed — then knead or work in with a pestle the following powder, made fine : two pounds each of poplar bark and ginger, half a pound each of golden seal, balmony, cloves, slippery elm bark and cayenne. When it becomes of the consistence of dough, add a fourth of an ounce of penny- royal, well mixed. Make it into a loaf, or pills, or any other form you wish, and let it drj' for use. A piece of this may be dissolved in the mouth, and swallowed with the saliva. It will answer as a good substitute for tobacco. This is a pow- erful antidyspeptic agent, and an excellent article to be used by people of weak, debilitated, and consumptive habits. The spring is the best time to try its beneficial effects. People then are apt to feel weak and faint, from the imperfect digestion of their food, produced by the change in the atmosphere or other causes. .^ The use of this article will give tone to and brace up the stomach, and impart to a person a vigorous and lively sensation. Antiseptic and Stimulant. GUM MYRRH — Balsamodendron Myrrha. Myrrh is the most powerful antiseptic known, and is on that account highly serviceable in all putrid affections whatever. It is almost a cer- tain remedy for cholera, and all cases of putridity of the bowels. It is good in female obstructions, difficulties of the lungs, and for weak joints, sprains and bruises. Combined with alcohol and cayenne is the most usual form of using it. [See page 629.] No. 6. RHEUMATIC OR HOT DROPS. IMPROVED RHEUMATIC DROPS. 1. Take one gallon of high cheny spirits, one pound gum myi*rh, four ounces golden seal, four ounces bayberry, one ounce cayenne; mix and shake once a day for several days. The solid articles must be pul- verised. 2. Take one pound of gum mjTrh pulverized, and one ounce of fine cayenne; simmer them for twenty or thirty minutes in one quart of sweet wine, this will decompose the myrrh rapidly. Then add two ounces of pulverized prickly ash seeds, one ounce tincture of camphor, one gallon of West India rum, and four pounds of fine loaf sugar. This is an ex- cellent article for all kinds of sprains, for a weak back, &c., to be bathed 710 THE THOMSONIAN on and taken internally. It is also a valuable remedy for relax, dysen- tery, &c. 3. Take one gallon of any kind of liig-h wines, one pound of guni myrrh made fine, and one ounce of cayenne; put them into a stone ju"" and boil it for a few minutes in a kettle of water, leaving the jug un- corked. It maybe prepared without boiling by letting it stand and shak- ing it two or three times a day for a week, when it will be fit for use. These drops are to remove pain and prevent mortification, either inter- nally or externally applied. Dose, from a tea to a tablespoonful in a little hot water, or given in other medicine. They may be used to bathe with in all cases of external swellings or pain. It it an excellent remedy for the rheumatism, in which case take ateaspoonful and bathe the parts affected. It will relieve headache by tak- ing a dose , bathing it on the head and snuffing it up (he nose . It is good for bruises, sprains, swollen joints, and old sores; it will allay inflammation, reduce swellings, ease pain and produce a tendency to heal. There is scarcely a complaint in which this may not be used to advantage. It is the best preservative against mortification I have ever found. For bathing, in rheumatism, itch, or for any other external application, add one quarter part of spirits of turpentine; and for sprains or bruises, a small quantity of camphor and nerve ointment may be added. COMPOSITION POWDERS— i^irsf Preparation. Take of bayberry two pounds, ginger ose pound, cayenne and cloves each two ounces; all finely pulverized and well mixed. Second Preparation. Take of baybeiTy, ginger, poplar and hemlock bark each one pound, of red or white oak bark half a pound, three ounces of cayenne and two of cloves, all finely pulverized and well mixed. Third Preparation. Take two pounds each of bayberry and ginger, one pound each of pop- lar and oak bark, three ounces of cayenne and two of cloves, all finely pulverized and well mixed. DIRECTIONS FOR USING. Let either of these compounds be taken for canker and to promote per- spiration, the patient being shielded from the air. Dose, a tea-spoonful in a cup of hot water, sweetened. This is for the first stages and less violent attacks of disease. It is a valuable medicine, and may be safely employed in all cases. It is good for relax, pain in the stomach and bowels, and to remove all obstructions caused by cold. A few doses of this, the patient being in bed, with a steaming stone at the feet, will cure a bad cold, and usually throw off disease in its first stages. JVervines. LADIES' SLITVER—Cypripedium. This is an excellent article in all spasmodic nen'ous or hysterical af- fections. It is entirely destitute of narcotic properties and may be used MATERIA MEUICA. 711 with freedom and safety in all cases of disease. After its operation the patient feels cheerful and happy in belli body and mind. [See page 632^1 ASAFETID A— /"erwZa jlsafatida.. This article is powerfully antispasmodic expectorant and feebly laxa- tive. It is very useful in the treatment of hypochondria, hysteria, con- vulsions, spasms and all cases of nervous debility. From the union of its different qualities it is an excellent article in all difficulties of the lungs. It may be substituted for the faregoing, and is also a valuable ar- ticle in constipation and flatulency. [See page 634.] CAMPHOR — Laurus Ccmsphora. This exerts a considerable influence over the brain and nervous system. It increases the heat of the strrface, promotes perspiration, strengthens the pulse and allays nervous irritation. It expels wind from the stomach and may be used as a nervine when tbe asafetida and valeiian cannot be Lad. [See page 636.] Note. — Holland gin is an excellent nervine and may be used in all cases of nervous initability with good effect. Let it be prepared in form of sling, and taken hot on going to bed. SKUNK CABBAGE— /dodes Fatidus. This is an antispasmodic stimulant and narcotic, and is good for all affections of the lungs, hysteria and rheumatism. It is a valuable remedy for coughs and dropsy. [See page 638.] BITTERSWEET— .SoZanwrn Dulcamara. It has the power of increasing the secretions of the kidneys and skin, and in large doses produces narcotic effects. It is useful in mania and also in cutaneous affections. An ointment is made from it very useful ta remove stiffness of the joints and callouses, and also for spiains and re- laxed or contracted muscles. [See page 639.] Antiscorbutics, BURDOCK— ^rcfum Lappa. This root is sudorific, diaphoretic and aperient, withont irritating pro- perties, and is a valuable remedy for all scorbutic affections. The seeds are diuretic and may be profitably employed where such articles are ne- cessar)'-, and also to cleanse all mipurities from the blood. The leaves are useful in drafts and may be applied to the feet or amy part of the body suffering with pain. [See page 641.] BLACK SNAKE 'ROOT—Macrotys Serpmtaria. This is a very useful article in rheumatism, dropsy, affections of the uterus and pulmonary consumption. It exerts a great influence over the nervous and arterial systems, and increases the secretions of the kid- neys and skin. [See page 643.] PIPSISEWA OR PRINCESS VlNE—ChimaphUa Umbellata. Its active properties are antiscorbutic, tonic and astringent, and is good 732 THE THOMSONIAN in rheumatism, scrofula, affections of the kidney and all scorbutic diffi- culties. £See page 644.] GREEN OSIER— Cornus Cirdnali. Good for all kinds of inflammation, especially of the e)'es. It strength- -ens the stomach and removes scorbutic difficulties. [See page 646.] BOCKS— Ramex. Very useful in scorbutic disorders and cutaneous eruptions. They are antiscorbutic, aperient and tonic ; good in all cases where any articles under this head may be used. [See page 648.] PRICKLY ASH — Xanthoxylum Fraxineum. This is an antiscorbutic, antispasmodic, stimulant and diaphoretic; good for coldness in the extremeties, chills, inflammation in the face, tooth- ache, &c. [See page 650.] YARROW— Achillea MilUfolium. Internally, yarrow is useful in nervous affections, colic, and intermit- tent fevers; externally, for all kinds of inflammatory sores, salt-rheum, cracked hands and piles. [See page 6.52.] LOVAGE — Ligusticum Levisticum. Good for scrofula, venereal, rheumatism, and female obstructions. £See page 652.] CVBEBS—Cuheba. This is a grateful tonic, stomachic and regulator of the digestive or- gans. It is also a useful remedy in gonorrhoea and first stages of syphil- lis. [See page 653.] MEADOW FERN— 3fyrica Gale. Useful in salt-rheum, tetter, itch, and all poisonous eruptions of the skin. [See page 649.] FERN OINTMENT. Take of the leaves of meadow fern, the buds of balm of Gilead, and gum myrrh, of each equal parts; simmer in fresh butter, and strain. Let it be hardened with bayberry tallow and rosin. DRINKS FOR BAD HUMORS. Take four ounces each of the following articles : burdock seeds, prin- cess pine, sarsaparilla and sassafras; let them all be dry, finely pulver- ized and well mixed. Steep one tablespoonful in a pint of hot water, and let it be used as a constant drink. DECOCTIONS OF SARSAPARILLA. FOR THE BLOOD. Take of sarsaparilla root six ounces, soft water one gallon. After ma- cerating in boiling water for two hours, then take out the root and bruise it; add it again to the liquor, and macerate it once more for two hours; then boil down the liquor to four pints, and strain it. Take from a gill to half a pint daily, or more if thought advisable. COMPOUND DECOCTION OF SARSAPARILLA. Take of sarsaparilla root, cut and bruised, six ounces; the bark of sas- safras root, lignum vitas dust (guaiacum wood) or shavings, liquorice MATER FA MEDICA, 713 TDot, of each one ounce. Bmise them well tog-ether, and put them into ^five quarts of water, and let it steep over a gentle fire for six hours; then boil down the liquors to one-half or to five pints, and strain off. Tlie dose is, from one gill to half a pint daily, and to be taken for all bad humors. These decoctions arc of very great use in purifying- the blood, and re- solving obstructions in scorbutic and scrofulous cases; also in cutaneous cniptions, and many other diseases. Obstinate swellings, that have re- sisted the effects of other remedies for upwards of twelve months, have been cured by drinking a quart of this decoction daily for some time. Decoctions of sar^aparilla ought to be made fresh every day, as they very soon become fetid and unfit for use. Whiletaking this tea, the courses of medicine may be used with great advantage . ANTISCORBUTIC DRINK, Meadow fern leaves and burs, bruised and made into a tea, are very useful in cleansing the blood of all humors. For this purpose, it is more valuable than sarsaparilla. JPowerful Antiscorbutic Olntrncnt TOBACCO OINTMENT— OR UNGUENTUM TABACI. Take half a pound of the leaves of tobacco, one pound of dock roots, one pound of lovAge root; bmi-e the leaves and roots in a mortar, and .put them into two gallons of soft spring, or rain water; boil for one hour, strain off, press the grains and simmer the liquor down to the thickness of molasses, then add two pounds of fresh lard, four ounces of beeewax, and four ounces of burgundy pitch; continue a moderate heat just sufficient to dry away the moisture, and unite the compound into an ointment for use. This is tbe most powerful antiscorbutic ointment that I have ever become acquainted with. I first observed the salutary operation of this valuable ointment, in a case of saltrheum of six years standing, upon the Island of Nantucket. The sore embraced the whole back part of the head from the crown to the neck, and from ear to ear. So severe was the irritation, that the hands of the child were muffled to restrain him from tearing tiie skin seriou-ly with his finger nails. Notwith-tanding the hand; were shut and a strong cloth put over and tied fast about the wrist to keep his fingers thus closely confined, on going to bed he would turn upon his face, and with hi>hand; thu; muffled, rub off the scabs from the whole suiface of the sore, and the blood and water would course their way down to the back of the neck, staining the shirt and bed clothes very much with the foul ulcerous matter. The be it medical as.istance in the place had been employed for three or four years, but to no advantage; the parents completely despairing of the child's finding any benefit, except in time they thought he might out grow it. By the application of this ointment the sore was healed entirely in three weeks. In a month or two after, it broke out again, about as large as a cent; the ointment wai again applied and the sores healed. It is now about eighteen years since, and the sores have not again broken out to the knowledge of the writer. 46 714 THE THOMSOiMAH A second case of the same complaint I had about one year after the «me before mentioned, which was the most violent of any I ever saw, as there was not a particle of the natural cuticle or skin to be seen above the chin ; in fact the whole surface of the head was one solid mass of corruption > also the joints of the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. The only sound skin was to be found on the body and between ihe joints. The child had been afflicted with this complaint near three years. The mother had employed the best physicians in the place, and they had giv- en their unremitting attention to the case for about two years without any perceptible benefit. The mother having heard of the case of the boy whose head I had pre- viously cured, as before mentioned, after being atllicted six years, she went to see the child, and examined the head, for her own satisfaction. On her return home I was sent for. I went immediately to the house, and after the usual salutation on entering, the lady, who was a quakeress, said — Is thee Doctor Thomson.'' That is my name, I replied. Well, 1 have been to see Coffin's child, whom thee cured of the salt-rheum, and am so well satisfied with thy practice in that case, that I have sent for thee to see if thee can render me a lilie service in the case of my child . There is the poor distressed object, (pointing to the cradle) not sick at heart, but see the dreadful state of his face. I have had Dr. G. to attend to the child for about two years past, and I will give thee six months to effect a cure, and no longer. I remarked, that I thought she ought to give me as great a length of time as doctor G., if I effected the cure : but not so — six months was my limit. She said that Dr. G. was an old friend, or he would not have been favored so long. I made the commencement, and in three months the sores were entire- ly healed, and the face, body and limbs, were without a scar; and it ap- peared to me to be the fairest complexioned child I ever saw. The ope- ration of the medicine seemed to improve the child both in strength and color of the skin. I have cured a number of other cases of salt-rheum and scorbutic ulcers with this ointment. PREPARATIOIf OF THE OINTMENT BEFORE USE. Take a lump about the size of a walnut, and mix it well with a table- spoonful of hog's lard, or about three parts of lard to one of ointment. Then give the patient some prepared composition, hot drops, or some- thing to warm the stomach. Then wash the parts affected by the disease with warm soapsuds, to cleanse the same; dry them off with a cloth, and take a portion of the ointment about the size of a pea and iiib it over them, and so continue until the whole surface of the sores is saturated. Increase the strength of the ointment daily until you are enabled to apply it in full force. In a few minutes after the application, the patient will begin to look pale, grow sick at the stomach, and will vomit profusely, if the ointment is of sufficient strength, by which means the whole system, both internal- ly and externally, will become cleansed by its use. I think tliis oint- ment the most powerful antiscorbutic that can be applied to the surface of the body, as it purifies the skin and blood at the same time, of the sharp acrid humors. Those who have cutaneous eruptions which they wish to be rid of, will never regret the application of this remedy; but they must not mind the temporary sickness which it will certainly create, as there is no danger, that I have ever known, to arise from its effects, which are the same pre- MATERIA MEDICA. 715 cisely as are experienced from the seed of the lobelia or the brown emetic when under a course of medicine. This ointment may be applied to the neck and breast of children to good advantage in cases of the croup. It is also good for old ulcers, fe- ver sores, and for tetanus, or lockjaw, by bathing the parts affected, and drying it in by the lire. It is excellent to bathe joints, or contracted muscles. There is no sore upon the surface where this ointment may not be use- fully applied, especially if it cannot be healed with other remedies usual in such cases. Take a bath three or four times a week and cleanse the surface, as di- rected under the head of " Treatment of the Surface." N. B. Never be frightened at the effect of this ointment, as there is no danger if the stomach is kept warm and well nourished with gmel. The antiscorbutic tea may be used daily while the ointment is being applied. TREATMENT OF THE SURFACE AFTER TAKING A BATH. for the benefit of scorbutic patients. After having taken a bath and filled the extremities with an active cir- culation of blood, which may be known by the fulness of the veins, pour over the whole body a quart of water, with the chill removed sufficiently to leave it gently tepid, or about the temperature of the air. Then rub the body with a napkin severely, so much so as to create a cutaneous ex- citement and a warm glow throughout the whole exterior system. Thea take four ounces of the tincture of lobelia, and dissolve as much saleratus in it as it will bear. Pour over the body a quantity of this preparation, and rub it in with the hands, and upon the lunbs also, and it leaves an agree- able genial glow, that is very pleasant to the person who experiences the operation. It clears the capillary vessels, and is an excellent thing to correct morbid obstructions of the perspiration. Where the external surface is dry and inert after bathing, and applying the cold or tepid water as above directed, the rheumatic liniment may also be used thoroughly over the body, the same as the tmcture was applied, causing a lively and pleasant glow, that is very useful to promote perspi- ration, for dyspeptic, rheumatic and dropsical habits ANTISCORBUTIC POULTICE, For Fever Sores, Whitlows, Biles, Old Ulcerous Sores, King's Fvil 4-c. To half a pint of hot water, add two heaping tablespoonsful of fine salt and one fablespoonful each of cayenne and brown emetic, well pulveriz- ed; stir them well together, and add one gill of soft soap, one tablespoon- ful of ginger, the same quantity of slippery elm and sponge crackers, and wheat bread or Indian meal sufficient to make it of a proper consistence. When this poultice is applied, keep it moist by occasionally wetting it with a teaspoonful of water, or dipping it into water. Hot medicine should be freely taken, to prevent the difficulty from striking to the sto- mach, and to prevent faint sinking sensations, and loss of appetite. For fever sores, old ulcers, rheumatism, &c., this remedy has not its equal, to our knowledge. When there is much distress and a high state of inflammation, and the sore is not yet opened, much relief will be obtained by buiiiyrg a piece 716 THE THOMSONIAN of punk upon the part (see caustics, page 679,) and (hen applying this poultice. Almost immediate relief from distress will be the result. A course of medicine at this lime, to equalize the fluids of the body, will be attended with the mo>t beneficial res^ults. We have cured with this poultice, in connection with courses of medicine, a case of hip dis- ease of twenty-seven years standing, several fever sores and bad ulcers, be- sides dispersing or scattering many that had commenced, on various parts of the body. A very bad scorbutic difficulty was cured upon a young man's neck, extending from the shoulder across the breast and up the side of the neck, to the upper jaw and right cheek. This case had been given over by the regular faculty as incurable, but we restored him to good health by the use of this poultice, accompanied by courses and the antiscorbutic syrup (see page 642). OUTWARD APPLICATION, WHILE USING THE AKTISCORBUTIC DRINKS. Make as strong a tincture of lobelia inflata as you can, by boiling it in water and then putting it into spirits. Add a teaspoonful of saleratus to eve- ry four ounces, and with this wash the parts affected. At the same time make a daily use of the drinks, and the good etfects will soon be visible. After taking a vapor bath, let the whole body be bathed Avith this article. TO CURE TETTER IN THE FACE, OR BARBER'S ITCH. Wajh the face with pure lime water or a lye made of hard wood ashes; let it dry, then neutralize the alkali by washing with good vinegar. The lye kills the insect, and by timely application the vinegar prevents the corrosive effects of the alkali. If the system is much impregnated with the scrofulous affection, use freely of the antiscorbutic syrups, or drinks to cleanse the blood. Cathartics. We wish our remarks in relation to cathartics, on page 654, to be re- membered, as we do not wish Dr. Samuel Thomson to be held accounta- ble for what we may say in relation to this matter. We may honestly differ on >his subject, but peifectly agree that if people will take such medicines, let them be of the most gentle kind, such as peach leaf tea, pepper pods, beef's gall, castor oil, or senna, instead of calomel, croton oil, gamboge, and other powerful and poisonous drugs. Note. — Drastic cathartics should be used in no case where there is danger of mollification. The gall cathartic or oil may be used to advan- tage, compounded with rheumatic drops or gin sling, in case of relax or dysentery. Tlius compounded, they soothe the bowels, and give quiet to the arterial and nervous systems, producing sleep and rest to the patient. THE NATURAL PHYSIC FOR THE BODY. After the natural physic of the body which is the gall, has exerted its MATERIA MEDICA. 717 powers and has failed in producing that healthy action in the stomach and bowels that is so necessary, the next nearest to the natural physic should be used. Cathartics should never be used if we have any more effectual remedy. After the gall fails in producing action we must sub- stitute art. Rye and Indian bread is an excellent remedy; let it be con- stantly used for a time, and for a change if necessary, substitute the bread made from unbolted wheat. Another good remedy is a greening apple to be eaten after each meal. This will keep the bowels in regular order longer than any other fruit kind that can be preserved. I am ac- quainted with an old gentleman in this city whose age is between 70 and 80 years; he is a master builder, and is actively engaged in his profes- sion, and to appearance you would not suppose him over 55 or 60 years of age. He takes no physic, but always after dinner you will see him eating his juicy greening apple, which he thinks is the best physician he can employ. This man has quite a florid countenance and lively eyes, which have a jf reat antipathy to doctors. This case is a practical monu- ment of the salutary effects of the greening apple upon the bowels. I here take the liberty to recommend for the good of others his practical knowledge on himself. In a number of cases I have seen the good effects of apples for costiveness. ANIMAL PHYSIC— BEEF GALL. Take 1 quart of beef gall, put it into a glass bottle of 3 or 4 gallons, then add one gallon of the best Holland gin, and one gallon of Die best sugar house molasses ; shake it well together and scent it with pennyroy- al. This is an excellent corrector of the digestive organs, and well cal- culated to remove constipation of the bowels and restore their natural action. APPLICATION. Take from half to one glass night and moming. It will coirect the digestion and remove the costive state of the bowels, by which means the appetite is sharpened, the circulation quickened in the extremities, and thus regulating the nervous system, thereby making the mind cheer- ful and the body active, and establishing a regularity through the system that renders life pleasant and a blessing. Beef gall may be dried down and made into pills and used to great ad- vantage ; or it may be mixed with bitter root or golden seal, which makes a very valuable pill. PEPPER PODS. Take at night on going to bed from 4 to 10 cayenne pepper pods and they will generally operate during the night or next morning. The op- eration of these pods upon the bowels of dyspeptics produce happy ef- fects upon the mind, as they carry warmth and activity with them, dif- fusing a lively sensation through the lower extremities, equalising the circulation throughout the body, and loosening the head from the many bands that have apparently kept the mind in bondage from the time the costive habit commenced. From which time the feet became cold to excess, in the same proportion as the head became excessively hot and oppressed from the additional circulation from the feet, which was forced to the head by the torpidity of the bowels. When the bowels become rio^ht again, the feet and stomach warm and active, and the head cool as usual when in health, order will reign once more throughout the whole body. [See page 590.] 718 THE THOMSONIAN PEACH— THE FRUIT, LEAVES, FLOWERS AND BARK. Take one ounce of peach flowers or leaves and put them into three gills of water J let it simmer at a moderate heat for half an hour; strain off and sweeten it with sugar and add a little milk. Take half at night and if necessary take the balance in the morning. This infusion is an excellent corrector of the digestion, especially for children when teeth- ing, and for all kinds of derangement of the bowels for either old or young. The properties of the peach leaves are much the same as the pit or kernel. A free use of ripe and mellow peaches will produce the same effect upon the bowels. Children who are troubled with a bad state of the stomach and bowels, and of feeble constitution, should make free use of ripe peaches, and a great benefit will be derived to the constitution. The peach bark may be used for the same purpose, when neither the flowers, leaves nor peaches can be had. See page 624. CATHARTIC COMPOUND. Take four ounces bitter root, eight ounces peach leaves and eight ounces butternut bark. Bruize the articles fine in a mortar. Put them into a brass kettle, and add one gallon of soft spring or rain water, boil it down to about half a gallon, then strain off and press the grains. Clean out the kettle, and then boil it again down to about one pint. Let it stand for 12 hours and settle ; pour off the clear liquor, and to this decoc- tion add a like quantity of fourth proof brandy, and the same quantity of molasses. Put it into a glass bottle or stone jug, stop it tight and shake it well, and it is fit for use. APPLICATION. Take a tea-spoonful about three times a day, twice a week, and it avUI remove flatulency and restore order where disorder was prominent before in the bowels. The stimulating effects of the butternut will remove al- most all kinds of cholic pains. Judgment should be used in its applica- tion, or it may produce a reaction in the bowels, and a costive habit more violent than before. Increase or diminish the quantity according to judgment. BITTER ROOT— -■^poci/nMm Canabinum. The Apocynum or bitter root may be used to good advantage in dys- peptic habits. To remove costiveness, it has not its equal in the vegeta. ble materia medica. It may be taken half a tea-spoonful in a little hot water, in composition or in the dyspepsia powders prepared, and in fact in any manner that it can be most conveniently swallowed without sick- ening the stomach. For confirmed dyspeptics, where artificial means must be used to pro- duce action in the bowels, this article may be used with great satisfac- tion to the patient; for when taken in small quantities, say quarter of a tea-spoonful three or four times a day, it will require some days for the powerful correction properties to be made manifest, and then they are sat- isfactory. BUTTERNUT— Jitg^ans Cyneria. The extract of the butternut bark I have used in a great variety of ways. It is a powerful aiixiliary in the third preparation, in cramps, con- vulsions, and in all cases of suspended animation. I first used this com- pound in Montreal, in cases of cholera in 1832, and was well pleased with its lively, searching and stimulating effects, as it would start a mois- ture in the palms of the hands in a very few minutes, relieving all pains MATERIA MEDICA, 719 and cramps in the extremities in much less time than the preparation without it. It may be used for compounding; emetic pills, together with brown emetic, cayenne, nerve powder, or composition. Regulating the strength of the pills by judgment. The pills may be made with a little No. 2, and used for cholie pains, but by being often repeated, the cathartic properties are lost, and a se- vere costive state of the bowels succeeds the operation. Therefore, as a cathartic, it should be used with caution. A tea made of the green bark sweetened, will generally relieve the cholie at once. CASSIA MARILANDICA— ^mencare Senna. This article I have always used in connection Avith sage and ginger. From its operations I have witnessed the most salutarj' effects in cases of violent attacks of typhus fever. In one family on the island of Nantuck- et, where three members had died (two sons ane one daughter,) one in seven, one in eleven, and tlie last in four days, all of whom were labor- ing under a high state of derangement from the time of the attack, until death, was the cause why tiie father commenced with me at the time the fourth child was taken sick. The t}'phus fever was epidemic and very fatal that season, and the regular practice was attended with bad success. The patients were attacked in the back of the head, neck, and small of the back, and immediately lost their senses, from which time the scene was a solemn one indeed. I had five patients in the same family, three of which wei-e of the typhus fever. My commencement was to put half an ounce of sage, half an ounce of senna and one tea-spoonful of ginger together, and steep them in half a pint of hot water ten minutes, and let the patient diink half of the tea. This relieved the pain in the head and back as soon as it operated ; they had no more pain, and the medicines thus restored them to health in a short time, without the loss of reason for A moment. [See page 656.] OLEUM RICINI— Casfor Oil. I have found castor oil to be very good for children, when the bowels have been out of order. Also for grown persons, but in all cases let a lit- tle composition powders be used to warm the stomach and bowels, if ne- cessary' to remove pains. I have frequently given my children castor oil in warm gin sling sweet- ened, which by the way is as good a method as can be adopted. The gin, from its quieting effects upon the nerves, subdues all pain and luls the patient to sleep. After such an operation, or at the time the oil is doing its office, the composition, cayenne or any other hot medicine may be use dto do away the pain, if any,' that may attend the operation. Oil may be judiciously used in boiled milk, with part of a glass of gin, when a person is troubled with the piles. The operation of which is admirable, as the person can retire to bed and go quietly to sleep. For a grown person, put half a glass of oil into one glass of sling; stir it well when taken. A child may take a table spoonful in half a glass of hot sling, to be regulated accord- ing to the age. I have found tliis course much more convenient than us- ing the the syringe, and certainly much more to the satisfaction of the patients, if I was away from home. [See page 657.]j SUITABLE PHYSIC JTor those troubled with Gravel, Stranguary, or Urinary Difficulties. Take of castor oil two tablespoonsfid, and boiled honey two teaspoons- f ul, put them into a teacup that has been warmed by being in hot water or TSO- THE THOMSONIAW near a fire ; the warmth of the cup will make the oil and honey very thin^. which must be stined well together and taken. This is a dose for a grown person, which may be graduated in all cases to suit the age. A dose of composition may be given about the same time; this will carry life and vigor through the bowels and urinary passages, and is not sur- pas'T iby any other cathartic we have ever used. Aside from its cathar- tic properties, it is very useful in gravel and all disorders of the kidneys. PHYSIC. Rhamnus Caiharticus. Jiuckthom Berries for a cathartic, may be used to good advantage when no other remedy is at hand, and physic is required. They possess the most powerful bitter that I am acquainted with, except the bitter root, but have some corrective qualities that make them sometimes use- ful. APPLICATION. Take from five to ten, and from that to fifteen or twenty, or even as high as forty or fifty for rugged men, have been used before an operation has been produced. But generally from ten to twenty are a sufficient dose. They may be taken at night, on going to bed, or at any other time that the circumstances of the case may require. They produce lit- tle or no paini, hence they are more valued than drastic purges, and are attended with none of the bad consequences peculiar to some other kinds, which produce nearly as much pain as they are taken to remove. POWERFUL STIMULATING PHYSIC. Take of mandrake root and butternut bark, each half a pound; bruise these articles well in a mortar together, and boil it in half a gallon of soft spring or rain water, to one pint. Strain off and press the grains. Add equal quantities of molasses and fourth proof Jamaica rum. Put it into a glass bottle and shake it well together; stop it tight, and it is fit for use. APPLTCATIOIV. Take one tablespoonful for a grown person, and a teaspoonful for a child; it causes no pain. This has proved of great value in many cos- tive habits, for colics and distress in the head, when it is caused by con- stipation of the bowels. WHEN SHOULD CATHARTICS BE TAKEN. Physic should not be given if thought advisable until twelve hours af- ter a course of raedicme, and then the hot medicine should be freely used, to keep up internal action sufficient to overcome the bad effects, if any^. arising from its use. LAXATIVE PILLS. Take one ounce poplar or peach extract, half an ounce of rhubarb, half an ounce Castile soap, half an ounce of bitter root and half an ounce of dried beef's gall ; work this compound well together and add a little No. 2, or cayenne. If it is not stiff enough to pill, work in rhubarb and bitter root, of each equal quantities, till it be of sufficient consistency for pilling. Make it into pills. Take from one to three at night; they will regulate the bowels and ease the head of unnecessar)' pressure and con- fusion. These pills are gently laxative, and innocent, where people wish ca- thartic medicines; and will obviate the necessity of any calomel, or anr other powerful poisons. MATERIA MEDICA- 721 Diuretics. STRAWBERRY— /'rcgana Virginiana. This is a valuable diuretic, to be used in stranguary, gravel, and dilli ■ culties of the kidneys. It is also diaphoretic, moderately tonic, and as- tringent. [See page 660.] CLIVERS — Galium Jparine. A powerful diuretic, emmenagogue, stimulant, and diaphoretic; to be used in cases of calculous ulcerations, gravel, urinary difficulties, and fe- male obstructions. [See page 661.] WILD LETTUCE— Zac^wca Elongata. A good remedy for complaints of the kidneys and bladder, also for dropsy, scorbutic ditfKiulties, and costiveness. [See page 662.] PARSLEY — Afium Petroselmum. Parsley is good for dropsy, gravel, and obstructions of the liver and kidneys. [See page 663.] DANDELION — Leontodon Taraxacum. This is a good article to be applied as a remedy for derangement of the digestive organs and the urinary apparatus. It is good in chronic intlam- mation of the liver, and also operates as a hydragogue. [See page 664.}. JUNIPER — Juniperus Communis. Useful in all difficulties of the kidneys, stranguarj^, dropsy, gravel; and in cutaneous and scorbutic affections. [See page 666.] RECEIPT FOR DROPSY, STRANGUARY, GRAVEL, &c \ i ' Take several water-melons and bruise them fine, then put the macerat- ed pomice into a flannel or canvas bag and submit it to a heavy pressure, to extract the juice, which do to the amount of two gallons; then simmer it down to one, and skim it. After this add four pounds of boiled honey,^ and the whole substance of eight good lemons, well bruised. Put this into a stone jug, add an ounce of fine barberry bark and half an ounce of fine bitter-root (after scalding them in half a pint of boiling water to ex- tract their strength); two ounces each of fine mustard and ginger, one pound of water-melon seeds bruised fine, and half a gallon of first quality of Holland gin. Let this compound be shaken together daily for a week, and stopped tight for use. Take from half to a glass, from three to six times a day, as the patient is able to bear it. When peaches can be had, the fine pulp of half a peck of the first qua- lity may be added, with more melon juice and gnn, according to judg- ment, if the compound be too thick. This remedy needs no commenda- tion as to its value. The proof is in its application. FOR DROPSY. Take four ounces each, of sassafras, prickly ash, white sumac, and wMte pine; bruise and boil in two gallons of water down to a quart. 722 THE THOMSOiMAN strain, and add one pint of best Holland gin and two ounces of fine mus- tard seed. Dose, a gill, three times a day. While usin^ this, bathe the feet at night in hot water, as directed on page 692, with the use of stimulating liniment. HONEY A REMEDY FOR THE GRAVEL. By using half honey and half sugar to sweeten the tea and coffee taken at meals, cases of gravel may often be cured, without any other treat- ment. A better remedy, however, is to make a strong decoction of pipsissawa, to which add for every quart a pint of good Holland gin, and sweeten it well with honey. This is valuable in all complaints of the kidneys. Dose, a wineglassful three times a day. FOR OBSTRUCTIONS OF THE KIDNEYS OR BLADDER. Take half a pound each, of pumpkin seeds, parsley roots, hemlock boughs, poplar bark and clives, 4oz. ginger; boil this compound in two gal- lons of Avater down to one; sweeten with honey, and add half a gallon of best Holland gin. Take a wineglassful once an hour till relief is obtained. Wliile using this, a steaming stone may be placed at the small of the back. DIURETIC BEVERAGE. Cranberry vines in decoction are good to promote the discharge of urine. Whortleberry bushes and fruit used in the same way are goodkfor gravel and stoppage of the urine. Parsley roots, leaves and seed, are al- so good for the same purposes, to be used as above. A tea may be made ■of the articles, and used as a constant drink. DIURETIC COMPOUND. Pure new cider is an excellent diuretic, and may be profitably com- pounded^ith other articles for that purpose, as follows : Put into a two gallon jug, one and a half gallons of cider; then take half a pound each of mustard seed and horse radish roots, made fine, and four ounces of good pure ground ginger; put these articles into a quart of pure new ci- der and steep them for ten minutes; when cool, add it to the contents of the jug, and shake it well together. Dose, a wineglassful several times a day. It is a great diuretic, and is excellent for the dropsy. A STRONG DIURETIC DRINK, FOR URINARY DIFFICULTIES OR DROPSY. Take a water-melon, bruise it fine and press out the juice; sweeten it with boiled honey, and then add the substance of one lemon, and enough Holland gin to keep it from souring. Let this be used as a common be- verage. A large quantity of this juice may be prepared in the same way in the season of melons, and preserved for use. The substance may be reduced by boiling down the juice to the consistencey of molasses, and preserved with honey and gin. Of this, use one teaspoonful or more, in a tumbler of soft water, seve- ral limes a day. In diseases of the kidneys, costiveness, liver complaint and asthma, this article will produce a beneficial effect. MATERIA MEDICA. 723 SWEET ELDER TREE— Sambucus Canadensis. It has been remarked, that this tree is a whole magazine of physic for rustic practitioners. A syrup may be made of the ripe berries, with the addition of peach- meats or cherry-stone meats, with brandy sufficient to preserve it, which is an excellent strengthening and restoring medicine. The berries may also be made into wine, which tastes much like that made from grapes. The bark and young shoots given to sheep, will cure the rot. The buds and young tendrils make good pickles. By whipping fruit trees with the green leaves, it will prevent insects from troubling them. An infusion of the leaves in water, sprinkled over rose buds and flower beds, will preserve them from caterpillars. The white or sweet elder is the kind used . FOR A SUPPRESSION OF URINE, Take a little spirits of turpentuie — a few drops upon sugar, or com- pounded with honey or in any other way. TO CURE DIABETES, OR A CONTINUAL VOIDING OF URINE. Take rosin and loaf sugar in equal quantities, well pulverized. Dose, a teaspoonful, three or four times a day. This will soon put a stop to the complaint, unless the system is much reduced; then remedies should be used to restore and regulate the action of the stomach and bowels. Keeping up a gentle perspiration will usu- ally relieve the patient; if not, the tincture of kino may be given, in tea- spoonful doses, in composition tea or hot water, from two to six times a day. Mucilaginous Substances. FOR POULTICES AND INTERNAL USE. YEAST — CherevisitB fermentum. Yeast is an excellent article to be used in cataplasms or poultices on all inflammatory sores, bruises, broken limbs, putrid ulcers and sprained joints. It may also be internally used in dysentery and all cases of pu- tridity of the bowels. Its effect is very cooling, soothing, and agreeable. [See page 667.] SLIPPERY ELM— Ulmus fulva. This is a valuable article in dysenteiy, diarrhoea, and diseases of the urinary passages. In poultices it is very servicable to apply to inflam- matory sores, burns, freezes, and all kinds of ulceration. [See page 668.] 724 THE THOMSONIAN BUCK-HORN BRAKE— Osmunda regalis. This is good in dysenter}', or a sore, tender state of the stomach and bowels, and is also very servicable in female weaknesses and general debility. [See page 6(39.] BENNE PLANT— SasimUOT orientale. This article is good in diseases of the bowels and urinary passages, and may be also profitably employed in poultices for burns and iniiammator)' sores. [See page 670.] HOLLYHOCK— ^IthcBa rosea. Hollyhock is good for soreness in any part of the alimentary canal, and may be substituted for slippery elm in poultices. [See page 671.] RED CLOYER—Trifolium pratense. Good for cancers, old sores, sore lips, and scorbutic difficulties. [See page 671.] WILD TURNIP— ^rum Trifilum. This article stimulates the secretions of the lungs and skin, and is good for pain in the stomach and bowels. It is very servicable in connection with other articles made into cough drops. [See page 672.] DIRECTIONS FOR TREATING WHITLOWS, FELONS, &c. W^hen a person is afflicted with felons, whitlows, or any ulceration of the like, be particular to keep up the strength and quiet of the nervous system by soothing the stomach with stimulents and tonics. At the same time apply a poultice made of brown emetic, cayenne, yellow lily root, with yeast, slippery elm or flax seed for mucilage ; to each half pint of the poultice add two spoonsful of fine salt, and thicken with wheat bread or sponge crackers, and with a little ginger. Apply this poultice warm, and let the patient take a dose of composition and nerve powder, and then go to bed and get into a perspiration. If this does not relieve administer a course of medicine, apply to the sore the antiscorbutic poul- tice, and keep up the perspiration. Tliis is almost certain to produce relief. When the sore commences, apply to it the skin of the inside of a fresh raw ego^ shell, and if that does not scatter it slack a piece of lime upon the part atfected. This will kill the skin and promote suppuration. Smartweed bruised and macerated in vinegar, if applied to felons or whitlows in season, will prevent them from coming to a head. TO CURE WHITE SWELLINGS. Take a green comfrey root and scrape a mass the size of an e^rg ; to this add the white of an egg well beaten, and a glass of fourth proof brandy; mix them till they are of the consistence of a poultice. Let a plaster of this be tightly bound on the sore, and renew it as often as it becomes dry. This plaster may be preserved in a tight jar, or be made with dry comfrey, pulverized instead of g een. This is to be applied also in case of leakage o/ a joint, weak back, or weeping sinew. MATERIA MEDICA. 725 HOW TO TREAT CANKER OR MORTIFYING SORES. While the patient is under the operation of a course of medicine, let the sore be washed with soap suds ; then with caidter tea. While the sore is wet, add to it a powder of iine bayberry, emetic, cayenne, and slippery elm, wet and mixed together ; then over this apply a poultice of jj^inger and canker tea. This will have a decidedly beneficial effect, and a few repetitions of it will generally effect a cure. BILES. A person afflicted with biles may find a cure by drinking burdock tea, and at the same time applying spirits of turpentine to the alfected part. With this treatment they will soon become dry and disappear. TO REMOVE INFLAMMATION AND HEAL OLD OR RECENT SORES. Wash the affected parts with soap suds, then apply several thicknesses of linen cloth wet with tinctuie of lobelia. Keep ihe cloths constantly wet with the tincture, and the sore will heal rapidly and maturate but little. A VALUABLE POULTICE For Bruises, Barns, Freezes, Sfc. In a moment after the accident, cut from the centre of a loaf of wheat bread a slice, and dip it into brewer's or baker's yeast, and let it remain till well saturated, then put it upon the part affected. This is much the best and handiest remedy which we have ever found in the above com- plaints. > If the yeast cannot be had, make use of the common dried emptyings, called turnpike, (which almost every hou^e-wil'e has on hand) break them up fine and form into a poultice. If that is not to be had, make use of the kind of rising used in the family, to raise bread or biscuit. If that is not on hand, and cannot be had, dip a slice of the bread into pure soft water and apply that to the sore; always remembering to keep the poultice wet. Either of these remedies will ease the pain immediately, and give rest and quiet to the patient. This remedy should be kept in mind by every family, in case of accidents. It is simple but effectual, and Aviil save much distress if applied in season. Diarrlioia ami Dysentery. FOR RELAX OR DYSENTERY. Take one handful each of red raspberry and witch-hazel leaves, with four ounces of pulverized flax-seed. Steep them for one hour in two quarts of water, then strain off and sweeten with loaf sugar. Add while hot two ounces of bayberry, one ounce of all -pice, and a fourth of an ounce of cayenne all made fine; and to this add one quart of Holland gin. Do 56, half a wine-glass three times a day, the patient being in bed if pos- sible. This will quiet the nervous irritability of the bowels. FOR DYSENTERY—^ good remedy for Children. Take four ounces of pulverized flax-seed, steep for twenty minutes in one quart of boUing water, strain off and add one pint of Holland gin, one pound of loaf sugar, and grate in, while hot, three nutmegs. 726 THE THOMSONIAN Dose, from half to a j^lass three times a day. If the bowels arc in a cold state, while using tliis article, give occasionally an injection of some nourishing soup, well seasoned. DIARRHCEA — A capital remedy. I have seen the happiest results from the use of the best of Holland gin and loaf sugar, or gin and molasses, if sugar cannot be had. Take half a pint of the best Holland gin, and half a pound of fine loaf sugar. Let the sugar dissolve in the gin. Sliake it well together and take a wine- glass, or for a child half a glass. Let a grown person take a glass and go to bed and put a warm brick to the feet; the anti-spasmodic proper- ties of the gin will quiet the nervous irritability of the bowels, and ease the pain. If the bowels be in a bad state, or much clogged, a dose of castor oil may be taken in boiled milk. This will remove the morbid matter, and the gin Avill quiet the pain of the bowels to a charm. The patient can take a refreshing sleep^ after which take a bowl of chicken, veal, beef, or oyster soup well seasoned with pepper and salt. After the bowels have become quiet, a tea made of raspberi-y or witch-hazel leaves may be taken with a little sugar, milk and cayenne. But if this does not effect the cure, which it will do in three out of four cases, it shows that a course of medicine is required to assist it. RELAX OR DYSENTERY. FROST GRAVES— Vitis Cordifolia. Make a strong tea of frost grapes, and let it be sweetened and taken by the person afflicted. The taste is very astringent, rough and acid, and will operate in a very salutary manner upon the bowels, in the first stages of the relax. If the grapes cannot be had, the tendrils tliat act as fingers in grasping and retaining hold on other substances, and by that means sustain the vines may be used as follows. Take a handful of those tendrils and bniise them fine, then pour on one pint of hot water; let it steep for fifteen or twenty minutes, and set it away to cool. This tea is an astringent, and may be used for constant drink. Or the tendrils may be bruised and boiled in milk, in which state it will afford nourishment with its medical virtues. The grapes and tendrils may be made into a syrup with flax- seed, bayberry and popple bark, sweetened with loaf sugar and with the addition of Holland gin, to preserve it from souring. Take a glass three or four times a day. FOR RELAX. Pulverize one tea-spoonful of burnt alum, and mix it well with a table spoonful of fine loaf sugar. Let this be taken from half to a tea-spoonful once an hour, and the disease soon abates. FOR RELAX OR DYSENTERY. Take the grains from the bottom of a jug, where a gallon of rheumatic drops, or No. 6 has been made. Put these grains into a kettle and add one quart of sweet wine, put it over the fire and let it boil for twenty mi- nutes, when it will be seen that the acid has dissolved the gum, and the wine has become strongly impregnated with it. Strain it off and let it stand until cold; then add one quart more of sweet wine, sweeten it well with loaf sugar, then add two ounces of composition powders and one quart of good Holland gin. Put into a jug, shake it well together and stop it down for use. Tliis remedy is good for chroruc debility of the bowels, or relax, or looseness of long standing in consequence of in- digestion. It is also good for weakness of the stomach, occasioned by MATERIA MEDICA. 727 long" debility, and may be taken by all classes for such complaints. For a grown person take from half to a glass two or three times a day, or whenever a weakness is felt at the stomach. For children give a table- spoonful just before eating, as it will then sharpen the appetite. It is good for what is called worm complaints in children, and is a great anti- septic to prevent mortification in the boAvels. A GOOD REMEDY FOR DYSENTERY, AJ\D A GREAT ANTISKPTIC. Take one teaspoonful of pulverized maple charcoal, and mix with it one tablespoonful of molasses, three of West India rum, and half a glass of sweet oil. Let half of this be taken as a dose for an adult, to be re- peated, if necessar}', in two hours. For children the dose may be gradu- ated aceordin"- to their asfe. For Pulmonar-y Complaints. FOR A COUGH. Take of 4th proof Jamaica rum one pint, good sugar house molasses one pint, add them together and let them be well shaken. This article is an excellent thing to keep a cotigh loose, and is a great tonic for the stomach, as the writer of this well knows from experience. He took a phial of this compound and kept it in his pocket, and when an irritation was felt upon the lungs, or in the throat, which indicated an inclination to cough, a small sip from the phial would at once allay it until such times as he had time and convenience to attend to it, once or twice in twenty-four hours, and then in a warm room. Taking care of the pence is what makes people rich. So it is in this case by attending to these slight symp- toms of irritation in tlie throat and lungs is w^hat produces health. This is what causes the consumption. The feet should in such cases be kept warm without fail, with cork or hat soles in the bottom of the shoes or boots, and a piece of ginger shovdd be constantly kept in the mouth to keep the saliva thin, and the mucus membrane of the throat and lungs warm. A VALUABLE MIXTURE FOR COUGH. Take of hoarhound and red cedar bark of each one handful, boil it in two quarts of w'ater down to one pint ; then add one pint of molasses, and half a pint of West India rum. Put it into a bottle and shake it well together, and stop it tight for use. Take one tablespoonful three times a day. This is a powerful pecto- ral mixture, and has affected some astonishing cures of lung complaints and hoarseness. It is well calculated to keep the cough loose, that the patient may raise easy. If any stimulating medicine should be wanted to assist in expectoration after it has been tried, add to every half pint of this medicine, one-fourth of an ounce of pulverized wake robin, or wild turnip. Tincture of lobelia may be added; also cayenne, if a greater stimulating quality is wanted to assist in expectoration in the morning, or after being exposed to the cold at- any other time. This remedy is well adapted for hoarse, dry coughs, which hard laboring people are subject to at times, from too great exposure in prosecuting their business. ^28 THE THOMSONIAN COUGH DROPS. No. 1. Take 6 ounces of wake robin well pulverized, when dry ; stir the fine powder into one pint of cold water, rub it until tlie knobs are broken, and it becomes a paste much like starch. Then pour into the same com- pound half a (gallon of water, boiling hot ; add one teaspoonful of line capsicum, half a gallon of molasses, and half a gallon of 4th proof Jamai- ca rum ; then add half a pint of tincture of the green herb of the lobelia inflata ; put it into a jug or glass bottle ; sliake it well together and stop it tight for use. This is an excellent expectorant mixture for coughs, colds and consumptions. For those who are troubled with a cough a small phial of tlii^ medicine should be kept in the pocket and taken from one-fourth to half a teaspooafuU at a time and often, just sufficieut to keep the glands of the mouth, throat, and mucus membrane sufficiently stimulated to raise easy whatever matter may have accumulated. No. 2. Take two ounces of lettuce seed, bruise it in a mortar, put it into one quart of hot water; let it boil for ten or fifteen minutes, then strain it off; add one pint of strong tincture of balm of Gilead, one pint of good mo- lasses, and two ounces of wake robin well pulverized, four ounces of liquorice stick well pulverized, one gill of tincture of emetic, one ounce cayenne, and scent it with pennyroyal, or any other essence you may "fancy; put it into a jug, shake it well, and stop it tight for use. Take a phial that will hold two ounces and keep it full in the pocket for use, or at the bed side, to be used when an irritable sensation or an incli- nation to cough ii felt in the throat or upon the lungs. Take a small sip from the phial, say from a quarter to a half of a tea-poonful; this will al- lay the irritation of the mucus membrane, and will loosen the phlegm so that it may be ejected from the lungs with little effort. Long and con- tinued spells of coughing wear out the lungs. This is what should be guarded against by every consumptive person. No. 3. Take four ounces of flax seed well pulverized, two ounces of liquorice root made also fine ; pour upon the ingredient one quart of boiling water, and place it over a quick fire ; let it boil for twenty minutes; strain off; press the grains; then add half a pound of good honey, and half a pint of pure lemon syrup; simmer it over a slow fire for ten minutes; skim it; set away and let it cool. Then add 1-16 oz. good cayenne, one gUl of good tincture of lobelia, and half a pint of 4th proof Jamaica rum. Put it into a glass bottle and shake it well together Fit for use. APPLICATION. The best way to use this medicine is to have a phial of about 2 ounces of it in the pocket. When any irritation is felt upon the lung^ or in the mucus membrane, take a small sip from the vial, say one tea-poon- ful, and so continue to repeat it as often as the irritation is felt, if it be fifty times a day. These drops are veiy valuable in recent attacks of cold with old or young. They arc also good for asthma, croup, or any dif- ficulty of the chest or lungs. N. B. A tablespoonful may be taken on going to bed, and it may also be taken during the night if necessary. Let a1able*;poonful be u-ed in (lie morning on leaving the bed. It should be also taken before ex- posure to cold, and after such exposure to keep the temperature of the lunjTs even. MATERIA MEDICA. 729 No 4. Take four ounces of liquorice ball and eight of gum Arabic, dissolve them in two quarts of soft water over a slow fire, then add half a gallon of boiling water, with two ounces of dyspepsia powders, half a gallon of molasses and the same quantity of wine bitters, which have been mixed. Then cut up six lemons and macerate them well in half a gallon of alco- hol, to extract the oil from the skins, and form a strong essence; add it to the other ingredients ; then put in one quart of tincture of lobelia and two teaspoonsful of cayenne; sliake it well together and it is fit for use. A VALUABLE SYRUP FOR COUGHS. Take one pound of hoarhound, broken up fine, steep it in two quarts of water for twelve hours, strain off and boil the liquor down to a pint; take two ounces of skunk cabbage and one of wild turnip, pulverize and boil for two hours in two quarts of water, and when cool strain off and mix it with the decoction of hoarhound. Then add two quarts of fourth proof spirits, and one pound each of boiled honey and loaf sugar. Let this compound be put into a jug and boiled, with the cork left out, in a kettle of water for half an hour, when it will be fit for use. This will enable a person afflicted with a cough to raise easy, without injuring the membrane of the lungs or throat. Dose for an adult, a tablespoonful. Iji/iiments. RHEUMATIC LINIMENT. Take three pounds of wliite soap, and dissolve it in two quarts of rain or soft water, by boiling; next, dissolve two ounces of camphor, one do oil of rosemary, and half an ounce of oil origanum, in one gallon of high wines; add the whole compound together in a stone jug. Then take two ounces of good cayenne pepper and put it into a point of boiling water, let it steep over a hot fire for ten minutes, then pour it into the jug, shake the contents well together, and stop it close for use. APPLICATION. This is g;ood for rheumatism, pains in the side, cold feet, head-ache, sprained joints, &c. HOW TO BATHE THE FEET IN HOT WATER. A USEFUL METHOD TO REMOVE ALL RECENT ATTACKS OF DISEASE. Take a dose of the prepared composition, then put the feet into a pail half full of water, as hot as the patient can bear it, having the body well shielded with a cloak or blanket while bathing. Increase the tempera- ture, by adding more hot water, by pouring it in on one side of the pail, while the feet are still in the vessel, and having one hand in the water in active motion, mingling the different temperatures as fast as possible. In 47 730 THE THOMSONIAN ten or fifteen minutes the patient will be in a profuse perspiration, cTery part of the body being full of heat, and an active cuculation. Continue this operation until the perspiration stands upon the temples. On the upper lip, and the palms of the hands, and the veins are full upon the feet and the back of the hands. These are symptoms that the body is sufficiently warm. Then take out one foot and wipe it diy with a towel or napkin, and bathe the foot thoroughly with the stimulating liniment; then put on the stocking. Treat the other foot in the same manner. In all cases, this is the most rapid course I ever adopted to fill the sys- tem universally with warmth, and to produce an active perspiration. In all violent attacks of disease, such as colic-, pleurisy, inflammatory rheumatism, cramps, lock-jaw, croup, quinsy, &c., where the patient re- quires immediate relief from a dangerous disease, this is preferable to steaming. But steaming is the best course that can be adopted to clear the skin or cutaneous system universally of the morbid matter it contains. Where the patient is subject to cold feet and pains in the head, he can make a great improvement to his steam bath, by putting his feet into a pail half full of water as hot as he can bear. AH excessive circulation to the head will be speedily removed by this operation, provided the bowels are in good order, and the whole body and limbs below the neck are bathed with the stimulating liniment. STIMULATING LINIMENT— AND BATHING THE FEET. Melt one pound of white soap and add it to a gallon of high proof whis- key; after which, take two ounces of cayenne pepper and boil it in half a pint of water for five or ten minutes, then add it to the whiskey, toge- ther with a little essence of hemlock, and it is fit for use. Shake it well together and pour it off into phials. It is good to bathe on to the feet when cold, also over the body after steaming. APPLICATION. It is an excellent article in a great variety of complaints, such as cold feet and hands, palsy, numbness, tooth-ache, cramps, pain in the head, back and side, and rheumatism. When a person is troubled with head-ache, or any uneasiness about the head or stomach, by bathing the feet thoroughly by the fire before going to bed, and sit with the legs across a second chair, with the bottom of the feet as near a hot fire or stove as can be borne, with a screen before the face and head to shield it, much relief will be obtained ; for the head wUl be relieved at once if the bowels are right. VOLATILE LINIMENT. Take of sweet oil six ounces, spirits of hartshorn one ounce, oil of ori- ganum one fourth of an ounce, shake them well together in a bottle, and stop it tight for use. APPLICATION. Good for sprains, bruises, swellings, and local pains. VOLATILE LINIMENT, For Violent Sprains, Rheumatic Pains, ^c. Take fom* ounces of sweet oil, and one ounce of spirits of hartshorn — shake them together in a phial for use. APPLICATION. To be used for sprained joints, or violent attacks of pain of any kind. MATERIA MEDICA. 731 OCMPOUND LINIMENT OF SOAP. Take of camphor one ounce, soap three ounces, spirits of rosemary one tpint, half an ounce of cayenne ; digest the soap and cayenne in the spirits of rosemary until the soap is dissolved, and add to it the camphor. APPLICATION. This is useful to excite action on the surface, is used to disperse scro- fulous enlarg'ements, and is good to moisten flannel to apply to the throat in cases of quinsy, pleurisy, croup, &c. LINIMENT OF LIME WATER. Take of lime water three ounces, after it has stood long enough to be- come perfectly pure, and of oli^e or linseed oil three ounces; mix by shaking" or stirring it well together, and it fonns a kind of soap of a whi- tish color and devoid of acrimony. APPIvICATlON. This article is excellent for bums, scalds, chapped hands and chafes. It is best to make it fresh when it may be wanted. RHEUMATIC LINIMENT. Take Tialf a pint of the small inflated buds or capsules growing upon the sea kelp, or sea weed, a plenty of which is to be found on the sea shore of the northern states; put these buds into half a pint of fourth proof brandy and heat it over the fire, and by continual stirring it will become a thick jelly. This is for bathing the stiff backs, joints, &c., of those who have the rheumatism, and is said to be an excellent remedy. FOR THE CHRONIC RHEUMATISM. Take half a pound of black cohosh and bruise it well in a mortar, pour "upon it one pint of boiling water, let it steep for ten minutes, then put it into a jug, and add one quart of good Holland gin. Let it stand twelve hours, to impart the strength of the roots to the liquor, and shake it oftea together. Take a glass three times a day, or oftener if thought advisable, and it will very soon relieve the pain. This remedy sliould not be taken by pregnant women, as it will pro- duce abortion, and consequently weaken the constitution. Note. — Take one tablespoonful of black cohosh, finely pulverized, put it into a tea cup, and fill the cup half full of boiling water; let this he taken three times a day, and it will generally relieve in three or foiff days. VOLATILE TINCTURE. To one quart of cherry spirits, add two ounces of cayenne, and whea settled pour off, and add a few drops of the oil of pennyroyal. VOLATILE SALTS, OR HARTS-HORN. Take of crude sal almoniac one ounce, of pearlash tAvo ounces; pound •each by itself, mix them well together, and keep it close stopped in bot- tles for use. 7S2- THE THOMSONIAN By moistening it with essence, the strength will be increased. Appli- «d to the nose, this is good for faintness, and to remove pain in the head. Ointments and Salves.. WAX OINTMENT. Take of white wax four ounces, spermaceti three ounces, olive oil one pint; mix them together over a slow fire, and stir them very briskly without ceasing until they are cold. APPLICATION. This ointment, when rubbed over the face and hands but lightly, pro- duces a soft smooth surface, very agreeable to the touch, similar to the softest silk. It also removes all chaps and roughness of the skin. It makes a good lip salve, and is also good for sore nipples, for which use it should be kept by those who may want such a remedy. SIMPLE OINTMENTS. Take of olive oil five ounces, white wax two ounces. Melt the wax. in the oil over a slow fire, and set it away to cool and continue to stir the compound until cold. APPLICATION. This ointment is useful for chapped hands and face, and is an excellent article for softening the skin. OINTMENT OF LARD. Take of hog's lard two pounds, rose water four ounces. Beat the lard with the rose water till they are mixed ; then add four ounces of white wax, and melt the mixture over a slow fire, and set it apart, that the wa- ter may subside, after which pour ofif the ointment from the water, con- stantly stirring it until it be cold. APPLICATION. Good' for softening the skin, sore nipples, and chapped hands and face, and is good for chafes in the groins, or any other part of the body, for both young and old. BURN OINTMENT. Take of beeswax and Burgundy pitch and melt them together; then • mix sweet oil luitil the compound has the consistency of ointment. APPLICATION. This salve will ease the pain of a bum almost immediately on its appli- cation, for which purpose it is very valuable. It is also good for fresb cuts, or wounds and bruises of the flesh. OINTMENT FOR THE PILES. Take yarrow blows, and simmer them in fresh butter, and annoint the parts affected. [See pages 647 and 652.]. MATERIA MEDICA. 733 •OINTMENT FOR PILES, POULTICE AND WASH FOR VENE- REAL. Simmer together two ounces of the toad lily root (^Hemerocallis flava) two ounces of green emetic {lobelia inflata), and a piece of white vitriol (^sulphate of zinc), about the size of a walnut, finely pulverized, in half a pound of fresh butter ; strain off, and you haVe an excellent remedy for syphilitic sores. A wash may be made of the same articles that will destroy the irrita- tion at once. It may be injected in form of decoction into the penis in bad cases with great advantage. The lily root, compounded with slippery elm and sponge crackers to form a poultice, may be applied to old ulcerous sores, or over the head of the penis, from which it will soon extract the morbid poison, if fol- lowed up daily. An injection per ani may be usefidly employed once or twice a day while the poultices are used. This remedy should be remembered by practitioners who may attend such cases. OINTMENT FOR RELAXING MUSCLES. Take one pint of angle worms and simmer them two hoursin fresh but- ter over a slow fire, then strain ofif and add two oimces of oil of origaniun, one ounce of spirits of camphor, and a fourth of an ounce of fine dust of cayenne pepper. Stop it close in bottles for use. If the fresh butter cannot be had, any kind of soft airimai or fish oil may be substituted. This ointment may be used to great advantage for stifFjoints, contract- ed muscles, cramps, or lock jaw, or in any disease where the muscles of the body are violently contracted. It should be rubbed thoroug^ily into the part and dried by the fire, or by holding as near it as can be borne some heated substance, and continue rubbing it till it is dry. Let this course be adopted in the morning, and at night on going to bed. Always take warming medicines before this application, and if ne- cessary a course of medicine. OINTMENT FOR SPRAINS, SWELLINGS AND RHEUMATISM. Simmer together for fifteen ntinutes, half a pound of neatsfoot oil, one gill of fourth proof brandy, one gill of spirits of turpentine, and half an ounce of cayenne. To be applied hot to the part affected, after which wrap it in flannel bandages. Let composition or hot drops be taken, to keep the patient from feeling faint or weak at tlxe stomach. FOR SALT-RHEUM, OR SCALD HEAD, Take of fresh hog's lard and of tar equal quantities, say one pint of each; put them into one pail full of soft rain water, boil the same for two hours; keep the kettle full of water, when done boiling set it away and let it cool. APPLICATION. Spread plasters and apply to the sores. The happiest results have at- tended the use of this ointment, in eruptive sores, such as above men- tioned. ' FOR SALT-RHEUM OR CUTANEOUS DISEASES. 'Take of the Seneca or sweet clover one handful, and lovage one hand- ful, bruise them together and simmer them in fresh butter or hog's lard 754 THE THOMSO:\IAN for three hours, or until the moisture is dried away, or the oil has absori>- «d the virtues of the herbs ; strain off, and press the g'rains. This is an exellent softening' and fragrant ointment for any eruption of ttie skin, such as salt-rheum, chaps, or cracked hands, or for scorbutic diseases generally. SALT-RHEUM WASH. Take one ounce of the cow, toad, or yellow lily root, bruise it fine, put it into half a pint of boiling water, let it steep for ten minutes; strain off half a teacup full of the tea, add three tablespoonsful of milk ; it is thea fit for use. Next, wash the part diseased with soap suds; dry off the sores — ^then wash thoroughly with this tea, which will remove the peculiar itching or irritation, and will purify the sore by its roughness. Next put over the sore three thicknesses of linen or cotton cloth, wet with the tea ; conti- nue the use of the tea, and keep the cloth and sore or sores thoroughly wet day and night until they are healed. The sOTes should be cleansed twice every twenty-four hours, or oftener. The yellow or cow lily is a great counter-poison to all irritating ulcers, •r sores of any kind upon the surface ; and is one of the best remedies when made into a poultice for biles, whitlows or felons, and to cleanse ©Id sores in use. ADHESIVE, OR STICKING PLASTER, Take of common or litharge plaster, five ounces, and one ounce of white rosin; melt them together, and spread the liquid compound thin on strips of linen with a table knife. APPLICATION. This plaster is good to keep the lips of wounds together, that they may Real, and is also used to keep on dressings. STRENGTHENING PLASTER. Melt two ounces of rosin and add to it a teaspoonful of cayenne to make £t stimulating, and lard sufficient to make it of the right consistency, which may be known by dipping a knife or spoon into it, and then put- ting it into cold water. If you get it too soft, add more rosin. This is an excellent plaster for rheumatic pains in the back, side, or ^^_ Embs. Decayed teeth that are troublesome may be filled with it, anrf I the pain relieved immediately. This plaster applied to the face or breast is excellent for the coid or ague affecting those parts, and if applied to the face, is a good remedy for tic doloreatix. All those troubled witb any difficulty in which we have recommended this plaster, should not fail to make use of it, as we can assure them it is an excellent application in all such cases. Plasters should be raised about once in Uvo days, to clear the morbid perspiration from the surface underneath, and give ease to the parts. BLACK SALVE, FOR OLD ULCEROUS SORES. Take half a pint each of linseed and olive oil, and half a pound of redi lead, and simmer them down to a salve. If burnt it is spoiled. This is one of the most efficient plasters we have ever applied to old putrid ulcers that have resisted the effects of eveiy other remedj. MATERIA MEDICA. 735 HEALING SALVE. Take one pound each of beeswax and salt butter, half a pound of tur- pentine, and twelve ounces of balsam fir; simmer them together, strain oflf, and it is fit for use. It is good to heal fresh wounds, bums, scalds, and all bad sores. STRENGTHENING PLASTER. Take equal quantities of burdock and mullein leaves, bruise and put them into a kettle with a sufficient quantity of water, boil them well; then strain and press out the liquor and boil it down about half as thick as mo- lasses; then add three parts of rosin and one of turpentine, and simmer tUl the water is all evaporated. Put it into cold water, and work it with the hands. If too hard, add more turpentine — if too soft, more rosin. This is good for weakness in the back, or any part of the body. For Catarrh. Pulverized pipsissewa may be used alone, as snuff, or compounded with equal parts of bayberry bark, blood root, and witch hazel leaves, finely powdered. Thus compounded, it is good for polypus in the nose. Sore Eyes. EYE WATER. Take of unicorn, goldenseal, and bethroot, of equal quantities, or | of an ounce each, well pulverized ; put this compound into a phial con- taining four ounces of hot drops ; shake it well together for several days in order that the drops shall extract the virtue of the roots. APPLICATIOIf. Put three drops of this compound tincture into a mixture of mUk and wa- ter of equal quantities, and dip a linen rag into the mixture and then close the eyes and wash the lashes thoroughly, by which means the medi- cine will work itself into the eyes and produce a salutary effect. If the internal surface of the eyelash is sore, let one drop or more fall into the eye. Then wet two or three thicknesses of linen with the mixture, and put it upon the eyes on going to bed, and put a few extra folds wet with cold water over the other to keep it moist and to reduce the inflamma- tion ; put a folded handkerchief about the head to keep these cloths to the eyes, and unless the difficulty originate from the body this remedy will generally effect a cure. This is also a good application for sore breasts. FOR SORE EYES. When the eyes are weak or inflamed break and pour out an &gg fresh from the shell, and the last drops of the white may be dropped into the eyes. In two or three days they will become strong and the inflamma- tion will be removed. This remedy is excellent for weak eyes either for young or old. [See page 647.] 736 THE THOMSONIAN CURE FOR FILM IN THE EYE OF A HORSE OR OX. Edward S. Jarvis, Esq. of Surry, Me. in a letter to Mr. Joseph R. Newell, proprietor to the Boston Agricultural Warehouse, states as fol- lows : Have you ever heard of a cure for a film on the eye of an ox or a horse .'* I was told of one eighteen or twenty years ago, and have been in the practice of it ever since with perfect success. It was brought to ray mind by just having had proof of its successful application in a calf that had its eye hurt by a blow from another creature. A film formed over it and it was thought its eye was lost. But by turning into the op- posite ear, a great spoonful of melted hog's fat, it was cured in 24 hours. I do not pretend to account for this, but I have seen it tried with success so often, that I think it ought to be made public, if it has not been be- fore. I learned it from an Indian. N. B. The above remedy we give as we find it, and if it be correct that a film can be removed by such means from the eye of a dumb beast we can see no reason why the human species may not be benefitted by the same means. It is certainly worthy of consideration. J. T. STEAMING A great improvement for persons who have a low circulation, and a heavy pressure of blood to the head, cold feet, and a bad digestion. When the feet are cold and the head distressed, or the veins low in the feet and full upon the temples, let the person when he goes into the bath, put his feet into a pail half full of water, as hot as he can bear it. Let the temperature of this water be raised or increased by the addition of more hot water, as fast as the patient can bear it, at the same time keeping up a lively steam upon the body. This is decidedly the best course that heat can be applied to produce a uniform circulation through the system. When the bath has been applied a sufficient length of time, take a quart of cold water and add sutficient hot water to render it but one or two degress colder than the air. Pour this over the top of the head and all over the body and limbs. Wipe off with a cloth, and bathe the feet, legs and body thoroughly with liniment. This operation will give new life and vigor to the body, and the head will be much improved if the bowels are in good order at the time. COUNTER POISONS. To cure the bites of snakes of various kinds, the bifes of spiders, stings of bees, and other poisonous insects. Let the following directions be attended to, as soon after the accident as possible : Take as wide a mouth bottle as possible, that will hold from one gill to half a pint, or if that is not to be had, a gill cup or wine glass, that is perfectly tight except at the top ; put into it from half to a glass of the strong spirits of camphor. Then put the mouth of the bottle, or the top of the cup upon tlie wound or bite, and invert it bottom side up, and keep the mouth of the bottle so liaht against the flesh that the spirits will rest upon the wound, and not leak out or waste away. By watching the spirits closely you will perceive a movement of the camphor between the flesh and upper surface of the liquid, as if the rarification of the air in the bottle and the counter poisonous qualities of the camphor, was not only neutralizing the virus in the body but drawing it out of the flesh into the MATERIA MEDICA. 737 bottle. And the effect is almost instantaneous upon the patient. Where there was pain before, now ease, quietude and peace predominate. BY JUDGE UNDERWOOD. Rufus Black, of Cherokee county; Alabama, abotit sixteen years of a^e was very badly bitten on the top of his foot by a large rattlesnake, which instantly appeared to be progressing- to death. His father being informed that Mrs. Pattan kept the tincture of lobelia, lost no time in applying that powerful remedial agent, by giving the youth a wineglass full every fifteen minutes, until he took five, which vomited him copious- ly, and so completely cured him that he walked about that same evening, and enjoyed company, and was quite well the next day, except the bit- ten spot itself, which was so badly bitten that a large plug sloughed out, and he is perfectly free from it ever since. — Southern Botanico-Medical Journal. TO EXTRACT POISON BY SUCTION. We are informed from good authority that in three separate cases where people had been bitten by poisonous serpents, once by a copper head and twice by rattle snakes, that the poison was readily extracted by a person applying the mouth immediately after the accident to the wound, and drawing out the poison by suction. Remedies icorthy the attention of Females. MOTHER'S RELIEF. Take two pounds of partridge beny vines, half a pound each of high cranberry or cramp bark and unicorn root, a fourth of a pound of blue cohosh or pappoose root, and one pound each of flax seed and red rasp- beiTy leaves ; let as many of these articles as possible be green and all well pulverized ; boil them in three gallons of water for two hours, then strain off and continue to simmer till it is reduced to a gallon and a half; then add four pounds of loaf sugar and half a gallon of good Holland gin. Let half a glass of this compound be taken three or four times a day, for several weeks before confinement. This will strengthen and invigo- rate the constitution before childbirth so that the mother will pass the time of labor with little danger, and will be less liable to take cold after confinement. This article should be used by every prospective mother. TO CURE THE WHITES OR FLUOR ALBUS. Put one handful of dog, or box wood blows, (Cornus J^lorida,) into a bowl ; pour on sufficient quantity of boiling water to wet them thoroughly then add half a pint of good Holland gin. Stop it tight in a bottle for use. Take from half to a glass three times a day ; increase or diminish the quantity as circumstances may warrant. Tliis remedy has cured some obstinate cases of the Fluor ^Ibus in this city, where the severity of (he complaint had resisted the power of every other remedy. In several cases where females had been sorely afflicted for several years after being married, and never had any chil- dren, by the use of this remedy alone they have been restored to health, and all the other difficulties obviated. I have one case in my minds eye who had been weakly for several years, and without \ child. 738 THE THOMSONIAN and about ten years since she took this remedy, and I believe she has been rewarded liberally by the addition of six new members to her fa- mily since. Thus you see, ladies, you can choose or refuse the good thing's of this life. FOR FALLING OF THE WOMB, OR PROLAPSUS UTERL Burn and pulverize white beans, and make a beverage of it the same as coffee. Let the patient use this as a constant drink for a week or two, or till the cure is effected. This is said to be a certain remedy. A USEFUL SYRUP FOR WEAKLY FEMALES. Take one handful of Spikenard roots, do. do, Comfrey, do. do. do. Sarsaparilla, do. do. do. Smooth leaf plantain, do. do. do. Black alder bark, bruise the roots and put them into one gallon of water and boil them for one hour ; strain off and add two poimds of loaf sugar, four ounces of ginger and one of rheubarb, and when cool one quart of brandy; stop it close in a jug for use. Take a wineglass about thiee times a day before eating. FOR BREEDING OR NURSING SORE MOUTH, OR FOR SORE MOUTH OF ANY KIND. Take of sage one ounce and boil it in half a pint of water to one gill ; strain off and add one gill of good honey, after it has been boiled and skimmed. Then add half an ounce of borax well pulverized. Let the borax be dissolved and well stirred or mixed in the compound, when it is fit for use. Keep it in a bottle stopped tight. This isgood for mothers who have what is called the nursing sore mouth, or for women who are in the family way when the mouth is sore. It is rough and will collect the thick phlegm or mucus from the glands, or the fauces or throat ; and will cleanse the sores and purify the breath. It toughens the mouth and removes all soreness. Take a teaspoonful and gargle the moutli and throat five or six times a day. POWDER FOR SORE MOUTH. Take marshrosemary, bayberry, chalk, rosin and sumach berries of each equal quantities, finely pulverised. To this add as much white su- gar as all the rest; let them be well mixed. To be taken into the mouth dry, or for children it may be wet or made into tea. APPLICATION. These powders may be used dry in the mouth, or in a moist state for children. Repeat the application until a cure is performed. If too dry- ing, double the quantity of sugar. If it still continues too drying, double the quantity of sumach berries. FOR SORE NIPPLES.—^ useful Plaster. Take a linen cloth, and gather the comers and sew them in such a form as for it to resemble one half of a ball-cover, or so that it will fit the breast over the nipple. Then melt wax and rub it over the inside of the case; apply several thicknesses of the wax, until the case becomes well MATERIA MEDICA. 739 sattn-ated. This when applied will cause a free perspiration of the breast, and will remove agues and hard bunches, and heal all sores of the nipples by constant use. ANOTHER REMEDY. Take a ball of beeswax and warm it so that it becomes pliable, then work out a plaster in form and shape so that it may fit snugly upon the breast, about three inches from the nipple each way; let this be used constantly upon the breast before and after nursing, and a moist perspira- tion will immediately start under it, and there will be no sore nipple, nor inflamed, caked, or broken breasts. The bosom of the dress should be so snug as to keep the plaster so close to the breast as for it to adhere as tight as possible. This should be remembered by nursing mothers. TO PREVENT SORE NIPPLES OR BREASTS. Bathe the breasts daily before confinement with beef brine. We know this to be a valuable preventive, and those who would regard their com- fort after confinement should not neglect this precaution. FOR SORE NIPPLES. Take a handful of the herb pellitory of Spain, (Parietaria officinalis) and simmer it in butter until the entire strength is exhausted from the herb; strain off, and the ointment is fit for use. FOR INDIGESTION AND FEMALE OBSTRUCTIONS. BROOK LIME — Veronica Beccabunga. This article is said to be a valuable remedy for indigestion and con- sumption. It is stimulating and is good in form of bitters to regulate the monthly turns with females, by removing obstructions. FOR NERVOUS IRRITABILITY OF WEAKLY PATIENTS. MOTHERWORT— Zeonwrus Cardiaca. Take of Motherwort a handful, and make a strong tea, and let it be drank hot by the patient on going to bed, or when the spasms come on ; this will produce almost immediate relief with either male or female. Feaverfew, Mugwort, or double or single Tansey, will produce nearly the same effect. Miscellaneous. FOR CHAPPED HANDS AND FEET. To cure cracked hands, when injured by lye in washing, and they are very painful — or chapped feet in the spring and fall, common to child- ren: Wash the hands or feet clean, dry them well by the fire, then rub them well over with vinegar. When the surface is diy, wash the acid off again with clean warm water, and when dry annoint the parts with cream ; but if that cannot be had, milk may be substituted. Rub two or three 740 THE THOMSONIAN coats over the parts affected, and diy it in by the fire; thfe pain will be relieved at once, and the sores will immediately heal up. Those who are in the habitual use of lye, potash, or any other coiTOsive substance, will do well to remember this remedy. TO PREVENT TOOTH-ACHE. Bathe tlie tep part of the head and back of the neck in cold water at every time you wash. Those who do this, will generally avoid not only the tootli-ache, but also the head-ache. TO RELIEVE THE TOOTH-ACHE. If the tooth be hollow, roll up a piece of cotton the size of the orifice, and wet it with summer savory oil, hot drops, spearmint or peppermint oil, or the tincture of pepper, and press it snugly into the tooth; or plug it with the stimulating strengthening plaster, after having cleansed and dried the cavity with cotton. This will generally relieve. [See page If the tooth is not hollow, but is affected with the ague and distress in the jaws, make a small bag of cayenne, of the size of a white bean, and place is between the teeth and cheek. Take some warming medicines, such as composition or cayenne tea, or hot drops; this will Warm the sto- mach and much assist in affording relief. FOR THE TEETH. Honey, mixed with pure pulverized charcoal, is said to be excellent to cleanse the teeth and make them white. Lime water, with a little Pe- ruvian bark, is very good to be occasionally used by those who have de- fective teeth, or an offensive breath. SNUFF FOR POLYPUS IN THE NOSE. Take pulverized blood root and saturate it with the sap of the black ash tree, tried out by laying a green stick near a hot fire. Make a thick paste of these articles, then dry and pulverize it. This snufF may be taken several times a day. A small quantity of bay- berry may be added to the blood root, which will be some improvement. The sap of black ash may also be used to advantage alone, or with hot drops, by snuffiing it. When a polypus has been extracted from the nose, a free use of this snuff will usually prevent it from growing again. HOW TO MAKE ESSENCE. To make any kind of essence : — Add a teaspoonful of oil to a pint of fourth proof spirits, and shake them well together. TO REMOVE A TIGHT RING FROM THE FINGER. Thread a needle, flat in the eye, with a strong thread; pass the needle with care under the ring and pull the tliread through a few inches towards the hand; wrap the long end tightly round the finger, regularly, down to ihe nails, to reduce its size. Then lay hold of the short end of the thread to unwind it. The lliread pressing against the ring will gradually remove it from the finger. Tliis unfailing method will remove the tightest ring without difficulty, however swollen the finger may be. Flowers deleterious in sleeping apartments. [See page 69.] MATERIA MEDICA. 741 TO EXPEL INSECTS FROM THE EAR. Insects frequently gain access to the ear, and create excrutiating dis- tress;^ to remove which, pour in a few drops of alcohol, brandy, or spirits of camphor, and they immediately come upon the surface. It is not unfrequently the case, that both children and grown persons are troubled with distress in the head from this cause, when they suppose it to be the ear-ache. RECEIPT FOR TETTER. Take half a pound each of narrow plantain, lobelia inflata, narrow dock roots and blood root, and steep them in half a gallon of good vine- gar at blood heat for thirty hours; strain off and press the grains. Take emetic pills or tincture daily; and about twice a week, at night, take a bath, and after nabbing the surface well ihen apply tliis wash and let it dry. It may be used several times a day. FOR FISTULA. Take a lump of salt about the size of an egg, the same of hard soap; then take a quantity of poke root {Phitalachia decandria) and boil it se- parately until it becomes a syrup of about one pint; then mix the salt and soap with it, to the consistency of hard soap. Wash the parts atfected night and morning for a week or fortnight, and the cure is^ effected. TO CURE CORNS ON THE TOES. Clavus. Take half a pint of water cement m good condition, fresh- from the cask. Wet up a tablespoonful and put it in form of a poultice upon the com just before going to bed ; keep it snug during the night, and in the morning you will have a hard lump of plaster, to remove from the toe, the corn and flesh having absorbed the moisture of the poultice; it should be borne in mind that the cement should be put only upon the upper side of the toe, or the side affected, as it would be difficult to remove, if the part affected should be encircled entirely with it, without the assistance of a hammer or some heavy instrument, to break the cement, which might be attended with some pain to the individual. Continue to apply tliis preparation for about one week and the clavus part will detach itself from the live flesh, and by the application of a little oil the com may be removed and the sore healed. This discovery was made by one of the contractors on the Croton Wa- terworks accidentally. One of the laborers who was mixing the water lime or cement had many corns upon his feet, and he was about in the mortar in his bare feet, and it was but a short time before hi^ feet were entirely clear of those troublesome appendages. ANOTHER REMEDY FOR CORNS. Soak the feet well in hot water until the corns become soft, then shave them down to the quick. Let two or three drops of tallow hot from a candle be applied to the com ; rub it well in ; then wind a strip of linen cloth two or three thicknesses about the toe and make it fast • continue to wear this cloth until it wears out and comes oflf. I have known many corns cured from this remedy alone. FOR SCARLET FEVER. A very simple remedy for this dreadful disorder, is merely a mixture of cayenne pepper, salt and vinegar, used as a gargle, occasionally swal- lowing a teaspoonfuU. 742 THE THOMSON IAN FOR BLEEDING AT THE NOSE. Great relief if not a radical cure may be affected by bathing the feet in stimulating liniment, and using snuff" freely, made of pulverized Avitch hazel leaves, to contract the blood vessels in the head. IMPORTANT ADVICE TO YOUTH. Keep the head cool, the feet warm, take no mineral or poisonous me- dicine, and bid defiance to doctors. STEEL BUSKS. It is extremely probable that whatever conducts the electricity of the body from it, will occasion direct debility. With this view I have long been in the habit of causing females who use steel supports in their stays to lay them altogether aside. ASTHMA, We learn from an intelligent friend who has long been afflicted with this most distressing complaint, that the fumes of burning paper saturat- ed with a solution of saltpetre gives him perfect relief. He keeps a quan- tity of paper which he been simply soaked in strong saltpetre water and afterwards dried, constantly on hand, and on the recurrence of a parox- ism obtains almost instant relief from burning half a sheet or a sheet in his room. Others who have been similarly affected have tried it, with corresponding benefit. In no case has it been known to fail, as far as his information extends. We deem the testimony sufficient to warrant the publication of the pre- scription, which certainly has the merit of simplicity. If it shall prove generally efficacious, its value is beyond price. It can be readily tested. We think the leaves or lobelia mflata would be far better, and less dan- gerous to the health of the patient. Miscellaneous Observations, UPON VARIOUS SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH DISEASE AND ITS TREATMENT, REMARKS, &C. FOR THE QUINSY, PUTRID SORE THROAT, CROUP, Or any difficulty or inflammation about the throat, neck, or organs of respiration, occasioned by taking cold, or pressure of blood to the head. In all the cases above mentioned, the difficulty is brought on from the loss of animal or vital warmth, consequently cold feet, costive or relaxed state of the bowels, attended with more or less torpidity of the stomach, and digestive apparatus; and a consequent excess or pressure of blood to the head. TREATMENT. Take a dose of composition, and get the body into a comfortable state as regards warmth ; then bathe the feet in as hot water and continue to in- crease the temperature until the heat is as great as the patient can bear. Continue this operation for twenty or thirty minutes, keeping the body well shielded from the air, then take out one foot and wipe it diy with a MATERIA MEDICA. 743 cloth, and then bathe it thoroughly with stimulating liniment, which dry in by the fire; put on the stocking, then take out the other foot and treat it in like manner. Let the patient go into a warm bed, with a hot stone at the feet to keep up the perspiration, which this course will produce; then make an injection of composition or No. 3, moderate in point of astringent properties, sweeten with molasses, and add one ounce of the strongest kind of third preparation. Before using this, the bowels may be cleansed by administering a gentle enema of warm milk and water. After which, use the first or strong hijection, thoroughly applied, and when it operates the scene of excitement is changed from the head and neck for the bowels and lower extremities. Now administer a gentle emetic of the green herb, which will operate mildly and create but little excitement in the stomach. This course will throw the blood to the low- er extremities,- and relieve the pressure at the head and the difficult re- spiration. Now take two ounces of the strengthening plaster and melt it; add one teaspoonful of the finest and best cayenne pepper, stir it into the plaster; and should it be too stiff, add a little hogs-lard, which will soften it to a suitable consistency. Next cut a piece of leather or thick muslin, so that it will fit in upon the throat and out to the outer edges of the lower jaw and chin, and extending down the throat and neck about six inches, around just back of the ears on each side of the face; spread tlie plaster upon this cloth, or leather, of sufficient tliickness, and put up- on the neck; and if it does not set snug, slit it under the chin in several places until it will lay close to the neck and chin without wrinkles. This plaster will draw out the inflammation and relieve the patient almost im- mediately. In all cases of croup, cloths v\Tung out of hot water may be applied to the bowels of children with good success, to assist vitality by absorption, while you use the other remedies. In this treatment, it will be perceived that the great benefit derived, was in transferring the seat of excitement from the upper to the lower extremities until the obstructions above were removed, which requires but a short time. By this course of treatment I have cured many serious difficulties of the lungs and throat; and in fact, the treatment is excellent in any case of disease, as all require an equilibrium in the circulation, and this is one of the most effectual ways to produce so desirable a result. In all cases nourishment should be freely used, such as milk porridge, chicken soup, water gruel, beef tea, or any other substance of which the patient is fond, as it strengthens the body and allows the medicine to pro- duce a more thorough operation. TO STOP THE LEAKAGE OF JOINT WATER. In case a joint be cut so that the water exudes from the wound, the most proper treatment is to wash it thoroughly with cold water, then wipe dry and bathe the internal surface of the wound with hot drops ; then close it together with a needle and thread; bind upon the sore a soft sponge, which will dry up the leakage at the same time and close the lips of the wound. In eighteen or twenty-four hours the parts will be badly swollen in consequence of the internal discharge of the joint water into the flesh, which will cause it to extend and be extremely painful; then a powerful stimulant or draft must be applied, to remove through the pores the matter that accumulates in the flesh until the sore heals at the bottom. The limb should be kept very still. If it be the knee or ankle, it should be placed upon a pillow in a chair and let the hot medicines be taken freely to keep up a perspiration, which will remove all inflammation in a 744 THE THOMSONIAN few days. A poultice of comfrey and white turpentine may also be use- fully applied to the wound. In a few days the sore will be healed at the bottom, provided you remove the matter from the flesh by perspiration as fast as it accumulates from the wound internally. Let the limb be kept elevated and still, and strais^ht if possible, on a board. Scraped sole leather applied to such wounds will also stop the leakage of the joint, and may be used instead of the sponge, if the proper means are employed to keep up the perspiration. RHEUMATIC PAINS, AND DEBILITY IN THE KNEES. A gentleman called on us, who was troubled with great weakness in his knees, from rheumatic pains. His limbs were so weak that he was under the necessity of using a cane in each hand. He said that liis knees felt as if the joints would part and let his body down, whenever he at- tempted to rise from his chair, which he could do only with the assist- ance of both his hands, and then with great difficulty, so weak were the joints. TREATMEXT. I made a long bandage of cloth, the same as I would do to brace up a kroken limb, and spread the whole length with stimulating plaster. Then I commenced below the knee, and passed the plaster entirely around the limb, then under the hollow of the knee and around the limb above it, ap- plying it closely, and then brought it around again directly over the knee pan, and attached it by the adiiesive properties of the plaster to the band- age on the side. Thus the limb was braced above, below, and across the joint, which served as artificial support. The other limb was treated in the same way; the person at once arose from his chair, and without the assistance of his canes walked across tlie room, declaring that he had not been able to walk with so much strengUi and ease for a long time. SETTING A BONE IN THE FOOT. A lady by accident stepped into a hole and sprained or turned her foot in such a manner as to injure it, so that she was not able to walk upon it for several weeks. She employed one of the best surgeons in the place, who applied wormwood and vinegar, and a great variety of remedies, but all to no purpose. It was badly swollen, and she was obliged while sit- ting to keep it elevated on a chair, being unable to bear it on the floor. She wished us to relieve her if possible. We examined the foot, and it appeared to us that the metitarsal bone where it is joined to the first pha- lanx of the little toe was out of place, for when she put it down she said it seemed as if that part touched the floor before any other part of the foot. TREATMENT. We put her foot into hot water and bathed it thoroughly, at the same time giving suitable medicines at the stomach, thus starting an active circulation throughout the whole system, and relaxing the muscles and making them pliable, and then applied the stimulating liniment to the foot. We then cut out a piece of thin board about the size and just in the shape of the bottom of the foot, hollowing out a space about a quarter of an inch deep directly under where the metitarsal bone would come MATERIA MEDICA. 745 upon the surface of the board. We then made a bandage about two yards in length and rolled it ; then we placed the bandage across in front of the foot and carried the roll back and around just above the heel; then brought it forward around and across the end of the bandage and hollow of the foot, about which we passed it three times, drawing it very closely each time, which brought the outer edges of the foot so as to resemble the hand when pressed upon the sides, forming a longitudinal hollow in the centre. The board was then applied to the bottom of the foot, over the bandage, which was then drawn several times around tlie foot and board, together, thus bringing down the foot to its natural position. This re-, duced the bones to their natural place ; and as soon as the operation of dressing was over with, the lady arose from her chair and walked, for the first time since the injury had been received, and never had any fur- ther trouble with it. TO STRAIGHTEN A CROOKED LEG OR STIFF JOINT, When caused by contracted muscles. Give the stimulating medicines and keep up an active circulation through the whole body. Bathe the feet and legs in hot water, in order that the muscles throughout the system may receive as much warmth as possible, thus becoming very elastic. Wipe the parts dry and bathe them with hot drops and nerve ointment or stimulating liniment. Then put the contracted limb while yet full of elasticity, on to a straight board and swathe it down as near straight as practicable. Continue the hot medicines, and bathing the limb with hot water and ointment at night, and with the ointment alone in the morning, and at each time straight- ening the joint on the board by drawing closer the swathe or bandage; the same may also be done at noon. At each application endeavor to bring the joint a little straighter or nearer the board than at the preceding time. By following this course many cases of crooked limbs may be made straight. THE FEET! TAKE CARE OF THE FEET!! Let this be remembered by all. This important admonition cannot be repeated too often. Three quar- ters of our diseases come on by the feet. Young ladies get the consump- tion by their thin slippers and silk stockmgs. They expose themselves in the ball room after over exercise, by sitting down where it is cool. After leaving this place of amusement Ihey communicate to the body a chill that is most pernicious through their shoes. Young gentlemen get the rheumatism, indigestion, pleurisy and catarrh, by their thin pumps. Young mothers get the ague in the breast, the milk leg, costive habit, fever and dropsy, by the extremities becoming too cold and an obstruct- ed perspiration taking place. Dyspepsia and nervous debility is brought on by the feet becoming cold, the circulation becoming thereby crowded to the head, by which means the bowels and stomach suffer for the want of an active circulation in the lower extremities. THE REMEDY. In the first place make pride bow to convenience, comfort and health in all things. In the second place see what the wants of the body re- quire to make it comfortable, and supply those wants without regard to 48 746 THE THOMSONIAN the opinions of others. Tliis fear of what Mr. A. i\Ir. B. or Mrs. C. or D. will say, is what has killed its tens of thousands. Therefore, a pei- iectly independent feeling of v/hat others may say or think as to our dress and appearance, if it be decent and comfortable, is one of the first important requisites to preserve and secure health. In cold weather se- cure the limbs with flannel undergarments, drawers, and woollen stock- ings. Put into the bottom of the boots or shoes, inside next to the feet, cork soles or bottoms, which are furnished in small sheets for tlie pur- pose and may be trimmed down to fit the bottom of the boot or shoe. These corks will keep the feet dry and v.arm and if the water soaks through the bottom so as to moisten the corks, the feet will remain warm, as the cork will not absorb the wet, consequently will remain dry. Old hat may be used instead of cork, as a substitute, where the former can- not be had. This part of keeping the bottoms of the feet warm, is cf the utmost importance to preserve the body from disease, and more especial- ly the lungs, liver, and digestive powers. Those persons who take vio- lent exercise in their pumps should always have thick shoes or boots with cork or hat soles, to protect the bottom of the feet against the cold when about to be exposed. The benefit of cork soles may be more highly ap- preciated by those who have been subject to lung complaints, headache, cholic, rheumatic pains, pleurisy, &c, than those who enjoy good health, and make use of the means as a preventive against the attack of those complaints. The feet being guarded as above and kept warm, the body requires less clothing to keep it comfortable; therefore economy as well as health requires that the feet should be well protected against the cold. TO PREVENT FATIGUE AFTER EXCESSIVE LABOR, Or after having exhausted the vital or muscular energy by excessive per- spiration, before and after the commencement of chills. When the exercise is over, do not sit down until you get to a stove or fire, and then place your back to the heat. In that way the greatest force of the heat will be felt between the shoulder blades and down the back, so that the medulla spinalis, or spinal manow, Avill receive the greatest possible influence from its direct application. The quantity of warmth received by absoi-jjlion by the spinalis is distributed through the body by the nerves, and the comfort and rest experienced by the person through the whole syiitem while the radiation of heat is in process, is pleasant be- yond conception. When the system has thus replenished its vitality, and every part of the body has become warm, a scalding sensation is experienced on the back, to show that the system is as full of warmth as the wants of the body re- quire. The absorbents take up heat so rapidly when a person is very cold, and the system is filled so quick with the warmth, that it reacts upon the sur- face, meets the direct rays of heat, and creates of a sudden, a sensation or impression that the back is burning or scalding. When the last de- scribed sensation is experienced, those who will be at the trouble will find the veins full of blood, both in the hands and feet, and if they attempt to exercise, the inconvenience of excessive labor will hardly be felt, and they will feel much refreshed and invigorated. Those persons who are troubled with lung difficulties will experience lasting benefit by the frequent apj)lication of this warmth, as the writer of this article knows by experience. The most direct way to affect the lungs by external heat is by the MATERIA MEDICA. 747 back ; and those who have taken serious cold may be benefitted by re- membering" these admonitionSj if they do not consider them too simple. INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF THE YOUNG SLEEPING WITH AGED PEOPLE. When young people sleep with the aged, it will be perceived that the senior will grow vigorous, whUe the younger will become pale and wan In appearance, dejected in spirits, and enfeebled in constitution. The old person literally becomes young, and the young one old. The reason is perfectly plain. The two becoming bed-fellows, an equilibrium soon takes place in the warmth and vigor of their bodies. Thus tlie old per- son preys upon llie vigorous and active system of the young, by absorp- tion, or by gi\'ing new life to the old, while the young person in the same degree partakes of the inert principle of the aged. In this exchange, the young person parts with that principle which sustains vitality and prolongs life, and obtains the infirmities and impotence of age. In a de- gree it may be truly said, it is life to the aged, and death to the young. HEALTHY ABLUTIONS. Bathe the whole surface of the body with cold water ever}' morning on getting out of bed, then rub smartly Avith a coarse napkin to raise a cuta- neous excitement. This produces a healthy action upon the skin, giving the young a robust constitution, and makes the aged more rugged, and less liable to suffer from fatigue or clianges in the atmosphere. By making it a constant practice, the muscular system will become more firm and solid, the person will be mucli less liable to take cold, will require less clothing, and feel moi-e strength and animation. This should be remembered especially by weakly females and all debilitated persons ; but let them previous to the bathing take wanning medicines, to prevent taking cold. SPRAINED LIMB. It may be thouglit strange by some that an emetic should relax the mus- cles of a sprained joint, and reduce its swelling; but that such is the fact, we can testify from our own personal experience. We sprained one of our ankles when young, which became so much swollen and so painful that we were unable to walk. But by taking an emetic of the tincture of lobelia, and applying a cloth wet with whiskey and water to the afiected part, in six hours the swelling was entirely re- duced, and we were .able to use the limb comfortably. During the continuance of the perspiration, the cloths were wet several times, the fever drying them rapidly. A HEALTHY BEVERAGE FOR LABORING PERSONS. Put two tablespoonsful of brown sugar into a pint of cold soft water, or the best drinking water you have, and keep it for a constant beverage in hot weather. This is one of the most healthy drinks that can be used to keep up the tone of the system. A teaspooniul of ginger should be add- ed, which will render the drink more desirable either in hot or cold wea- ther. In the warmest weather this will keep the body cool and comfort- able, and give A-igor to the system and an ambition for business. 748 THE THOMSONIAN THE VIRTUES OF HEMLOCK. TO BE REMEMBERED IN BILIOUS COUNTRIES. In imheallhy countries where the water is stagnant, let it be made intc* tea, by having hemlock bouglis boiled in it, to prevent the injurious ef- fects of the water, and if used as a constant drink it will keep ofl" all pu- trid disorders incident to such places. People who work in swamps, or low, unhealthy places, by using this constantly will avoid disease. Tiy the experiment. RED RASPBERRY LEAVES— i?»5ws Strigosus, A SUBSTITUTE FOR IBIPORTED. TEA — Then Chinensis.. We have been in the habit for some time past of using the red rasp- berry leaves as a substitute for imported tea, and most of our people pre- fer it. We think the flavor superior, and certainly the article is far more healthy. The two kinds of tea are prepared for each meal, and the rasp- berry is preferred by most of the members of our family. Let our readers try this experiment for two or three weeks, and our word for it, they will anive at the ^ame conclusion that we have. Children and others who make use of this tea will not be troubled with diarrhoea, dysenter)% or sore throat or mouth. Ta Practitioners. INTEMPERANCE. A course of medicine should not be administered to any person wliile in a state of intoxication — as the volatile properties of the liquor will re- ceive a fresh impetus, and press violently into the head, and the subject exhibit the wildest paroxysms of madness, Irom the use of the steam bath and the other stimulating applications that would naturally be applied by a skillful practitioner, to produce a salutaiy operation or course. We believe that there is danger of apoplexy in a case of this kind, by too great a pressure of stimulus upon the brain. The stomach should be clear of alcohol for our stimulating treatment to produce happy results upon the constitution. The worst effects produced upon the system, to appearance, are by the application of the vapor bath. In some cases in which it has been used, the alcohol has become so volatile, and forced its way to the brain with such rapidity, that the patient would force him- self from the bath, and it woukl require the strength of several persons t® keep him under subjection. TO CURE INTEMPERANCE. People who have been subject to hard drinking should not be broken ofT too suddenly, as it will prove deleterious to health, and in many in- stances fatal to life. Let the following course be adopted. Take a quart bottle full of the favorite liquor that one has been accus- tomed to drink, with the usual strength. Let the inebriate take his glass as usual, then let his friend add to the bottle a glass of water for each one taken out,; and so continue to add a glass of water as oftf^n as he takes a glass of liquor, by which means the spirit is gradually reduced, and its consequent stimulating effects upon the body are gone, leaving nature to make up the deficiency in vital energy, by "an appetite and suitable nou- MATERIA MEDICA. 749 rishment. If it is thought proper, a tablespoonful of tJie tincture of lo- belia may be added to the bottle at the time the water is put in. In no instance should the liquor be taken away at once, but it should be done by degTces, und something substituted upon which nature may rely for a more congenial support. Aged persons, in this case, should be dealt with very cautiously. ANOTHER EFFECTUAL REMEDY. Whenever the time arrives that the thirst or hankering for tlie liquor takes place, which is usually about the time for taking the bitters, (say eleven o'clock) substitute milk instead of the liquor, and it will effectu- ally do away the inclination for the liquor in a few days. Nature re- ceives from the nourishment of the milk a stimulus far more genial and lasting- than tliat from the liquor. The body will be invigorated, the mind made clear,'and perhaps a disconsolate Avife and suffering children made happy. To PiMic Speakers, OR TO CLERGYMEN, ORATORS AND LAWYERS. j Take care of your animal warmth in time of s'peaking, or supply your- selves with fuel before you commence the voyage. Men have naturally allotted to them animal warmth sufficient to carry on respiration and for oral purposes; but when long continued or animat- ed speaking requires an extra supply, that from the extremities is called an, to make up the deficiency at the vitals. If the person be slender, or thin in flesh, his warmth is soon exhausted by excitement and rapid speaking, and he becomes weak for the want of material to give rarifica- tion to the air that is taken in by respiration. In such cases, artificial means should be resorted to in order to give the system a supply for such emergencies. We remember the case of a reverend gentleman, who was slender in body, excitable, and nervous in temperament. He would become so^com- pletely absoi'bed with his subject, and engaged when preaching, as to use up the natural warmth of his body by his quick respiration and rapid speaking. From being pale, his countenance would become lighted up and florid; and if he for a long time continued speaking, a purple hue of the countenance, a dulness of the eye, and a languor of the body would follow, succeeded by fainting, unless he had presence of mind sufficient lo sit down, or stop in season to prevent it. " What shall I do to avoid these feelings? said he to me. " Open your mouth less, and then more temperately, or on setting out carry a sufficient supply of fuel to last till you have amved at the end of your voyage," was our reply. "And how," he enquired, "shall I supply myself with this fuel.'" " Take a dose of cayenne or composition when you go into the desk." This advice he followed; and to our enquiries, soon after, what was the effect of our advice, he replied, " I could perform, it seems to me, if ne cessary, a second service with as much ease as the first, it gives me such a spring; it seems as if I was almost inspii-ed with new life." So we admonish j'ou, gentlemen clergymen, orators and lawyers, to iay in a good supply of fuel before you commence speaking. 750 THE THOMSONIAN Black and White Populatlonj AND THEIR LIABILITY TO DISEASE IW BILIOUS COUKTRIES- AIVD HOT CLIMATES. Why are the while population in tropical countries more subject to putrid diseases and death than the blacks in the same climate ! It is well known that the white people of high northern latitudes cannot live under the equator, like the blacks or native inhabitants, without being subject to >iolent attacks ol' bilious complaints, such as yellow and bilious fever, or black vomit, until after they have become accustomed to the climate. Let us look for a moment at their different complexions, and the part that color acts upon the system, in promoting health and generating disease. In philosophy, it is well understood that black will absorb the rays of heat and light, and that white will reflect them. Put a piece each of black and white clotli upon the snow, and the black will make its way to the ground, while the snow under the white will hardly become affected in the fame temperature. The fact is, the black cloth absorbs the heat, and exiiausts its influence as fast as it is received upon tlie snow beneath, while the white reflects nearly all the heat; con- sequently the snow is not melted in the same degree beneath. The same is the case with people. The blacks absorb sufficient heat from the sur- rounding elements to keep up vital energy, with the assistance of cay- enne pepper, which they eat in abundance, both in the crude state, in soops, and in many other forms, whicli enables them to carry on respira- tion and perspiration with a great degree of comfort and ease; by which means tliey throw off by the surface a large quantity of morbid matter, which would (where there was not sufficient vital heat absorbed to keep up the proper degree of circulation) accumulate within, until everj' ave- nue of the body Avould become full, when nature would make a powerful effort by evacuations to throw it off, by what is usually termed the black vomit, bilious fluxes, or yellow fever, or till death terminated the suffer- ings of the patient by mortificaiion. Inasmuch as nature is not able to take up by absorption warmth sulficient to carry on perspiration, in the same proportion should the person make up the deficiency and promote perspiration by the use of pepper or some other stimulus, to promote the secretions or evacuations of the body to such a degree as to throw off the excess of matter that the perspiration has failed in disposing of. The white man reflects the heat, consequently vitality cannot be kept up but by tlie assistance of forced efforts ; he becomes faint and languid, with a loss of appetite. The stream is nearly level with the fountain, or the temperature upon the surface rises nearly as high as that within. This will soon terminate his existence, unless by taking pepper or oilier arti- ficial means he keeps up the vital heat, or keeps down to a proper medi- um that upon the surface; thus maintaining a gentle moisture and a re- quisite surplus of \-itality to sustain respiration witli ea=e until the person becomes accustomed to the climate, by changing the character and com- plexion measurably of the surlace from a light to a dark color. Mr. Jefferson once remarked, lliat in lime the blacks would have full possession of the bilious portions of the low lands in the eoulhern states; and the reason is perfectly plain. Where the sun pours down the great- est power of its rays there vegetalion is the most abundant and luxuriant. The blacks are enlivened and invigorated by this heat, consequently it is a means of increasint; and perpetuating their race ; while by the same aii MATERIA MEDICA. 751 and climate the whiles are enfeebled both in body and mind, and there- fore will decline in population in the same proportion as the blacks in- crease. Why is it not as necessary for the blacks to emigrate north during the summer, for tiicir health, as for the whites? Are they not by their habits equally and even more exposed to di-ease ? The" amount of vegetation that is constantly going to decay, is much more where the soil is rich and the atmosphere hot, than where the soil is less rich and the atmosphere more temperate and healthy; consequently, the amount of morbid poison is proportionately larger in the former than in the latter case, and of course more unhealthy. Such a place is best adapted to those ])eople whose complexions are such as will with the greatest facility exhaust by perspiration the morbid poison received by respiration. This is the case with the blacks; they can live and prosper in the everglades of Florida, where the atmosphere is almost present death to the white man, who cannot Iceep up sufficient vitality to eject through the skin, the morbid poison received by the lungs into the body by respi- ration; consequently he is a subject for bilious or yellow fever, black vo- mit, &c. A resort to high lands in hot weather is a remedy for diseases incident to low groimds; but in all cases make a free use of the pepper. Let these our views of the operations of the different complexions, and their influence upon the body, be thought of by those who would study the cause and eifect of diseases upon the human system, and also the cli- mates best adapted to both health and disease, and our errors upon the subject corrected, if those news are erroneous. INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE UPON MAN. The effects of malaria on the range of human life, maj- be illustrated by a few facts. M. de Warville says that he has seen in the dry, healthy parts of America, women of sixty or seventy years of age, with an air of freshness, and sparkling with liealth; and (hat in many places one person in nine attains the age of eighty years ; while on the low island of Oerlon M. Moheau states that there are not more than live or six octogenarians in fourteen thousand inhabitants. The limit of life in Switzerland is placed by M. de INIoine at eighty-six years — wliile in Georgia, it is stat- ed, that white females born there very seldom attain the age of forty, and men rarely that of fifty years. Out of a thousand persons born at Vien- na half of them do not live to be two years of age — whilst in the province of Vaud, in Switzerland, five hundred out of a thousand persons born there live to be forty-one years old. At Petersburg, in Virginia, it is said that no white person born there has ever attained the usual middle age, and then the body appears quite decrepit and worn down, although no severe sickness had been endured; and on the west coast of Africa wliite children bom there seldom attain ten years of age. This is strongly con- trasted with the health of the people of the capital of Nor^vay, where there is but one physician among thirty thousand inhabitants. The preceding remarks sufficiently demonstrate the effects of climate and soil even on man, who, of all animals, is best capable of defending himself against the consequences of the deleterious elements ; for it cannot be denied, that in some countries his mind as well as his body arrives, with great rapidity and but little vigor, at maturity, when, without any perceptible intervening period of manhood, the corporeal structure hast- ens in an equal ratio of celerity to the grave. This fact is, however, but 752 THE THOMSONIAN a part of the universal law of nature — that whatever is rapid in its growth is equally speedy in its dissolution. The horse and the poplar quickly reach their height, gracefulness and beauty, and are shortlived; wliile the elephant and the oak require nearly a century to obtain their vastness, strength and grandeur, and flourish in all the pride of majesty for ages. DIRECTIONS FOR NORTHERN PEOPLE WHO VISIT LOW LATITUDES DURIKG THE SUMMER, HOW TO AVOID BILIOUS DISEASES. Wear black or red flannel under wrappers and draAvers, fitted as snugly to the body as possible, and let your outside garments be made of brown linen or black bombazine. By this course the body will absorb suffi- cient heat from the atmosphere, by the aid of the black, to keep up vital energy; thus you will in a great measure obviate the inconvenience aris- ing from a light complexion . Let the food be of soups, well seasoned with pepper and salt, and take daily a few pepper pods, and you will be likely to avoid in a great mea- sure the horrors of the diseases incident to a bilious country. Let the clothes be often changed, and a great regard paid to cleanli- ness. Let also a strong pepper sauce be freely used, made of a wineglassful of good vinegar, a teaspoonful of the best cayenne, and two teaspoonsful of fine salt. Stir this well together, and let it be kept in a phial or tea- cup for use. It may be shaken or stirred well together, and a teaspoon- ful taken half a dozen times a day. Tliis is an excellent remedy against all putrid difficulties incident to low bilious countries. USEFUL BEVERAGE. Again. — If the people at the south would import from the north a good supply of hemlock boughs {Pinus Canadei^sis') to be used instead of tea during the summer season as a common beverage, they would not be as liable to the attacks of putrid complaints. The tea may be made of the hemlock in the most stagnant water, if it be well boiled. Let it stand for a constant drink or beverage during the day. Let our southern friends try this remedy as a preventive of yellow, bili- ous and other putrid complaints, and they will not regret the experiment. The person who makes use of this tea, will not take cold in northern latitudes by ordinary exposure to wet or cold. It acts powerfully upon the kidneys, and is a valuable diuretic. TTie Asiatic Cholera. A PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY. In coming before the community with a theory so entirely novel, rela- tive to the cause and effects of a disease, which the most learned of the known world have thus far pronounced as being beyond human research, we do it with a consciousness of our inability to do justice to the subject. We are therefore in hopes that our more enlightened friends will have the goodness to point out the fallacy of our reasoning, if we are in error, as MATERIA MEDICA. 753 we are ever ready to confess our ignorance, and arc always r<;ady to ex- change it for an equal share of useful knowledge, from whatever source it may be derived. We have always been doomed to accompany the unfortunate few that are destined to stem the current of life, against the torrent of prejudice and abuse thai is always ready to break like a mighty cataract upon any who presume to offer an opinion that shall in the least ditfer from the old established track. But our destiny has been so long established, that the arrows of persecution and the darts of prejudice have lost their sting. We give our opinion, if it be ever so erroneous; for how can our tutors rectify our errors, unless they are acquainted with them? We therelbre advance our opinion, but shall ever claim the privilege to embrace the principles of a more correct theory, as soon as our opponents will con- vince us of the fallacy of our arguments, and have substituted in their stead more rational ones. Man, like a machine, is under the control of a regulator, and that re- gulator is the mind. He is composed of the elements, and his existence IS dependent upon a certain tone or temperament the composition has re- ceived. Like a commander in chief of an army, the mind commands the members of the body individually or collectively. If the eye, as the sen- tinel of the body, sees the danger, the mind by the eye is ijiimediately informed of it, and the limbs are directed to flee, or otherwise act, as the emergency of the case may require. Should the destruction of one or more of the members take place, and the mind remain unimpaired, we should perceive at once the disability of the body to perform its usual functions. The mind is sensible of the de- ficiency of the members under her command, or of the body coiporate, from which it has received no injury, but still remains as strong as be- fore any injury was received by the confederation. But when the mind is mpaired by loss of reason, the whole body corporate suffers compara- tive shipwreck, in consequence of the guide or regulator being impaired or gone. It is like a ship that is unmanageable — left entirely to the mer- cy of the waves — or like a powerful engine, that is under motion with- out adequate means by which it may be controlled. The ear can hear, the eye can see, the nerves feel, ihe limbs act — ^but not with judgment, without the direction of the mind. The principle of life is given us, and the desire to retain it; therefore when danger occurs to the body corporate, we have a greater dread of it than if it would only injure a part of the confederation. Like fruit, man comes to maturity and then goes to decay; and the means that will con- tinue him sound and prolong his days for the longest period, are what he is ever in pursuit of. When any unusual mortality visits his neighborhood, and his friends begin rapidly to fall around him, the eyes and ears inform the mind of the danger of the body, and the limbs are immediately directed to flee with the body to a safe retreat. It stands us all in hand to guard ourselves against the enemies of our existence; and being philosophically constructed, it is important to -search out the immediate and remote causes of any calamity that may at- tend us, or threaten our common country, and to reduce the cause as near to a mathematical demonstration as the circimistances of the case will admit, in order not only to shield ourselves, but our friends, and thereby furnish the means, if possible, to perpetuate our existence. Fear rests on the mind in proportion as the place where the person resides is subject to dangerous or pestilential disease. There must have been some principle in the atmosphere during the cholera, which was more destructive to hu- man life than at other times. 754 THE THOMSONIaN Therefore, the object of the writer now is, to dwell upon the immedi- ate and remote causes of the Asiatic cholera, in a philosophical point of view, and endeavor to show as far as we are capable, in our own way, by what particular agency man should be more rapidly cut off in the time of cholera — during that fatal season — than at any other time. We believe the remote cause of cholera was an unusual destmction of animal and ve- getable matter, durhig- violent and sudden changes of the weather; and the direct cause, the excess of nitrous or morbid gas, that was extracted by tlie power of heat from the decaving mass, during the summer wea- ther. By keeping the foregoing views in mind whilst perusing what follows, the reader will be better able to judge of the philosophy of our argument as we progress. It will be remembered, that in September, October, and November, 1831, preceding the cholera, we had our finest and best weather. During that season, all nature appeared beautiful and gay, and vegetation was clothed as it were with summer verdure. Insects were lively, and the whole face of nature was clad in its summer garb during the fall, as late as about the 20th of November, when winter set in. To-day, as it were, the sap of the plants was in their top, and there was no visible pre- paration for winter, as would naturally be expected at so late a period during common seasons in the same month; and all species of insects were lively, and there appeared to be no preparation for winter; when in an hour, as it were, cold weather set in. The change was so great that the sap m plants was frozen, by which they were destroyed in great abun- dance, and the sap in young fruit trees, in many instances, was frozen between the cam and the wood, by which the bark was raised, and the tree partly or entirely destroyed. In that way young trees suffered more from the 20th of November to the 20th of June following, than for fifteen preceding years. To verify this statement, we have only to say to the horticulturist, the gardener or the farmer, take a retrospective view of the fall of 1S31 and Hie winter foUowmg, and see if cold weather was not more destructive to the vegetable matter than they ever knew it to be for the same space of time. Myriads of insects were overtaken and destroyed, in consequence of becoming stiffened by the cold before they had time to get to their winter retreat. We presume there is no account on record since the set- tlement of North America, of so g-reat a phenomenon in the weather as took place in the latter part of the month of November and the fore part of December, 1831. The severity of the winter of 1831-32 preceding the cholera, far exceeded any winter that has been experienced by the old- est inhabitants of the country. From the time when winter set in, we had no weather sufficiently warm, by which the nitrous gas could be extract- ed from the substance in which it was generated, as has been the case in regular seasons. For in common seasons there is warm weather enough in each month to exhale the poison that has accumulated during the same time, which is done gradually; consequently the injury to the inhabit- ants will be light in proportion to its gradual escape. The large quanti- ties of gas which are exhaled in the spring, is what causes the peculiar fainlness felt at that time, and is what cuts off the inhabitants, and espe- cially the aged, more than at any other season of the year. In the fall, the frosty nights and hot days have the same effect upon the inhabitants, in proportion to tlie quantity oi tender herbage and animal matter that had suffered by the frost, the poison of which is exhaled during the hot days, from which it is frequently said in relation to consumptive people, if they do not die in the spring, they will live till about the falling of the leaves in autumn. MATERIA MEDICA. 755 The large quantity of matter that had accumulated in co?isequcnce of the sudden change in the fall of 1831, and the long and severe Avmter. throughout the country, had not exhaled its malaria or poison into the air, as is common, in consequence of the severe cold weather; and the accu- mulations of six months were to be disposed of when hot weather set in, about the middle of June, 1832. The exhalations of nitie from this mass of morbid matter, is what we believe destroyed so many inhabitants dur- ing tlie cholera. Nitre is generated in the greatest abundance in valleys and low- grounds, where dead animals are left to decay, or where large quantities of vegetable manure liave been deposited, or on the banks of rivers, in swamps and low marshy grounds ; and all rich soils have an abundance of it. Fogs in loAy lands are considered unhealthy, and they are so, in conse- quence of the nitre they contain. Nitre is the most powerful refrigerent ever used in medicine. In consequence of its cooling properties, it is administered in fever powders to kill the fever, so called, as \i\n\ wamith cannot exist but a short time if that is used in any considerable quanti- ties. The effects of nitre, or salt-petre, are well known to such as have by mistake taken it for salts, if they have been fortunate enough to get rid of it without the loss of life, as many have been thus killed. The Edinburgh Dispensatory says this powerful salt, when taken inadvertent- ly, is one of the most fatal poisons. We therefore see that nitre is a deadly poison, in substance, and why not in gas, in proportion to its density?* It is always found in caves, cellars, valleys, under barns, and in places the most retired from the rays of the sun. Heat is the only thing that will act upon it; and when the gas is extracted, it fonns the heaviest part of the air, and, like the sub- stance from which it is taken, seeks the low grounds, and valle}'s, and the streams of water, the latter of which it follows, and is emptied into the valleys of larger streams, each of which contributes its part of the poisonous fluid, and the amount is in proportion to the extent of tenito- rj', the quantity of low marshy ground, alluvial soil, and of animal and vegetable decomposition from which the water has flown. The o-reater the number of streams that unite, the larger and more dense the quantity of nitrous gas which settles down and follows the streams. It is invisible to the eye, but in shape and movement the same as fog to the sense of sight. It will be remembered that the cholera did not make its appearance the first waim days — not until we had several of them — and the country adja- cent had sulRcient time to give out gradually her poison, and it had float- ed down the valleys upon the bosoms of the streams, and become united in one dense body of gas, in the valleys of the Hudson, St. Lawrence, Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers; and then it was reported that the cholera had made its appearance in such a place, on such a day. And in our opinion the disease raged until the countiy had exhaled its excess of malaria; and as the nitre diminished in quantity through the country, the supply of the streams was less, the gas became less dense, the people inhaled a less quantity of poison in the same quantity of air; consequently the disease began to subside, gradually, until the fountain was dried up in the country, when the effects entirely disappeared in the cities. The effect of saltpetre when taken in too large quantities, in a solution * It has been ascertained by a system of experiments in England, that the weitrht of atmos - pheric air was consiiicrably greater during the prevalence i)f the cholera in thai coniitrv than usnal, by which it would appear that gome heavy foreign body had been difl'uscd through the lower regions uf the atmotiptiere about that period, and was in some way connected with that disease. 756 THE THOMSONIAN from a crude state, is a distressing' chill through the whole system, at- tended with violent cramps at the stomach and limbs, a cold sweat upon the body and extremities, which is on account of the refrigcrent qualities of the article, which is rapidly destroying the lire of life or the vital heat. The temperature of the surface of the body being reduced below that of the air, the atmosphere immediately condenses upon the body, which is the cause of the excessive moisture upon the skin, a purpleness of lips and finger nails, a contraction of the skin upon the hands and feet, and death terminates the life of the poor sufferer in a very short time, unless ■some very active stimulants, antiseptics, and emetics are used to keep up the heat, and eject the morbid matter from the stomach. The cholera is generated under the same principle, according' to our theory, in receiving the nitre in fonn of gas into the blood, through the lungs gradually, by which means the system is poisoned equally through- out, and the patient does not suffer the distress that he v.ould, to take a dose of saltpetre into the stomach, when hale and vigorous, and while the person was yet in a pure atmosphere. The subjugation of the principle of life, that has supported a large muscular system, cannot be done with- out a powerful struggle. The same body could be overcome with com- parative little distress, except the contraction or cramp of the muscles, when the atmosphere is infected, and every breath is reducing the princi- ple of life through the whole body, and, of course, every one of the sens- es become blunted or deadened, in proportion as the fountain or vital principle gives away, to what it would be to attack it in full vigor of strength with saltpetre. The oxygen of the blood is destroyed by the intru- sion of this gas upon the lungs, the blood becomes purple and thick, the eyes are sunk back into the sockets, and nature raises a feeble effort to remove the poison from the system by vomiting and relax, by which means the vital warmth is again reduced, in raiifying or raising the heat of tlie fluids to the temperature of the vitals, before it leaves the system. By this means the vital heat is rapidly carried off, and to make up the deficiency, the wamith in the extremities is called in to support vital ac- tion, which leaves the flesh to contract, the muscles to cramp, and the quantity of water which has been thrown into the extremities by the heat, to carry on perspiration, is drawn back into the body, by the contraction of the flesh from the surface, when the heat leaves it and goes off in what is called the rice water discharges, by which means the limbs become much reduced in size. The warmth of the extremities being leftso much below, or colder than the temperature upon the surface, that the air con- denses upon the skin, in what is called the cold sticky sweat. This prin- ciple may be strikingly demonstrated, by putting upon the table in a warm day in the summer, two tumblers, one fdled with hot and the other with cold water; the latter will sweat, the air having condensed upon it, while the foimerwill remain dry. Nitre is used in connection with salt, to cure meat, and those who are in the habit of putting up hams, know that tlie larger the quantity of nitre used, the less the salt will take hold, so that many of the hams after being smoked will taste nearly as fresh as the meat would when it was first killed. By this we see that nitre is an anti-septic, and has a tendency to keep the flesh from decomposition. In case of cholera, whoever saw a patient that had mortified or become pu- trid before death, or that had any visible signs of mortification before it was buried, if the interment took place within six or twelve hours after death .^ The flesli of a person who died of cholera, was several degrees colder, if we could judge from the touch, than one who had died from any other complaint. It felt nearly as cold as a stone, the fibre was more closely concentrated than in the cases of death from other dis- eases, all of which we attribute to the refrigerent properties of nitre. The MATERIA MEDICA. 757 galvanic battery would not operate upon a person who had died of chole- ra, which was an evidence that the body was destitute of oxygen, or electric fluid. When has the time been before, or since 1832, that there was as little electric fluid in the air ? — in the vicinity of Albany we had but two or three thunder showers during- the summer, and then the clouds flew hio-h and with l)ut little lightning-. — Tlie heavens were of a death-like hue or a whitish yellow color fioni the horizon to tlic zenith. The Aurora Borea- lis, or northern lights, were scarcely visible during the summer. There was none of the florid appearances in the heavens that are usually disco- verable at evening- about the horizon in healtiiy seasons. It has been our opinion, and the facts have justified the ccnclusion, that from the temperate zone, or from about the latitude of Philadelphia, north and south, the cholera has raged with gradually increased violence, and as far north as Quebec, and south to New-Orleans, we are all too well acquainted with the fatality that attended the complaint to doubt for a moment ils wide spread sweep of destruction. In the frigid zone the sudden and violent changes of the weather must have had a powerful ef- fect upon animal and vegetable matter, and in proportion as it was de- stroyed, the poison would arise during the hot weather into the air, and tlie inhabitants would be exposed and the number of deaths would Ije in proportion toth« quantity of matter previously destroyed. At the south the ricli alluvial soil and the large quantity of herbage peculiar to that climate shared the same fate as vegetation at the north. Eut if any thing-, the south has a greater abundance of matter to generate disease, in con- sequence of having a greater leng'th of time for the growing season than at the north. Therefore the air will be filled with a g:reater quantity of g-as, and a fatality will attend the inhabitants in proportion to its density. See the accounts of the cholera upon the borders of the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri, and at the north upon the banks of the St. Lawrence. The report of the Massachusetts IMedlcal Society published in 1832, states what observation has taught us to be the fact in this countrv', that in the East Indies the cholera avoided the hilly countrj', and that a range of mountains would arresi its progress in any })articular direction, and after a long prevalence it found its way through the mountain passes and spread itself in the valleys beyond ; al.-o, that the greater part of the pa- tients were taken during the night. Now, according to our theorj', the nitre during the day was exhaled into the air and became greatly expanded, so that the quantity inhaled b}' the breath was less than at night, when the absence of a vertical sun would be the cause of a heavj- condensation of the atmosphere, which would concentrate the gas that would fall in heavy masses into the low lands, and heavy dews would cause the g-as to become more compact, consequently the patient whould inhale double and perhaps treble tlie j^as in the same quantity of air, which Avould poison his system universal!}-, by means of the circulation of the blood, and every part being reduced alike, he would feel no pain until the warmth was called in from the limbs, by which the muscles would be left to cramp or contract, for the want of the expansive power of heat. In consequence of the refrigercnt properties of the nitre, the vital heat or fire of life is fast dwindling, and the vital principle is so far reduced that the remnant of warmth is not able to expand the chest, which has now become much contracted; and consequently respiration is labored and difficult, and the patient feels as if a heavy weight was laying upon his breast; and as life ebbs out the senses leave the body, and sensation gra- dually-, departs; the hearing becomes indistinct, the eyes blind, and he dies wiftjout a struggle, unlike a death produced by any other complaint, 75u THE THO.MSONIAN imd the remains show marks of the horror that dwelt upon the patient's mind while in life, from the powerfully contracted state of the muscular system, which liad drawn so strongly upon the most delicate and sensible organs of the body. It may be asked, if our theory be correct, what should be the cause of the second appearance of the cholera in the United States, along the Mississippi, Ohio and J^.Tissouri rivers, when there appeared to have been no uncouunon change ihe fall preceding, like that of 1831. To this we reply, that in the spring of 1833, when those rivers broke up, the banks were overflown, especially those of Mississippi and Missouri, to a greater extent, as we have been informed, than for several years before. In some places the country was inundated for many miles eacli way from the beds of the rivers, and the water carried back and implanted a rich vegetable loam, or earth strongly impregnatnd with nitre, and in some instances several inches deep. When (he water subsided, this alluvial coat v.'as left, together with innumerable small ponds of water, which had settled in the concavities of the country for hundreds of miles along the rivers. It is well known, that a level country will retain large collections of water after the rivers have fallen within the limits of their original banks. The water is dried down; the poison or nitre tliatis embodied in the loam in large quantities is more condensed, and is continually reduc- ing, until from the veiy dregs the strong nitrous gas is exhaled into the air; it settles upon (he stream in a condensed form, and floats down, inundat- ing the cities; and as soon as it is strong enough, nearly every person of certain habits or of certain temperaments will he attacked, and the worst in body will die first. In such cases, it has generally been said that the cholera made its ap- pearance in such a place on such a day, and it continued to rage with great ^iolence for a season, and when the filth and water had become re- duced down, and the loam become dry, having exhaled all its moisture, (the means by which tlie poison escapes) the report then is, that the cho- lera has disappeared as suddenly as it made its appearance. In order to reduce my theory to matter of certainty, as nearly as possi- ble, I had recourse to experiments with tlie thermometer, both before and after the use of medicine, and tlie folloAving is a memorandum taken at the time. The course was to observe the pomt at which the mercuiy stood in the room; then I vvould draw out the plate from the case, and at the same lime have the person recline upon a sofa, upon the back, and take the bulb into the mouth, ag-ainst which lie would steadily eject the breath from the lungs, and in about five minutes the mercury would rise and be- come stationary at the point of standard wamith of the body, which would be from two to' ten degrees above the surrounding atmosphere, in propor- tion as the persons enjoyed different degrees of health. Mr. Benjamin C. True, dye-cutter. No. 7 Beaver street, near its junc- tion with South ]Markct street, came to me in July, in much distress; his •countenance was pale and ghastly, his cheek bones were prominent; his eyes were sunk back in the sockets, and he was attended with great op- pressson at the lungs and difficulty of breathing, and a cold sticky sweat upon the surface. He had been run down to this state in about ten hours, and his symptoms in every respect were those of an approaching cholera of the worst kind. I informed him, that before I gave liim medicine 1 MATERIA MEDICA. 759 wished to tr}' by experiment with the thermometer, the hci^-ht of the ani-. mal warmth of the body, to which he readily assented. The mercury in the room stood at 88 deg;rees above zero, and he only succeeded to raise it to 92 degrees, showing ihe small difference of 4 degrees surplus above the sunounding air. I then gave him a glass of the cholera medicine, and in about thirty minutes it had wrought so much of a change as to raise the veins in his hands; his cheeks and lips became florid, and he felt quite smart. I then tried the thermometer again, and it gradually rose to 99 degrees, showing a difference or gain of 7 degrees by taking the medicine, or 11 degrees suri)kis above the snnounding air, instead of 4 degrees, as at first. He had no trouble after the first day, as his certi- ficate will show. My course was to restore the heat of the body to its healthy standard, as in the case of True and others, in order that the perspiration might re- turn to the surface, and the heat to the extremities, by which means the sweat would pass off from the body through the pores, instead of a relax, which would stop, and the cramp would cease by tJie return of warmth to the muscles; after which, any gentle course that would clear the body of the morbid matter that had accumulated during the indisposition, would leave the system in a healthy state, with the exception of the debility oc- casioned by the disease, wdiich would soon be gone. J. T. Mhany, Jan. 14, 1833. The above experiment was tried upon me in the presence of several other persons, and what is there stated I declare to be correct; and I was much astonished at the immediate relief I obtained, and was more so, when I saw the change of seven degrees in the temperature of my system by the mercury. I had no more trouble after the first day. B. C. TRUE. Jllhamj, Jan. 14, 1833. I was present and witnessed the experiment upon Mr. Trae, and from ocular demonstration know it to be correct. I also had a similar experi- ment tried upon me, when I was nearly in the same state as Mr. T., and with the same success. DAVID BENSEN. Albany, Jan. 14, 1833. We saw similar experiments tried at the office of Dr. Thomson, Beaver street, Albany, and with similar results as above. R. E. WARD, Of the firm of Many ^ Ward, 84 Beaver street. JAMES HUNTER, Lata Associate Editor of the Albany Daily Advertiser. Albany, Jan. 14, 1833. I have seen the above mentioned experiments satisfactorily tried re- peatedly, with the same success as above, and they appeared to me to be both philosophical and conclusive. J. W. DOLBEAR. 760 THE THOMSOiMAN Useful Observations^ TO PEOPLE OF WARM LATITUDES, OR LOW BILIOUS COUNTRIES, WHICH SHOULD BE REMKMBERED. MEDICINAL PROPERTIES OF SALT. Dr. Stevens, an eminent physician of London, has recently naade cer- tain discoveries relatincr to the diseased and healthy slate ol" the blood, and the agency of salt upon the circulation, which .seems likely to pro- duce a great revolution in the treatment of fevers, and malignant diseases in general. It is well known that the blood of the arteries is of a bright crimson color, Avhile that of the veins, which is returning to the heart after having; spent its vivifying influence, is of a dark puiple. According to Dr. Ste- vens, the bright red color, the vitality and the stimulating power of the arterial blood, are all dependent on the quantity of salt which enters into its composition; while all acids, alkalies, and in general all poisons, tend to blacken the blood, to reduce its stitnulating powers, and of course to diminish the force of its circulation. The purple color of the venous blood is owing to the carbonic acid it has imbibed. In the lungs, the oxygen of the atmosphere removes this deleterious acid, and the circu- lating fluid then resumes a bright scarlet appearance. According to his theory, poisons, and those malignant disorders, such as the marsh fever, yellow fever, &c., which originate from the patient having imbibed a febrile poison, are, in their very first stages, accompa- nied with a blackness and stagnation of the blood, occasioned by the de- struction of its saline principle; and to cure the patient, this saline prin- ciple must be restored. Take, for instance, the bite of a rattle-snake. In this case, the poison of the serpent's fang mingles with the circulation, destroys its red color and its vitality, brings on blackness of the blood, stagnation of its cur- rent, convulsions, and death. The unfailing antidote, which experience has taught the Indian to apply, is to scarify the wound to the bottom, and fill it with salt. The salt is taken into the circulation, restores the red- ness and vitality of the blood, and the wound soon heals. Malignant fe- vers, and other malignant disorders operate in the same way. They be- gin by destroying the color and vitality of the blood, and reducing it to a black and putiid mass; and, says Dr. Stevens, I have seen patients in the last stages of these disorders, recover under the internal use of large doses of common salt, and other saline agents; wheie the cases were at first so hopeless, that their recovery aftenvards appeared to be almost a miracle. The climate fever of other regions, and some other fevers are produced in a different way. A cold climate requires a different constitution from a warm one. In cold climates, the digestive organs are more vigorous, and the blood is rich, stimulating, and full of salts. The blood in south- em climates is of a less brilliant color, thinner, and less impregnated with saline substances. When the constitution of a northern stranger is suddenly exposed to the influence of a southern climate, nature hastens to produce the necessary change in his circulation, and the change is ge- nerally accompanied with an awful disease. While the skin performs its functions of perspiration there is no danger; but the moment })erspiration becomes obstructed, from imprudent exposure to the cold night air, or MATERIA MEDICA. 761 any other cause, the fever breaks out. The reason is, that the blood is too stimulating, too full of salts, and the danger is, that this operation of nature for reducing it should be carried too far, and tlie blood so much blackened and weakened that the patient dies of mere exhaustion. These disorders, therefore, according to Dr. Stevens, in their first stages require the acid, in their latter the saline treatment. If this theory of Dr. Stevens be true, a great step has been made in the treatment of febrile and malignant disorders; and certainly the universal use of salt as an indispensable article of diet, as far back as histoiy car- ries us, and tlie craving which animals both wild and tame exhibit for it, would tend to prove that this condiment has some universal and essential efifect on the bodily constitution. REMARKS. It will be remembered, that in our cholera treatise we attributed the complaint to the excess of nitrous vapor, that had been exhaled from the great quantity of animal and vegetable matter tliat was destroyed the pre- ceding fall, and that the gas, being the heaviest pail of the air, sought the low grounds, or valleys of streams, upon the bosom of which it floated down, and its density and fatality was in proportion to the extent of ter- ritory and marshy grounds that supplied ihe streams with water. ^Ve also endeavored to show that nitre was a powerful refrigerant, and had a tendency to destroy animal warmth, for which purpose it was used by medical men to kill the fever, and we quoted medical works to prove our position. Also, that nitre possessed of itself a piinciple that would destroy salt as well as life. To prove which, we mentioned the fact of its being extensively used in curing hams, by the nitre preventing the salt from taking hold as it would if the salt-petre had not been used, by which means the hams are kept much more fresh than if they had beeii cured by salt alone. The places where nitre is generated in the greatest abundance is in swamps, marshes, and upon rich alluvial soils; and such are the abiding places of yellow, marsh, bilious, and many other kinds of malignant fe- vers, in proportion to the density of the gas, from the greater or less quan- tity of decomposition. The air is impregnated with the nitrous gas in those peculiar low grounds; the person inhales constantly its deleterious qualities ; and the refrigerant properties of the nitre not only destroy the oxygen in the air, but inhalinii' it upon the lungs, the salt or preservative principle of the blood is destroyed, the blood becomes morbid, and thick or sizj-, and of a dark or blackish red color, and thus the foundation of putrid fevers is laid. If putrid and malignant diseases do not originate entirely from the ex- cess of nitrous gas that escapes from the animal and vegetable decompo- sition in swamps and low grounds, by destroying the stimulating proper- lies and salts of the blood, and by infusing a great quantity of nitre into the air that we breathe, how does it happen that the vellow fever and other putrid complaints are not prevalent upon mountains or high lands I In order to preserve the natural temperature of the blood, we should in the first place seek a pure atmosphere, by resortuig during the sultry seasons to high grounds, as it is well known that pestilentiaPdiscases re- main in the valleys. It is also a well known fact, tliat where pestilential diseases rage with great violence, the air is almost entirely destitute of electric fluid, whicli was tlie case in Albany during the cholera, as we had but a trifle of thun- der or lightning during the prevalence of that complaint. It was also the case it other parts of the country. 49 762 THE THOMSONIAN We believe tliat pestilential diseases of every grade are broug'ht about by animal and vegetable decomposition, in its various stages of decay, some of wliich are more iavorable than others. For instance, there is a constant growth and a constant decay, in nature, in process at the same time; and it is in the power of the elements to increase or decrease tlie amount of disease, in proportion as the seasons are regular or irregular. For one extreme often follows another. If we have an unusual space of dry weather, the decayable substances do not diminish as i'ast as if we had alternately dry and wet weather. For in a long series of drj- weather, the fluid part of the substances which are decaying dries up ; and should a drought continue for a number of weeks, the stock of materials for decay is constantly and rapidly accumulating, and the quantity that remained when the drought first set in still conti- nues nearly in llie same state as when the drought overtook it, with the exception of the small portion of moisture which it had formerly con- tained, and which was soon annihilated, leaving the substance behind to become a fresh source of disease, in conjunction v,'ith the increased accu- mulations . In what we call regular weather, the morbid matter which accumulates by nature, except in some extraordinary cases, evaporates into the air nearly as fast as it collects. Thus by its gradual escape the atmosphere is so slightly atfected, that the quantity inhaled by an individual, if in health, is not so great but what nature in her daily operations works it off without any inconvenience to the person; consequently he does not think liimself sick, or that he has been exposed to any thing that is deleterious. But how is it after a drought of several weeks, during which health gene- rally pervaded the land? As soon as it rains any ot^ consequence, and the sun again makes his appearance in all his splendor, the earth emits a hot disagreeable effluvia, which at once produces the head-aehe and a faint sensation at the stomach. The morbid matter that was on hand be- fore, and what has accumulated during the drought, has now become wet and is ready to exhale into the air, say in six days, what ought to have been escaping for six weeks. Tlius the atmosphere becomes at once overcharged with that peculiar gas or poison from decayed substances, and the system, if healthy, is more active in absorbing it and hastening' dissolution than if it had been in a morbid state ; and it has a tendeney to carry all living matter with it, to decay or death, which would be the case, if it were not that nature has implanted m every man a desire to live, and has pointed out remedies for him to use Avhen this enemy to his existence attacks him. Notwithstanding his exertions, in proportion as he decays, in that ratio this perpetual curse to man gets the upper hand, imtil he is cut off by some disease, or old age can withstand its attacks no longer, and he sinks in death. The climate fevers of the southern region, says Dr. Stevens, are pro- duced in a different way; a cold climate requires a different constitution from a warm one. We should like for Dr. Stevens to inform us if the greatest number of attacks by fever at the south are not upon the low grounds where vegetation is the most abundant, and if said disease is not more liable to attack the inhabitants in warm weather, when the vegeta- ble matter is in its most rapid state of decay.'' and if the disease will not be as much more fatal than at the north as the vegetable substances are more plenty, and the rays of the vertical sun are more intensely warm to hasten the decay ? Also, we should like to know if the fever mentioned by the Doctor was not measurably brought about by the deficiency of vital warmth, which a northern man possesses when compared to a West Indian, which could not increase by absorption as fast as he gained in latitude traveling south? We would also ask if the facilities of tlie skin MATERIA MEDICA. 763 :are not increased in absorbing heat as the skin becomes brown or dark colored; also, if tlie Spaniards, Portuguese and West Indians are not in the habit of replenishing- the vital warmth, inasmuch as they are overcome by tlie external heat, by a free use of cayenne peppers and salt in al- most every kind of food that is used among them; such as soups in par- ticular ? Also, are not those peppers greatly used in their native state, and are called chincopins by the Spaniards, who keep them in their pock- ets for use, much, the same as many of our northern people do tobacco ? Dr. S. will admit we presume, that black will absorb heat while white reflects it, hence the peculiar adaptation of the tropical climates to the black population and higher latitudes to tlie white population, for if a white man cannot absorb warmth fast enough to keep up respiration, the head and fall is lost as the miller would say, tlie outward and inward heat become equal, and as the surplus of vitality is gone, the man must die. Wherever the yellow fever has prevailed at the south, the black popula- tion, with the same care, have never been cut off in the same proportion as the whites. The blacks make free use of cayenne peppers to keep up vital energy and restore their health, whde the whites live popular and die so, by the free use of calomel and other poisons. The white missionaries, who a few years since went to the colony of Liberia, were very soon cut otf by not understanding how to temper them- selves to the climate, or in consequence of not adopting- the remedies that the blacks have recourse to. "Again," says the Doctor, "when tlie constitution of a northern stranger is suddenly exposed to the influence of a southern climate, na- ture hastens to produce the necessary change in his circulation, and the change is generally accompanied with an awful disease." The doctor ■does not inform us what this change is, and how it is brought about. But we presume the man having left a high for a low latitude, the heat is in- creased upon the surface much faster than the vitals have absorbed it, consequently in proportion as the heat vitally failed in keeping up by ■absorption with the increased warmth, so much cessation of motion took place, and in that proportion the vital heat failed in rarifying the water and other morbid matter, and throwing Uiem clear from the skin by per- spiration; and as soon as the heat was so much reduced as to fail in per- forming the office of rarification, the matter that should have escaped from the surface stops in the flesh for the want of assistance, the skin be- comes clogged, dry and inflamed, the blood thick and morbid, the sys- tem is now fast filling up, and the patient will soon cease to exist, unless the first principle that was lost, that is the heat, can be aroused to action to assist the body in expelling the load with which it is incumbered and ■once more to produce a free perspiration, and by the use of other appro- priate remedies remove the morbid matter that has been secreted in the body. The doctor admits that while the skin performs its functions of perspiration there is no danger. But he does not give a name nor a clue to it that we may Icnow the cause why the skin ceases to perspire. Any of us know when we are sick and when we do not perspire; we also know when our friends are dead ; but that is not the main thing we wish to know. We wish to learn what has brought about this change so tliat we may avoid the attacks or know how to elfect a cure when once we are attacked. The Doctor says that a northern person's blood is too stimulating and too full of salt, and the danger is lest this operation of nature for reduc- insi^ it should be carried too far and the blood become so much blackened and weakened that the patient dies from mere exhaustion. Now if heat is the stimulant or principle that acts upon the water or fluids of the body to produce perspii-ation, how does it happen that a northern man when at- 7G4 THE THOMSONIAN tacked at the south with the fever ceases to perspire, if he has too much vital stimuhint, and how docs it happen that the blood beconaes blacken- ed if it is not destitute of oxygen or heat, or nearly of the same tempe- rature as the surrounding air? Wc think if the Doctor had given his southern patients all the salt the blood contains instead of taking it away, and then added to the natural stimulant of the body by the use of half a dozen West India pepper pods daily, which the God of nature lias ex- pressly and so abundantly furnished there lor them, the perspiration Avould not have ceased so soon, neither would the blood have become black for the want of natural stimulant or warmth. We will here inform the Doctor that in the West Indies where the cay- enne pepper is used the most freely, there the diseases peculiar to the climate are far less prevalent than where they are not used, and the na- tive inhabitants seldom, if ever, have an attack of the complaints so com- mon to northern peopie there. We will now ask the Doctor ii'it would not be better for a northern person to adopt the habits of the natives, in relation to medicine, who have tested their remedies and have fully tested tlieir efficacy and safety in the complaints of the country. Under all these considerations we would like to know if it is not the constant inhalation of the morbid poison in its greatest strength into the system, the reason why the common age of man in tropical countries rarely exceeds that of from twenty to thirty years, while in Norway, Sweden, Russia, England and the Northern States of America, they at- tain that of from lifty to seventy, and even sometimes to an hundred years and upwards. If the operations of the vertical sun upon animal and vegetable decom- position is not the cause by which the great average of the duration of of life among the people in tropical countries falls short of those in higher latitudes. How is it that the blacks who have removed from those countries to higher or more frigid latitudes, so far exceed in age those of their own countrj^men who remain in the low latitudes and even that of the white people in cold countries. It is well known that the nurse of Gen. Washington, a black woman, reached the astonishing age of one hundred and sixly-five years, at which age she was exhibited at the north, and it is also true that a much larger proportion of blacks at the north, arrive at the age of an hundred, than of the whites. Such we believe are the qualifies of a light and dark skin in hot and cold climates, in prolonghig or shortening life. Thus it will be seen that emigrating from low to high latitudes pro- longs, while that from high to low, shortens existence. Where the blessings of Providence are the most profuse, man is per- mitted to enjoy them the least length of time ; but where it is necessary for him to stniggl*^ and labor the most unremittingly for an existence^, there his life is prolonged to the greatest age. On the use. of Physic and Intempej-atc Indulgences; OR A COUIfSEL OF THE SENSES UPON THE INDISCRETIONS OF THE APPETITE. Cathartics, the same as evciy other substance, have their good and bad qualities; and also require a discriminating mind to know when to use, and when not to use them. Like ever)' other article, physic may be used with discretion and with indiscretion. We may as well say that MATERIA MEDICA. 765 bread is not healthy, because if we eat a loaf of it we are made sick (hereby, consequently a small quantity is injurious, as to say that because peach "leaves, senna, castor oil, or pepper pods, in improper quantities, nnd at unsuitable times, Avill do injury, tliat there is no valuable proper- ties in them, when g-iven in such ([uantities and at such times, as expe- rience may have taug;ht beneficial. Who does not know that steaminp,-, properly administered on suitable occasions, and at a proper temperature, is a powerful ag:ent in dispelling disease. And who does not also know the power of steam, when it is not subject to the control of a judicious engineer, has destroj^ed many thousand lives. Yet shall we say there is no redeeming properties in the power of tlie steam bath, when administered to the sick by a judicious practitioner f These remarks in relation to physic, strongly remind us of the rules and regulations, wliich we once saw placed over the kitchen table, for the observance of the domestics, at the residence of a gentleman in Boston, Mass. which were as follows, viz : " The Ruhs of this house. — Keep every thing for its properuse ; keep every thing in its proper place, and do every thing in its proper season." The whole theory and practice of physic may be embodied within the above rules and regulations. Everything in nature may either be used in season or out of season; and the grand secret in the practice of medi- cine is to ascertain the appropriate times for their use. The knowledge of this fact is what constitutes the skillful practitioner in medicine. The most healthy physic is that which is the most natural to the body. Hence the gall in sutficient quantities to move the bowels with regulari- ty, Avithout regard to the quantity or quality of the food taken in the stomach, is the best physic, and while that remains healthy artificial means to assist it in the performance of its office are unnecessa,ry. The abuse of the digestis'e organs by crowding the stomach with too ■great a mass of substances for its disposal, is what first causes them to complain. It is not honoi-able or just because a person is willing to work to heap upon hira the labor and dnidcrery which two or three in- dividuals ought to perform. So with tiie digestive powers. Because Ihej^ perfomi their task with cheerfulness and fidelity, the epicure and gormandiser have no mercy upon these useful servants, but will crowd the stomach wiih a heterogenous mass to be disposed of by them Avith great labor. This admirable power of the human system struggies with tlie acts of the epicure, until overcome by excess in eating, drinking and other intemperate indulgences, and is obliged as is said in common par- lance, to beg for help, that a little mercy may be shown it by a more temperate mode of living, or that some assistance shall be granted to enable it to perform the daily task which until this time, it has been able to accompFish alone. Until this time the mind has sided with the appe- tite, and the two united in overcoming reason, by which means they suc- ceeded in imposing upon the digestive powers to a most unwarrantable €xtent. The mind now begins to find that it has not the capacity to act, and its domicilis not the place of peace and quiet which it was once. The appetite, taste, and relish have become vitiated, the feet complain of being cold, the bowels do not act, and a derangement exists through- out the body. The mind and the appetite being now made uncomforta- ble in their respective stations, consent to call a council, to discuss the various causes of their troubles; and for the first time call in the aid of reason, ihe digestion, and the other members of the council. The mind first breaks silence by saying, that for some time past it has not found that degree of quietness and sercnitij that it has hitherto been accustomed to enjoy ; thai in performing its daily business there has 766 THE THOMSONIAIf been a degree of indecision and forgetfahiess that was unacconntable j, that the space set ajjart for its exercise seems contracted, and there ap- pears so great an intrusion upon its natural rights that it could not be tolerated any longer. This council, therefore, has been brought toge- ther that we may Icam the cause and correct the evil if possible. Yes, says the Ta>te, my territory has been invaded in the same way as tliat of the mind. I can no longer enjoy my food as I could once. That pleasure which I was accustomed to take over my roast beef, turkies, ducks, ham, and my game dishes, are not, alas .' what they were once to me. My champaigne and other wines, do not open with that delicious fragrance and flavor with which they have heretofore done. Yes, responds Mind, my rest has also become deficient, and what I have is much disturbed by frightful orgies, so that sleep is rendered ra- ther a curse than a blessing. Well, says Reason, I thought my two brethren would be brought up on a lee shore all standing, before long, and would be willmg to consult the res-t of the cabinet, after they had run riot as long as they could stand it. I must confess that I have been a great sufferer in this business. At times I could hardly perform my daily avocations, so affected has my- judgment been in consequence of the imprudent management of our bre- thren. Mind and Taste. Digestion has frequently complained to me of the injustice he had suffered and was still subject to from your iinprudenli and dissipated habits, as the burden he labors under seriously effects us all. That is a fact, says Digestion : Now to satisfy you on that point just walk into your laboratory and depository, of which you have appointed me the keeper and chief engineer, and see how you think I can work and do you all justice. [Opens the door into the depository first.] Now gentlemen, Mind and Taste have continued to throw a great mass of ma- terial into the depository for me to dispose of, for a long time past, botb day and night. When I was young and vigorous I did not mind it so- much, as I could clear it away by working over hours or doing two days work in one, or working both night and day without rest. This I have done until I can do it no longer for the want of my proper rest; and I even fell asleep at my work la*jt night; and see how my work has since accumulated. It is impossible for me to dispose of the whole of this ex- cess quantity in the laboratoiy in tlie time that is required — the conse- quence is that it will spoil. I can consume more material in twelve hours, and to greater satisfaction and profit to myself and you, brethren, when it is brought in to me at suitable times and in quality and quantity, than I can now in twenty-four hours, to be crowded i»i this way. Do you not know. Taste and Mind, that if you crowd your stove so full of wood! that there is no room for the workmen to exercise or the air to circulate through the interstices or chinks, that it will not bum, and that the smoke is crowded back into the room, to the great annoyance of the Avhole fa- mily .'' You must know this fact. Do you not also know, that by taking: out one half of the wood, and giving room for the workmen to operate or the air to circulate, that the fire will burn lively, the room become wirm, the smoke will be expelled, to the great satisfaction of the inmates, the ladies in particular.' .By this process you see that thalf a stove full of fuel make the inmates cheerful and happy, w-hile a full stove make them as miserable as smoke and the want of fire could possibly cause them to be. In the first instance eveij body in the room suffers, because MincS acted without consulting Judgment. In the latter case all are made hap- py by Mind and Judgment acting in concert, and allowing the workmen time to rest between spells in supplying the stove, while the heat gene- rated from the fuel subsides to that point where ]\lind and Judgment think it sho'jJ.d again be replenished. Do you not know, my brothc? 1 MATERIA MEDICA. 767 Taste, that you furnished tne suflicient work last night, when I should Lave been at rest, to employ me twelve if not twenty-four hours, to dis- pose of? The consequence is the store house is full, the workmen are fatigued out, and you must all suffer until we can obtain rest. During- which time we must call in our friend Emeticus or Catharticus to give u^ a lift and clear the coast once more. In this case we are obliged to era- ploy a new set of hands to work, who are unacquainted in many respects with our laboratory. We do therefore expect when we get at our busi- ness again, to tind that much bad work has been done by these strangers. But even in this case, it is better than for the work to cease entirely, for my friends here must be furnished with some kind of support, either good or bad. Now Taste and Mind, I will be your faithful servant so long as you counsel with judgment, but when you do not I shall call in my friends here who have assisted me in this case; fori cannot do as I could once when young and vigorous, before you broke my constitution by re- quiring me to labor botli nig lit and day, and without rest; and by Avhich means I have been rendered in a great measure incompetent to perform my duties, without artificial assistance. Feet and Hands said they had suffered, but did not know the cause. The whole body politic assembled in council concurred in tlie opinion that at times they stood in need of support, but could not account for its absence. Those inhabiting the region of the bowels complained that the various avenues of the body were clogged, and for a long time the superintend- ent had not furnished the necessary means to keep them cleansed and in order. The consequence was the bloodvessels were so crowded that the blood was forced to the head or upper part of the body, where there was more space for a free circulation ; consequently the extremities were left to suffer with the cold, and for the want of support. The reason why Mind and Taste found themselves so discommoded, was the intrusion upon their territory by the blood of their neighbors of the lower extremities, which ceased to fulfil its ordinary- duties, in con- sequence of the confusion brought about by their own bad management in not consulting Judgment in relation to food, drink rest, and such oth- er matters as were calculated to make the body and mind happy. A" PHILOSOPHICAL AND USEFUL OPERATION. TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD TO SUSTAIN LIFE. The operation of transfusion, or blood taken from a man and injected into the veins of a woman, who was dying of hemonhage, was performed under the direction of Dr. Bhmdell, lecturer on physiology and midwife- ry, at Guy's Hospital, London. A poor woman, about 25 years of age, was attended, whilst in labor, by Mr. Waller of Aldersgate street. Nothing particular occuired during the labor, but after the birth of the child, flooding occurred to an alarm- ing extent. When visited by Mr. Waller, the patient's pulse, at the wrist, was scarely perceptible; indeed, at times, it could not be felt; the lips and face were of a pallid or death like hue, and in a word, the taper of life was but faintly glimmering. Under these circumstances, it occurred to Mr. Waller that the opera- tion of transfusion would be a measure to rescue the patient from her pe- rilous situation. Mr. Blundell was sent for, and upon his arrival he found the patient Siad semewhat rallied; in consequence of which he deemed it better to 768 THE THOMSONIAN delay Ihe performance of the operaiion, for, as Dr. Blundell observed (o his pupils, this operation is jusliriable in extreme and otherwise desperate cases. After waiting an hour the patient became worse ; she vomited, and was exceedingly restless, which may alsvays be regarded as a very bad symptom; the pulse at the wrist was fluttering, and occasionally not to be felt, and there was that peculiar expression of countenance which can hardly be described; it may be called 'death in the face.' It did not appear proper to delay tlie operation, which was therefore commenc- ed as follows : The cephalic vein of the right arm was laid bare to the extent of about an inch, and a blunt pointed bent needle was passed under the vein, at the lower part of the opening, so as to prevent the eiflux of blood. The husband of the patient, a robust lieallhy young man, was now called in and two ounces of blood was taken in full stream, from his arm, and re- ceived into a conical glass tumbler. An opening of about one-eighth of an inch was made in the vein of the patient, and by means of a syringe and tube, the blood abstracted from the husband was somewhat slowly thrown in, towards the heart. No very obvious efi'ects were produced from this supply of vital fluid, and after a pause of one or two minutes, two other ounces of blood were thrown in; soon after this the pulse at the wrist intermitted, and there was slight restlessness, or rather desire to change posture, but these symptoms passed away in the space of two or three minutes. In consequence of the recurrence of these symptoms it was deemed prudent to wait awhile, and after a lapse of five or ten minutes the patient was evidently rallying. From this period the patient went on improving and had not a single bad symptom which could be attributable to the operation; the functions of respiration, circulation, and of the chylopcetic viscera, were duly per- foniied; the temperature of the surface of the body was of the natural standard, neither was there any subsequent affection of tlie sensorium; which Dr. Blundell has known to occur- in some cases, after the operation of transfusion. The syringe employed was of brass, and well tinned on the inside; to the mouth of the syringe a pipe was fixed, of about two inches in length, of the size of a crow's quill, shaped like a pen at tlie end, but with a blunt point. Before the blood was thrown into the vein of the patient, all air was carefully expelled from the syringe, by placing the mouth upwards, and pushing up the piston until the blood appeared at the end of the tube at- tached to the syringe. Dr. Blundell observed, this case demonstrated, beyond all cavil, that the blood of a man may be injected, by means of a syringe, into the veins of a woman exceedingly reduced from haemorrhage, without caus- ing death. Whether the syncope which occurred after the injection of the blood, was the result of the operation, or of the previous ha-morrhage, may be disputed ; and admitting the syncojic to be the result of trans- fusion, we should be no more justified in rejecting the operation on this account, than in refusing to employ the lancet in other cases, because it occasionally produces syncope. As only four ounces of blood were injected, Dr. Blundell admitted, that it might be fairlv questioned by some, whether the supply of so small a quantity of blood really saved the patient. The doctor, however, (and he had seen a great deal of ha?morrhage,) is decidedly of opinion, that this timely supply of vital fluid turned the scale in the patient's favor, and rescued her from death. This case was related by Dr. Blundell in one of his lectures. N. B. We think this treatment philosophical, and is well calculated MATERIA ftlEDICA. 769 to restore patients after excessive haemoiThag-e, either from the uterus, lun;^s, or any other way that blood can be lost from the body. j. t. SHEEPS' PELT USEFUL IN BRUISES. In 180S, Marshal Lannes joined the French army in the Peninsula. In crossin;:^ the mountains near ■\Iondrao-on his horse stumbled, and in attemptinij to rise fell on hiai. He was carried to Vittoria in a state of j^reat danger from the shock and the pressure. Treatment. — A large slieep was immediately flayed, and the reeking skin was sown round the Marshal's body, while his limbs were wrapped in ^varm llannels, and some cups of weak tea were given him. He felt immediate relief, complaining only of the manner in which the skin seemed to attract every part wherewith it was in contact. In the course often minutes he was asleep. When life awoke the body was slreaming with perspiration. The dangerous symptoms were relieved; and on the tifth day he was able to command at the celebrated battle of Tudela,* in which 40,000 men under Castanos were beaten and dispersed, with the loss of all their ammunition and baggage. N. B. There is now living and in health, in this city, (Albany,) a lady who, at the age of eleven years, was crushed under a heavy timber, and . whose life was in like manner preseived by the immediate application of a warm pelt hastily stripped from a sheep. j. t. INDIAN REMEDY AND CURE FOR CONSU^^IPTION. We copy the following interesting cure from the travels and adven- tures of Ross Cox, upon the Columbia river, and among- the western tribes of Indians. " The Oakinagan mode of curing some of our diseases would probably startle many of the faculty. The ibllov/ing case in particular passed un- der my own observation : One of the proprietors had, in the year 1814, taken as a wife a young and beautiful girl, whose father had been one of the early partners, and whose mother was a half breed (her grandmother having beert a native of the Cree tribe;) so that although not a pure white, she was fairer than many who are so called in Europe. He proceeded with her to Fort George: but the change of climate, from the diy^ and healthy plains of Fort des Prairie to the gloomy forests and incessant rains on the north- west coast, was too much for her delicate frame, and she fell into a deep consumption. As a last resourse, her husband determined to send her to Oakinagan to try the change of air, and requested me to procure her ac- commodation at that place for the summer. This I easily managed. She was accompanied by a younger sister, and an old female attendant. For some days after her arrival we were in houily expectation of Iter death. Her legs and feet were much swollen, and so hard tliat the greatest pressure created no sensation : her liair liad fiillen off in such quantities as nearly to cause baldness; a sable shade surrounded her deeply sunk eyes. She was in fact little more than a skeleton, with scarcely any svmptoms of vitality, and her whole appearance betokened approaching dissolution. Such was the state of the unfortunate patient, when an old Indian who had for some days observed her sitting in the ' Memoirs de Larrcy, torn. iii. p. 24:3. That eminent Surgeon bad learned the remedy from the Savasjes of Newfoundland, who had applied it tn some sailors whose boat bad heen brokcD to pieces and themselves dashed by the waves upon their coast 770 THE THOMSONIAN porch door, where she was brought supported on pillows to enjoy Ihc fresh air, called me aside, and told me he had no doubt of being- able to cure her, provided I sliould aj^rce to his plan; but added that he would not o^ive any explanation of the means he intended to use, for fear we miu;ht laugh at him, unless we consented to adopt them. We accoi'ding- ly held a consultation, the result of which was, that the Indian should be allowed to follow his own method. It could not make her worse, and there was a possibilily of success. Traafment . — Having acquainted him with her acquiescence, he im- mediately commenced operations by seizing an ill-looking, snarling, cur dog which he half strangled; after which he deliberately cut its throat. He then ripped open the belly, and placed the legs and feet of the pa- tient inside, surrounded by the warm intestines, in which position he kept them until the carcass became cold. He then took them out and bandaged them with warm flannel which he said was very good. The following day another dog lost its life, and a similar operation was per- formed. This was continued for some time, until every ill-disposed cur in the village had disappeared by the throat-cutting knife of our dog-de- stroying doctor, and we were obliged to purchase some of a superior breed. While she was undergoing this process she took, in addition a small quantity of bark daily in a glass of port wine. In the mean time the swelling gradually decreased, the fingers lost their corpse-like na- kedness, the hectic flushes became rarer, and " that most pure spirit of sense," the eye, gave evident tokens of returning animation. When her strength permitted, she was placed on the carriage of a brass field piece, supported by bolsters, and drawn occasionally a mile or two over the prairie. The Indian continued at intervals to repeat Die strange applica- tion, until the swelling had entirely disappeared, and enabled her once more to make use of her limbs. Two-and-thirty dogs lost their lives in bringing about this extraordina- ry recovery, and among them might truly be numbered Mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, And curs of low degree. She gradually regained possession of her appetite; and when her hus- band arriyed in the autumn from Fort George, for the purpose of cross- ing the mountains, she was strong enough to accompany him. The fol- lowing summer, on my journey across the continent, I met them at Lac la Pluie. — She was in the full enjoyment of health, and *in the way that ladies like to be who love their lords.' " Remarks. — It will be observed that the philosophical theory of Thomsonism was carried out in the above case in replenishing and sus- taining vitality by receiving animal warmth and support by absorption from the bodies of animals through the medium of the feet. This case will furnish a useful study for all practitioners. Where the Thomsonian remedies could not be obtained and it should be tliought advisable to trv a similar experiment, sheep would be a good substitute for the dogs. We thinii the experiment worthy of notice and trial. It shows the tmth and philosophy of our theory. j. t. REUNION OF FLESH AFTER COMPLETE SEPARATION. The Ossevatore Medico contains a curious, and what it affimis to be a well authenticated case of reunion of the nose, after complete separa- tion. The patient, a woman of the town, had the whole of the soft part MATERIA MEDICA. 771 of llie nose bitten off in a quarrel, by a man. She was immediately car- ried before the commissary of police, when the nose was dressed. In three hours afterwards, Dr. Carlizze, who happened to come in, saw the patient, and entreated that search might be made for the lost nose. This was done, and two and a half hours afterwards, the mutilated portion was found, contracted, and all covei'ed with filth. The Doctor, however, washed the parts clean, and applied the piece, putting in a few points of suture. Tlie dressings were not removed before the seventh day, when the witnesses observed, with great satisfaction, tliat complete reunion hart taken place. In thirty-seven days, the cocatrix was perfectly consolidat- ed. The aspect of the nose, however, was most disagreeable, from the color of its tip, which presented a livid, unhealthy appearance. A solu- tion of nitrate of silver (moderately strong) was applied to this part, and after the fall of the eschar, in five days, the nose resumed its natuml co- lor. CRIME IN FRANCE. A French periodical, the "Revue Encyclopedique," contains the fol- lowing curious facts relating to crime in France : " Out of every 100 persons accused, 61 are regularly condemned. Out of the whole population, 1 in every 4,460 is accused. In every lOO crimes, 25 are against the person, and seventy-five against property. Experience shows that the number of murders is annually nearly the same ; and what is still more singular, that the instruments or means employed, are also in the same proportion. The inclination to crime is at its maximum in man at about the age of 25; in woman 5 years later The proportion of men and women accused is 4 to 1. The seasons have an influence on crime. In summer more crimes are committed against the person, fewer against properly ; the reverse is the case in winter. The developement of the inclination to crime agrees very perfectly with that of the passions and physical strength ; and on the other hand the development of reason tends to restrain the in- clination. The greatest physical strength of man is developed between the ages of 30 and 35, and the greatest mental powers between the ages of 45 and 50. It is a singular contrast, that about this age, we find men- tal alienation the most frequent, and most difficidt to remove." THOMSONIAN PRACTICE.— LOSS OF BLOOD. Among the many casualties to which mankind are subject, and one more to be dreaded than any other, is the excessive loss of blood. Wheri an artery or vein is severed upon either of the limbs of the body, so that the stream of life is rapidly flowing, and the vital spark fast extinguish- ing, which is frequently the case with the hardy yeomanry of our coun- try, who are accustomed to the use of implements of husbandry which wear keen edges, a speedy and effectual remedy, that would check the crimson current, must certainly be invaluable to them. Perhaps it will be regarded almost fabulous, if we say to those who are liable to cuts or incised wounds, that the blood may be stopped with the greatest ease by the following method: If the wound should be upon the foot, and the arteries are cut ever so bad, or if you please if tlie foot is severed entirely from the leg, by lying- down upon the back and placing the wound above the head, the blood will im.mediately cease to flow from the wound. Some may doubt this 772 THE THOMSONIAN statement, but it is a fact. The writer of this article has had the blood stopped in several instances upon himself by this means. If the wound is upon the foot, the j)erson should lie down upon his back and place the foot higher than the head, upon a stool or chair; and if it be upon the hand or arm, put t!ie wound above the head, and the blood cannot run, any more than water can run from its fountain while the stream is raised above it. In order to satisfy the incredulous upon this subject, we would request them to tiy the following experiment. When the veins in the hands are full, and appear to be crowded, which is per- ceptible to any person who can discover any object by the power of vi- jiion, place the hand in a perpendicular position above the head, keeping- an eye upon the veins, and in less than one minute the blood will have de- scended into the trunk of the body, and the veins disappeared. When a person has received an injuiy in any of the limbs, and a resort to this experiment is nece^saiy to stop bleeding, let the wound be well washed with cold water, and then a small quantity of No. 6, or third pre- paration, be poured upon it, dress it in that situation before it is removed from the elevated position, and the bleeding will instantly stop. But should the wound be very bad, the limb should be kept in that position from three to six hours, or until the wound has become a little closed or dried at the orifice. J. T. EXERCISE. A certain proportion of exercise is not much less essential to a healthy or vigorous constitution, than drink, food and sleep; for we see that peo- ple whose inclination, situation, or employment, does not admit of exer- cise, soon become pale, feeble, and disordered. Exercise promotes the circulation of the blood, assists digestion, and encourages perspiration; all of which are in a degree necessary to a hale constitution. It may be divided into two species, active and passive. Of the former kind are walking, running, leaping, swimming, and riding on horseback : of the latter are "sailing, swinging, friction, riding in caniages, &c. There is one species of passive exercise which deserves to be particu- larly mentioned and recomm.ended, more especially as it often becomes necessary, and is peculiarly adapted to the aged and infirm, and such as cannot partake of any of the active kinds: I mean friction; which, per- fomied either with the naked hands, flannels, o- flesh-bruslies, may not only be of essential service to those of that description, but, by promot- ing perspiration and the circulation of the blood, it often becomes useful in arthritic, rheumatic, and paralytic disorders. This appears to have been in much more common use, both as a preventive and remedy, ainong the ancients and moderns; the former of whom called it chafing. The effects of the want of exercise are more apparent and destructive, when conjoined with high living and strong drink: hence the gout and many other diseases are generated; indeed so evidently so, that it is now become almost an established i^ict, that that disorder will never appear, where sufficient exercise, with abstinence from animal food and wine, is practised. It is a fact which long experience has taught, that idleness and luxury create more diseases than labor and industry; which shows that an indo- lent and inactive, as well as an over-delicate and refined mode of life, is inimical to health and longevity ; hence the greater number of disorders in cities, where the inhabitants live high and use but little exercise, than m countiy places, where Uiey labor more and live more sparingly. MATERIA MED I CA. i i^ PERSPIRATION. Kell, by a very accurate set of experiments, ascertained that in hi?» own person he perspired tliirty ounces in twenty-four hours. Hales, by experiments equally accurate, found tliat a sunflower, of the weig-lit of three pounds only, throws otf twenty-two ounces, or nearly half its own weight, in the same period of time. But wliat is perspirationl Plain as the answer to the question may be to a portion of the conmiunity, by many it is not understood at all. Some attach no definite idea to the term. Others seein<^ the word experiment, and several fig-ures in the same connection, conclude at once tiiat it is a something" tedious or dilfic^t, or perhaps beyond their comprehension, and pass it over. Others still have no idea that a i)erson perspires at all, except when that profuse discharge takes place from tlie vessels, com- monly known by the name of sweating'. Now sweating is only an increased and profuse discbarge from the ves- sels at the surface of the skin, of the same fluid which is passing ofl', so long as we arc in health, at every moment of our lives. If we sit near a white wall in a hot summer's day, while the sun is shining on us and the wall, we may see the shadows of masses of vapor ascending like smoke on the Avail. Or take a looking-glass and hold it witliin an inch of the body or limbs of a person, and you will soon find it dimmed by a moisture. Tiiat this effect is not produced by our breathing is plain, be- cause if we bold our breath, or place the mirror opposite our back, the same result follows. The truth is, that every square inch of the surface of the human body, except perhaps the eye-balls, nails, &c. has in it thousands (probably tens of thousands) of small holes or pores, from which, so long- as we are in health, a vapor, more or less abundant, according to circumstances, is constantly issuing. To check this moisture, let it be done by Avhat means it may, and let it remain checked for a considerable time, produces mis- chief. Sometimes the evil ap}>ears in the form that we call colds; at other times it produces rheumatism, fevers, and consumption. To in- crease it veiy greatly for a considerable time, so that a person Is said to sweat profusely, unless done for the purpose of removing disease which already exists, is also injurious in the end. But perspiiation may be checked or rendered profuse in a great manv ways. We do not believe all adults ought to perspire as much in twenty- four hours as Kell says he did. Still they ought to perspire at all times, and in considerable quantity; and wliether the pores of the skin are stop- ped by dirt, or by uncleanly garments, or by great cold or heat, or by sudden chills, the consequence in time may be equally dreadful. DROAVNING. The following judicious rules were drawn up by Mr. D. 0. Edwards, of Chelsea, who turned his attention to the subject from having recently witnessed the drowning of three men in consequence of their own misdi- rected exertions. His belief is that a majority of the deaths of this kind arise from the same cause. Mules to govern persons loho have fallen into deep imlcr. 1. As soon as you find yourself at the surface of the water, wlilther you are raised by your buoyancy, let your body quietly take its level, when the water will reach a little above your chin. 2. Place one leg a little forward and the other a little backward, and stretch out your arms on either side, keeping them under the water. By 774 THE THOMSONIAN a sU<.':ht paddling motion you may rejjulate Ihe position of the head, and prevent it from gravitating downwards. Make no efforts, but wait tran- quilly until succor arrives. Voii cannot sink. 3. Do not lay hold of your companion or assistant, or you will infallibly sink him, without benefitting yourself. The best swimmer has no more natural buoyancy tJian yourself, and would be sunk by the exertion of a very little force. 4. Be periectly passive until your helper seize you by the hind locks of your hair. Upon this endeavor to second his efforts by throwing your- self on your back. Hold your neck stiif, and let yoiu- hind head sink in- to the water; then try to propel yourself, by 'slowly and regularly kick- ing against the water. 5. Be careful to keep every part of your body under water, except your face. 6. If two or more persons are immersed together, let them keep near «ach other. By this arrangement, one boat may save the whole party at once; but if they are dispersed, one at a time only can be picked up. Rales to gavcrn persons who attempt to rescue the drowning. 1. In removing a body from the water, whether into a beat or drawing it along by your own efforts, always keep the lace upwards. 2. KecoUect that you have no more natural buoyancy than the person you are attempting to rescue; therefore do not attempt to raise him out of the water, or you w ill sink yourself. By a gentle traction you may draw him towards the boat or the landing place, without fatiguing yourself. 3. Always aim at seizing the hair of the hind head, and keep the nape of the neck and your own hand under water; llius you insui'e his face and your own above the surface. 4. Keep your most powerful arai disengaged for swimming, and keep the other projected forward, having hold, as already directed, of the hair of his hind head. In this way you maj^ advance side by side, he floating supine on his back, and you prone on your breast. 5. As you approach the persons immersed, let them know by a shout: the voice reverberates v/ith double distinctness from the surface of the water, and the prospect of approaching aid adds to the confidence and consequently to the strength of the distressed. 6. Let all your movements be deliberate, firm, and gentle. With a view to remove apprehensions about the weight of wet clothes upon a person ii^imersed in water, Mr. Edwards says : To ascertain the increase of weight which clothing adds to the body in water, I made an experiment. I tied up into a bundle a complete suit of i-aiment, consisting of a cloth surtout, a waistcoat and trowsers, a linen shirt, a pair of cotton drawers, a pair of cotton stockings, and a pair of Wellington boots. The weight of the bundle when dry was seven pounds. It was kept immersed in water, and under a heavy weight, for an hour, until every particle of air was expelled from the interstices. It weighed in the water just one pound. Immediately after being taken out of the wator it weighed twenty .one pounds. The calculations are intended, and when tested by personal experi- ment ought to imbue the mind of every man, with tiie conviction — the firm confident conviction — that he is naturally buoyant in the water. For deducting the etTccts of fear and the weight of clothing from the fifteen pounds of sustaining levity belonging to Ihe body per se, the remainder would be eleven pounds eiglit ounces, which is quite enough to prevent the immersion of the breathing appertures, that is, the mouth and nos- trils. MATERIA JIEDICA. 775 VALUABLE DISCOVERY.— RESUSCITATION OF THE DROWNED, Recent exi raordinary effects of Galvanism in Restoring Life, apparently extinct. The following are a series of very interesting- experiments, made by a gentleman named Halsc, of Brent, near Ashburton, England, to test the power of galvanism in cases of suspended animation from drowning. " On Thursday last one of my spaniels whelped, having a litter of tliir- teen, six of whicli I took for my experiments. I drowned three of tliem in cold water and kept them immersed for filleen minutes, at which time I took them from the bucket and placed ihem in front of a good fire. No motion could be perceived in either of them. I then put the front legs of one of them into a jar containing a warm solution of salt and water, and its hind legs in a similar jar, in each of which was inserted one pole of the galvanic battery; the whole were then placed near the fire. *' The position of the dog being now favorable to operate upon, without the necessity of making any incisions in the flesh, I passed a very strong shock through its body; it moved its hind legs. I gave it another shock, which caused its tail also to move. I now passed twenty shocks in quick succession through its body; it moved every limb, its mouth opened, and I was inclined to believe that the dog had actually come to life; but the moment I ceased passing the shocks the dog was as motionless as it was previous to my commencement. Again I continued the shocks, and no- ticed that there was more moiion in tlie limbs. Considering that in pro- poition to the return of sensibility these shocks would be too powerful for it, I decreased the intensity of them, and passed many hundreds in rapid succession. I continued this for about five miiuites, tlie motion of the limbs increasing as the shocks increased in number. I nov/ ceased; the dog still moved; it was restored to life. I placed it on a warm flannel in front of tlie fire, and in a short time it appeared as well as it was previous to its being drowned ; it crawled on the flannel, and made the noise pe- culiar to young dogs. " I now examined the two other dogs, which were drowned and taken from the water at the same time this one was. They were both dead — a plain proof that it was entirely owing to the galvanic fluid that life was restored. The other three dogs I droAvned in warm water and kept them immers- ed for forty minutes, at which time all motion had ceased. Two of them I laid in front of the fire, and the remaining one I placed in the jars as in the preceding experiment. I now passed a few shocks of weak intensity through the body, but no motion was perceptible. I therefore increased the intensity of them considerably, and gave the shocks in quick succes- sion. Every limb moved, the belly protracted and again collapsed, and the head was raised. At this period I stopped passing the shocks, in or- der to see if there was any motion in the dog when not under the galvanic influence: there was none. I again proceeded with the shocks, and no- ticed that tlie limbs moved more rapidly than before. I considered it ne- cessary to decrease the intensity and increase the quantity of electric flu- id, which I did, so much as to be enabled to perceive a slight tremor in the dog. I continued in this manner for about five minutes, at which time I removed it from the jars and placed it on the table. It ivas a-livc. In a quarter of an hour it appeared to be perfectly recovered. " The other two dogs (which were not allowed to get cold during the whole of the experiment) were now examined; no moiion whatever could be perceived. I tried the effect of galvanism on one of these, and was successful. In one hour after this I operated on the other dog also. 77G THE THOMSONIAN hut it was in vain. There was no vigor remaining in the vital powers; life had fled." REMARKS. It will he perceived tliat the treatment of the dogs above mentioned was strictly Thomsonian. The immersion of the feet in warm water, to in- crease vitality by absorption, is agreeable to our theory; and the use of galvanism to efTect an oscillation of the lungs, appears to be an improve- ment. A warm stimulating injection with a human being, we_ think would also be an improvement, in connection with the applicatian of hot water to tlic feet, to increase the vitality or warmth more rapidly to that degree or point so necessary for respiration, in order to facilitate the j)rocess of breathing as soon as the lungs could be brought into ac- tion by the application of galvanism. In the case of a drowned person, the patient should be laid upon a bed, his body shielded with flannel, his head and shoulders gently elevated, and his feel over tlie foot of the bed, immersed in a pail of water, as hot as can be borne by the attendant. Then apply your remedies as rapidly as judgment may dictate. This is similar to the engineer raising a head of steam sufficient to ope- rate the machine as soon as the vahes are raised by artificial power to let the steam in upon the machinery. We think this subject should be investigated by all Thomsonian jirac- ti!ioners. J. T. TO NERVOUS PEOPLE. UNREASONABLE FEAR OF THUNDER. A young man who for some yp^rs was so terrified by thunder and light- ning as to be upon the point of falling into fits at their approach, found very great benefit from the following reflections, which a friend sent him for his most serious and trequent consideration. To diminish these ungrounded apprehensions, the timid sliould be in- formed, that of 750,000 persons who have died in London within a space of thirty years, two only fell victims to liglitning. They should also be informed, that they unreasonably prolong their fears at each shock. He who has time to dread the consequences of a flash of lightning, is already out of its reach. It is the lightning alone that can hurt us; and if we have seen it, it is folly to grow pale, and tremble by the clap of thunder, and to stop our ears against the noise which announces all danger to be past. The greater the interval between the thunder and the lightning, tlie more removed is the danger. If with our finger to the pulse we can count in the time twelve or thir- teen pulsations, we calculate the storm must be three miles distant. But the very best preventive against this or any other alarm, is the testimony of a "ood conscience. DIMIXUTION" OF ANIMAL HEAT IN SLEEP. During sleep, or dining the hours in which sleep usually takes place, the temperature of the body falls one degree, according to Magendie. The cause of this decrease of heat is to be sought in the languid state of the body at the time, all the vital actions being carried on more feebly, owing to the abstraction of exciting agents and the exhaustion consequent on the exercise of the day. MATERIA MEDICA. 777 Of Wounds and Contusions. A contusion or bruise is a wound internally, and does not communicate with the external air. Though some bruised parts are not attended with the tearing or lacerating of the flesh, yet the flesh assumes the appear- ance of black and blue, showing that the capillary vessels are really in- jured or ruptured, for wMch reason the two are classed together. WOUNDS MADE BY INCISION, Or sharp instruments, attended with a copious flow of blood, demand immediate attention. The venous and arterial blood are easily distin- guished from each other — the venous blood by its dark red color, and that of the arteries from its bright scarlet appearance. The former flows in a steady stream, while the latter is thrown out by the cardial action, with which corresponds the vibration of the pulse, ejecting the blood many feet when a large arterj' is severed. When the arteries are very small the \ibration of the pulse is scarcely perceptible in the stream or flow from the wound; hence many times it is difficult to determine whether an ar- tery is incised or not. MEDICAL, TREATMENT. In all cases the wound should be bathed in moderately cold water, and thoroughly cleansed from dirt and coagula, if there be any within the lips or orifice, until the peculiar aching or smarting sensation is entirely gone. Then wipe the part drj', and bathe the internal and external sur- faces of the sore with No. 6, or rheumatic drops. Let the lips be pinch- ed together with t^e thumb and fore finger, and then put a narrow band- age close about the sore, and make it fast. Should the wound be on the arm, hand, leg, or foot, and bleed freely, let the person put himself in such a position as to raise the wound above the head, and the bleeding will stop instantly, when it should be dressed in that position. After the first dressing there will be but very little inflammation or pain in the sore. In the course of six or twelve hours the bandage may be taken off", and the tiie lips of the wound will be closely diied or adhered together. Now wash in soap suds and dry off with a cloth, then apply a plaster of yellow salve, and the sore will mpidly heal. Should the patient feel faint under the first dressing, or at any time after the accident, give a teaspoonful of the drops, or a dose of the prepared composition powders. In all cases the bowels should be kept in good order, with a natural flow of the per- spirable matter to the surface. TAKING UP AN ARTERY. When the bleeding is profuse, it may be necessary to take up an arte- ry. If on separating the lips of the wound the artery is in sight, it may be seized with a small pair of pincers, or a small hook, and tied with a ligature composed of two or three threads of silk, well twisted and wax- ed. The arteries are known from the cunent of blood ejected by every pulsation of the heart. Great care should always be observed while tak- ing up the artery, that none of the small nerves are included, which are always found near the arteries. 50 778 THE THOMSONIAN TO STOP BLOOD IN -ANY OF THE LIMBS. If a person has wounded himself ever so severely in any of the limhg. either arms or legs, and he puis himself in a position to place the parts Wounded above liis head, the blood will cease flowing in an instant; the same as a stream by being raised above the fountain will flow hack to it again. In that position, the limb may be bathed with cold Avatcr and cleansed, as before described, taking up the arteries if necessary; after which bathe with drops and bandage the orifice together, and in a few hours the lips will be dried or attached to each other. There will be but little pain or inflammation. Then wash with soap suds, dry with a cloth, and apply the salve. Where the wound is very serious, it may be necessary to keep the in- jured limb above the head most of the time for several days, only taking it down occasionally for a few minutes, that a small quantity of the blood may cii-culate through it, thereby keeping the activity and warnith in it, but not to such an extent as to re-open the blood vessels that have been closed by adhesion by the above treatment. WOUNDING THE PRINCIPAL ARTERIES Or blood vessels of the arm, thigh, or neck, is attended with fatal con- sequences, unless a tournequet or some other instrument for stopping the circulation of the blood can be applied to the part. In some cases, by applying to the wound alter compressing the lips together, several thick- nesses of cotton or tow batting, and then tie a towel or handkerchief about the lim.b as close to the body as possible, awd slip through the loop a loggel and twist it up until the blood vessels are so completely com- pressed as to stop the bleeding, and measurably the emission of blood in- to the limb. By this means the blood may be stopped for the time; but it will eventually destroy the warmth and activity of the limb if persisted in for any great length of time. ^ THE TOURNEQUET, Is an instmment calculated to apply to and tighten a ligature about a limb near the body, in such a way as to compress all the blood vessels and arrest bleeding completely. The tournequet is employed by surgeons to prevent hemorrhage while amputating a limb, and must in all cases be put between the wountl and the body. The instmments used by surgeons arc too expensive for fami- ly use ; but the field tournequet, consisting of a single strap, with a pad adapted to the purpose, and a buckle — such as are kept for field ser\'ice in the army, and are sold in the shops — are of a cheap constmction, and may be kept for use in families. STITCHING WOUNDS. It is veiy seldom that wounds require to be stitched, except on the eyelids, nose, lips or ears, where adhesive plasters will not keep the lips of Uie wound together. It occasionally happens (hat a wound is made several inches in length. The stitches should be in the various angles, and in such parts as the judgment may dictate as best calculated to bring the lips of the wound closely together, to good advantage. Strips of the sticking plaster applied between the stitches to bring the i)arts more closely together, may be used with propriety. TO PREPARE STITCHING THREAD. Take according to the size of the wound, one, two, or three threads of sewing silk, (the white is best) about six inches in length, well waxed; MATERIA MEDICA. 779 ?f)lace the feread through the eye of a darning needle, if there be no sur- <;;eon's needle at hand; pass the needle through from within the lips of ^he wound under the skin, and have it pass up through the skin about half an inch back of the edge of the orifice, being particular to include tlie full diickness of tlie skin, which is from an eighth to a quarter of an inch, in the different parts. Draw through the ligature, until the middle of the thread rests in the middle of the wound; then detach the needle, and thread it with the other end of Uie silk; then commence in the wound below tlie skin and bring it out in the same manner on the opposite side. The stitch being complete, the tying of the ends of the ligature in a sin- \gle or sliding knot completes the work. The second or third stitch may be taken in like manner, if necessary. THE STITCIIKS Should never be tighter than barely sufficient to cause the edges of the wound to touch each other gently. The stiips of sticking plaster and the 'bandage sliould take off from the rest of the wound all pressure or exces- sive confinement of the sore. If the parts become swelled or inflamed, the stiches should be cut immediately; or as the i>arts adhere together so -as not to need them, the thread may be cut and drawn out. OF CONTUSIONS, OR SPRAINED JOINTS. In every sprain that is severe, there exists an internal wound, more or iless extensive; hence we frequently find the joints weak after the swell- ing is gone. In such cases, the ligaments of the joint are more or less lacerated, or violently distended. Ligaments that have had their elasti- ■city overdone, recover their tone very slowly ; consequently the joint re- mains weak for along time, and frequently requires artificial support for its protection. THE TREATMENT OF SPRAINS, The relief of the violent pain produced by the overstretching or twist- ing of the ligament, and the abatement of inflammation, is the first thing tol)e attended to. Take some ^ot drops or composition, to prevent fainting, then put the foot or joint injured into as hot water as the patient can bear; rub it tho- rougldy while in the water, increase the heat if necessary, and in ten or fifteen minutes take it out, wipe it dry, and bathe with stunulating lini- ment or hot drops; then bandage it well with flannel, in such form as to support or brace the joint; then let the patient go to bed, put a hot brick or stone at the feet, get them into a perspiration, and in a short time the pain will subside, if the limb is kept still. Should the inflammation remain high, a poultice of brewer's yeast, placed completely around the joint and kept moist, will ease the pain al- most immediately. Or a bread and milk poultice is good. Wormwood and vinegar may be used, if neither of the above remedies can be had. Or a fresh skin from the back of a sheep or other animal, applied to the sprain when it is warm from the animal, is attended with the happiest re- sults, as it will cause the part to perspire freely, and ease the pain. If the sprain is very bad, and the inflammation continues to progress towards tlie body, an emetic or a course of medicine should be taken, which will most generally arrest its progress, and force the swelling back to the part affected, where it is abated by the poultices and fomentations, provided the patient is kept in a profuse perspimtion throughout the body. 780 THE THOMSONIAIV THOMSONIAN THEORY, OR UNIT OF DISEASE. Dr. Thomson's principles of disease are, that all complaints originate, directly or indirectl}', from the same cause. That cause produces de- rangement of the fluids of the body, and that form of disease for which the body appears best adapted. The taking of cold, or loss of vitality from indigestion, over eating or drinking, or any other derangement of the functions of the body, are the causes which create an inability to throw an active and healthy circulation to the lower extremities, in such quantity and quality as is necessary to» carry on perspiration and a free and easy circulation throughout the system. Vitality being thus reduced, is not capable of keeping the feet from be- ing cold from absence of heat, which in turn contracts the blood vessels in the lower extremities, and forces the quantity of blood that is neces- saiy for their support to the head, the side, upon the lungs, or to that part of the system best adapted for the purpose; thus the head, or the part upon which {he cold or disease settles, has not only the requisite quantity of circulation, but that of the feet also, whicK creates distress, in conse- quence of the over distention of the vessels, and disease is the result. The name of the disease is derived from the part where the greatest distress, pressure, or distention of the blood vessels has been experienced, for the want of a suitable circulation in the feet; thus affording relief to those parts that have experienced the shock by full blood vessels in the feet. If the cold settles upon the lungs, it is consumption, or inflamma- tion of the lungs; if in the side, pleurisy; if in the head, head-ache; if in the bowels, cholic; if in the limbs, rheumatism; or if thrown to the sur- face generally, fever. After all, these different forms and names of disease arose from the same cause — the derangement in consequence of taking cold, or the loss of a portion of vitality. And they may all be removed, by restoring an equilibrium of the fluids throu2,-h the body, and giving to every department its due proportion of warmth and perspiration. Remore the debilitj' consequent upon the de- rangement or absence of heat, and the system assumes once nu)re a heal- thy action. Each member then becomes obedient to the power that com- mands in that particular department; and order ai\d regularity assume their appropriate control throughout the body. J. T. DISEASE. The different names which the unnatural concentration of the fluids of the body have received from their location, will now be treated on, under their appropiiate heads and diflerent names. Eruptive Diseases, SMALL VOX.— Variola. The disease of variola, or small pox, which a centuty ago was scarcely less dreaded than the plague itself, affords a memorable example of the triumph of the medical art over what appeared to be an inevitable evil MATERIA MEDICA. 781 attRched to human existence. By the introduction of inoculation, the disease was rendered comparatively safe to the individual; and by the substitution of the vaccine for the variolous poison, tins benefit has been extended to the community at large. Some time must be allowed for the prejudices of mankind to subside, but we have every reason to hope tliat trllimately this destructive scourge will be banished from civilized coun- tries. According to the degree of violence with which variola exists, it con- stitutes two varieties, which, although evidently belonging to tlie same disease, and convertable into each other, differ essentially in their symp- toms, and require different modes of treatment. From the peculiar ap- pearances of tlie eruption, they have obtained the names of distinct and confluent. The first attack of small pox is marked by symptoms of general fever, which partake of the inflammatory 4ype, and is characterized by vomit- ing, and by pain upon pressing- the region of the stomach. On the third or fourth day the eruption begins to appear on the face, and in about two days is completely over the body. It appears in the form of small red l^oints, which aftenv^rds rise into pimples, and at length, by the fifth or sixth day, are converted into vesicles, containing a light yellow fluid. These vesicles are surrounded by an inflamed margin, so as to produce a considerable redness over ll.e whole surface of the body which is not ac- tually occupied by the vesicles themselves; and all the soft parts, espe- cially the face, are so much swollen that the eyelids are often completely closed. About the eleventh day the fluids in the pustules become opaque, and of a yollowish color; and being now fully matured, the vesicles burst and shrivel up, and the inflammation gradually subsides, leaving red marks upon the skin, which, when the disease has been violent, are suc- ceeded by pits or depressions, that are never afterwards obliterated. The pusiles on the other parts of the body proceed in the same order with those on the face, but g6 tlirough their successive stages a day or two later, and are generally attended with less inflammation. In the distinct and less violent form of the disease, the fever abates when the eruption is completed, and seldom returns in any considerable degree; but in the confluent variety, what is called tlie secondary fever comes on at the period of maturation, which is often equally violent, and is indeed more to be dreaded than the first, or the eruptive fever. All the symptoms of this variety are more urgent, and come on at ear- Ker periods, although at the same distance of time from each other; the pustules are more numerous, so as to run into each otlier and form patches of continuous suppuration, while at the same time they are less elevated than those u\ the distinct kind, and have less inflammation around their margin. The fever is also of a different nature, exhibiting more of the typhoid type, and the system in general seems to be more oppressed and torpid, and to be less capable of reaction. The prognosis of the disease depends very much on the nature of the variety to which it mclines; for while in the distinct small pox we may generally hope for a favorable issue, the confluent is, for the most part, nearly beyond the reach of medicine. What circumstance it is that pro- duces the tvvo varieties we know not; it depends in a great degree upon what may be calif d the prevailing character of the epidemic; in some the distinct and in others the confluent being the most frequent; but we are not able to connect these differences in the nafui'e of the epidemic with any external circumstances, or with any peculiar state of the constitu- tution. We have suflicient evidence that it does not depend upon any specific difference, or the nature of the contagious matter, because both the varieties are capable of being produced from the same soiu-ce of in- fection. 782 THETHOMSONIArf Small pox IS always produced by its own specific contasjion ; and vvhert once the inilividual has gone throujjh (he disease, in however slight a de- gree, he is secured from any future attack. Upon tliis fact is founded the practice of inoculation; for we learn, that when a portion of (he matter is inserted under the cuticle it will communicate a much milder disease than one which is received in the usual way, which is probably by the lunti^s. We arc, however, totally unable to explain the cause of this differ- ence. The relation which the fever bears to the eruption, or the degree in which one is to be regarded as the cause of the other, is a point that has given rise to much speculation. According to the humoral patholo- gy, the eruption was thought to afford a remarkable example of the cri- tical discharge of an offending matter from the system; and proceeding upon til is principle, the great object of tlie practitioner was supposed to- be to promote tliis discharge; a system which led to a practice precisely the reverse of the true one, and which must no doubt have proved highly destructive. In what way the fever operates, or what is the pi-oximate cause of the "disease we know not; but it appears that the eruption is the consequence of the fever, and that whatever diminishes the fever diminishes the erup- tion also, and at the same time lessens the violence of the disease. TREATMENT. The Thomsonian plan of treatment is founded upon the principle, that to diminish (he febrile action in (he early stages, by keeping the body very temperate, by the use of such medicines as will barely keep the dis- ease from striking in upon (he vitals, is all that is necessary. And the patients should be kept in a temperature as low as can be made consistenr with their comfort. Perspiration sliould only be moderately felt in tlie palms of the hands; but by sweating to excess it will bring out the dis- ease in its most violent forms, spreading and uniting in one vast mass of pustles and matter throughout the surface of the body; and when the cri- sis takes place, it generally destroys the patient. When if the patient had been .kept in a moderate temperature, there would not have been found upon the surface so much perspirable matter to unite with the virus, and thereby augmenting tlie quantity of poison ; but it would have pass- ed off by other means, and relieved the surface in the same proportion. The main thing is to keep down the febrile excitement upon the surface, and in the proportion that this is done, in the same ratio you avoid the pustles. In the distinct variety, all direct attempts to act upon the eruption, ex- cept so far as we can subdue the fever, are at least useless, if not posi- tively injurious ; and when the disease has run through its course, the powers of the constitution soon return to their accustomed standard. In the confluent small pox we have a much more formidable disease to combat, and one which frequently baffles all endeavors. From its very commencement, it exhibits symptoms much resembling those of typhu."! fever; the cold air produces a dangerous shock to the oppressed and lan- guid powers of life. Tlie circumstance which renders this variety of the disease so critical is, Ihatwhcn from any cause the eruption suddenly dis- appears — an effect which sometimes ensues from the sudden application of cold to the surface, or from an injudicious use of purgatives, the vital powers become so suddenly oppressed by (he reduc(ion of anfmal warmth that the virus strikes in, and threatens the extinction of life almost imme- diately. When this is the case, we make a more free use of stimulants; but great experience and good judgment are so necessaay in a case of thi.-v MATERIA xMKDICA. 783 kind, Uiat it is impossible to g'ive directions, as we could if the patient were before us, as there are many remeiWes that mi2:ht be applied in one stage o{ the disease that would be improper in another. Hence the ne- cessity of a judicious practitioner, who will know how to keep the sys- tem in a cool and temperate state, to avoid the excessive eruptive putre- faction upon the surface. For it is much better for the patient, to let the virus remain in the llesh, and work it off moderately by other means, than that it should make its appearance upon the skin, where it becomes subject to the action of the atmosphere, by which the poison is augment- ed in a len fold degree, by mingling with the perspirable matter, and the jeopardy of the patient is increased in the same proportion. The pustules should not be ruptured; but let them come to maturity and separate from the flesh, which is the proper way to avoid the deleterious effects that would othenvise attend the welfare of the patient. The prac- titioner must bear in mmd, tlvat he has to contend on the one hand witli the tendency to febrile excitement, and on the other to the state of ex- haustion which generally succeeds the former, when it has been violent and long protracted. There is often in confluent small pox a state of restlessness or extreme agitation, which may be relieved with the nerve powder in a little com- position tea or asafetida. One of the most distressing effects of the confluent small pox is the in- jury which it leaves to the constitution generally, or to particular organs, of which the eyes are the most apt to suffer, so as not unfrequently to produce the complete loss of sight. In conclusion. — The small pox is the highest state of canker and pu- trefaction which the human body is capable of receiving, and is the most contao'ious, being taken by the breath, or it may be communicated by inoculation, in which case it is not so violent and dangerous as Vihen tak- en the natural way. The distressing and often'^^fatal consequences that have happened in cases of this disease, are more owing to the manner in which it has been treated in many instances, than to the disease itself. The fashionable mode of treatment has been, to give physic and reduce the system by di- eting, and keeping the patient loo cold. A judicious medium should be observed between the extremes of heat and cold, for the habitation of the patient. You do not wish to keep him so hot as to injure him by enlarg- ing the size and increasing the number of the pustules upon the surface by perspiration and endanger the life of the patient by excessive putre- faction outwardly, when exposed to the air; neither do you wish to keep him so cold as to have the disease strike in ntally, and by that means to destroy his life. Therefore keep a moisture gently in the palms of the hands, a moderate temperature upon the surface; keep the bowels regu- lar by a proper diet and without physic; let his exercise be lively, for a few minutes at a time, if able to be out, and when he stops to rest, to sit or stand, let it be where the wind does not blow on him, so as to take cold. If he is not able to be out, have the room well ventilated as often as necessary, and keep him away from the fire, if you would wish to avoid his having a great number of pock pits after recover^-. At no time sit with your face to the fire while the pock are filling, by which you will avoid the disagreeable appearance of a pitted face. Let the stimulating medicines be sriven moderately, and, if necessary, a light emetic. But these things had better be omitted, if possible, until after the pustules have filled and the disease has turned. Then a full course of medicine can be administered, and the surface of the body cleansed. When the pock ripens and peels off, a little wax ointment may be rubbed upon the sore spot, which will cause it to heal, and create a smooth skin. 784 THE THOMSONIAN ^Regular Treatment. — This disease would be treated under tlie regu- lar practice, by the nse of mercury, opium, anlimonials, blisters, nitre, and salts, with the application of ice, and exposure to the cold.] CHICKEN VOX.— Varicella. This disease is sometimes preceded by a distinct precursive fever, of the same general character with that which announces the approach of small. pox. The emption appears on the third day, in small inflamed spots, on the back and breast. In a few hours a small vesicle rises in tlieir centre, with a whitish transparent covering. On the second day of the eruption, the spots assume the appearance of small bladders, iilled with fluid. Being- pressed with the finger, they are found soft and elas- tic. On the third day the fluid becomes turbid, and on the fourth some of the vesicles begin to break and form crusts, while the contents of oth- ers condense within them. The diying process goes on rapidly, and by the tenth day the scabs usually fall oft". The symptoms of fever are not observed after the second day of eruption. TREATMENT. Commence, if soon after the symptoms appear, by giving a dose of composition or cayenne, followed by canker tea and No. 2. If the dis- ease be somewhat advanced, it may be necessary to administer the usual course of medicine, and keep up the perspiration by the use of steaming stones and warm teas. If tl>e bowels are disordered, administer injec- tions. Under this treatment, the disorder will show itself on the surface, and by keeping up the inward heat, nature will take its course, and the dis- ease will leave the body without any difficulty. [Regular Treatment. — Cooling piu-gatives, antimony, nitre, opium, and leeches.] KINE POX. — Variolce. Vaccince. This disease may be communicated from fresh vesicles, or by means of the dry crusts which fall off. The third or fourth day after vaccina- tion, the germ of the vesicle may be se Vaccination ought not to be performed during the progress of the eruptions, or in a bad state of health. TREATMENT. The treatment usually should be, to keep the pores open, and guard ao-ainst taking cold. But if cold have been taken, or any of the above symptoms aggravated, the course prescribed for chicken pox should be administered, more or less vigorously, according to the condition of the patient. MATERIA MEDICA. 785 {^Regular Treatment. — Under the regular practice, the treatment would be, with cooling purgatives, antimony, and nitre,] MEASLES.— Rubeola, This disease, communicated by contagion, makes its appearance from ten to fourteen days after exposure. The commencing symptoms are, a tickling sensation about the nostrils, sneezing, moistness of the eyes, and a dry husky cough. The presence of fever is also indicated. On the fourth day of fever the eruption usually makes its appearance in deep red pimples, which gradually become fainter as the disease advances, and collect in patches of irregular form, while the space between them ap- pears nearly natural. The febrile symptoms are sometmies aggravated on the appearance of the rash. The headache and fever are somewhat abated in tiie morning, but increase towards night, and the hoarseness and cough continue while the eruption lasts. This begins to subsitle on the third or fourth day from its appearance, the redness diminishes, the skin looks mealy and falls off in fine scales. In favorable cases the other symptoms now subside, but sometimes the eyes continue inflamed, and in other cases the cough remains. When the disease has been very se- severe a torpid, lethargic state sometimes follows the subsidence of the eruption. TREATMENT. In treating this disease the principle object fo be had in view is, to keep the deteimination to the surfiice, and thereby bring out the erup- tion and prevent its striking in. For this purpose, at the commence- ment hf the disease, a tea of composiiion or cayenne should be adminis- tered, with the use of a steaming stone at the feet, and other means by which perspiration may be promoted; and in light cases these means alone will usually, with proper attention, perform a cure. But if the case is severe, or by taking cold the eruption has disappeared from the surface, no time should be lost in bringing active means to the aid of nature. To throw off the disease, the best thing, perhaps, that can be done, is to administer a full course of medicine, with the addition of raising a brisker steam than in ordinary cases, and a plentiful use of cayenne in a decoction of witch hazel or red raspberry. Canker tea should be used freely in all cases of the measles, and while under the op- eration of a course of medicine, cider may be taken in whicli cajenne has been steeped, or the patient may take freely of pennyroyal or pepper- mint tea, or almost any grateful drink. Much care should be taken while recovering from this disease, to guard against taking cold or over- doing. In the treatment of measles some people are of the opinion that powerful means should be employed, but such is not the case ; mild usage at first will, if persevered in, produce the desired effect, with less inconvenience to the patient and trouble to the attendants. [Regular Treatment. — The treatment of the regular practice would be, giving opium, cajomel, nitre, antimony, digitalis, aether, and ammo- Jiia, with the addition of bleeding, and the application of ice water.] SCARLET FEYER—Scarlatina. This dangerous and formidable affection of childhood, when epidemic, does not seem to be dependent for its production on contagion alone. But when apparently springing from contagion, the eruption which is 786 THE THOMSONIAN nearly simiiUancous with tlio fever, appears in about three or four days after exposure. Thi* consists at first of minute red spots, but soon spreads into a general flush, chiefly manifest on the face and breast. The flush assumes a bright scarlet color, not seen in any other disease. The throat becomes affected, -which may happen as soon or even before the appearance of the rash, and is marked b\^ difficulty of swallowing-, und soreness. The tonsils and ncijjhboring parts of the passag'e are swolen and intensely re;', and in a short time patches of an ashy color appear. As the swelling and ulceration increase^ any attempt at swal- lowing- is attended with distress. Duiing this stage the fever docs not permanently diminish, and sufters but little remission ; thirst is great, the skin hot, headache intense, sleep broken, starting and twitching of the limbs, and frequently delirium. The eruption, perhaps after fading and reappearing, finally subsides. In slight cases the disease terminates from the sixth to the ninth day, by the ulcers healing and relief to all the symptoms. But death may lake place in violent cases at an early period or the fever may pass into a typhoid state, with symptoms somewhat re- sembling continued fever which sometimes continue for weeks, from which the patient usually recovers. This disease is not exclusively con- fined to children, but in adults more frequently attacks women than men, and its severity and danger are augmented by age. TREATMENT. In treating scarlet fever, nearly the same means should be employed as recommended in measles. Beware of employing physic in either case, but make use of stimulating injections, keeping up a gentle mois- ture of the skin and the strength of the patient, by nourishing broths and gruel. For further directions see page 496. A gargle may be made of cayenne, salt, and vinegar, and ateaspoonful used occasionally to cleanse the mouth and fauces of the filthy mucus, and to remove the inflamma- tion in the throat. [Regular Treatment. — Bleeding, blistering, giving tai-tarized antimo- ny, aether, and muriatic acid, with cold applications.] MILIARY FEVER OR SWEAT ERUPTION— 7l/i7ians. The oiigin of this disease is indicated by its name. It attacks persons of loose fibre and indolent habits, from lying in warm apartments, under too much clothing. It frequently occurs to women in childbed. Its ap- pearance is usually marked by minute red spots, much like the eruptions of measles. The sweat which attends it is frequently of an offensive odor, it is troublesome from itching and tingling, and is attended with thirst, heat of the skin, and often a coated tongue. Its duration depends on the continuation of the producing causes. The fever usually precedes the eniption, continues an indefinite time, and generally terminates in a natural sweat. TREATMENT. In effecting a cure of this disease it is necessary to have a due con- sideration to cleanliness, frequently sponging the surface of the body, with the addition of warming stimulants to raise the vital action. If the stomach is disordered an emetic should be administered, and if the state of the bowels are impaired, make a free use of injections. The treat- ment to be employed in mild cases of any other kind of eruption will be servicable in this disease. [Regular Treatment. — Blistering, opium, ammonia, musk, camphor.] MATERIA MEDICA. 787 NETTLE RASH— Lriicaria. This disease is distinguished by the appearance of broad, flat, florid elevations of the skm, which itch and tins;le, appearing- successively in different parts, without regidarity- Its moit frequent cause is the pre- sence of poisonous substances in the atomach. It sometimes occurs as an emption, fever commencing by a regular chill — the eruption siiow- ng itself on the second day. TREATMENT. Let the patient avoid such articles of food as are difficult of digestion, partaking of a simple diet, composed of nourishing soups, gruels, &c. This treatment, with the use of medicines to restore a healthy action of the stomach and bowels, which have been mentioned in the treatment of similar cases, will usually in a short time have the desired effect. [Regular Treatment. — The treatment of the regular practice is, with mercury, nitric acid and bleeding, with cold applications.] PRICKLEY HEAT— Zic/iew. This disease is caused by intense and long continued heat. Its distin- ^;uishing s)'mptoms are a diffuse eruption, with red pimples and a sense of tingling or pricking. It is attended with more or less general irrita- tion, and sometimes at its commencement with a slight fever. In the mQder form it first appears with distinct red blotches on the cheeks, chin, or arms, slightly inflamed at their base. In a few days the eruption spreads over the neck, body, and lower extremities, producing a sensa- tion of itching; often aggravated during the night. In a week or ten days the eruption fades and the cuticle separates in scurf. This is the common form, but we sometimes see a vivid rash thrown out, occasion- ally degenerating into wheals like the nettle rash, which remain for a considerable time unless the producing cause is removed. TREATMENT. The best way to relieve this complaint is to take freely of hot medi- cines and excite perspiration. I\ub the surface of the body, after the perspiration has ceased, with an ointment made of fresh butter or cream, in which has been simmered a little camphor, pulverized cubebs, or pep- permint. This ointment will cause a cooling sensation upon the surface. If this does not relieve take a course of medicine, and keep up the heat until the alarming symptoms appear, and let the patient cool dowr*: very gradually. Tliis generally answers in the worst of cases. [^Regular Treatment. — Mercury, tartarized antimony, with cooling lo- tions.] SHINGLES— CemgZe. This disease is sometimes preceded by some constittrtional affection. Tlie first local symptoms are itcliing and tingling of some parts of the body, which are studded with small, irregular, red patches, a little dis- tance from each otlier, covered with numerous small elevations. In twenty-four hours they have enlarged considerably, and contain a trans- parent, limpid fluid. It usually extends in strips from the spine towards the breast bone, but never entirely encircles any part of the body. In a im THE THOMSONfAN iew days some of the vesicles burst, others shrink up and are formed in- to scabs, then fall otFa«d leave an inflamed surface. TREATMENT. When this eruption makes its appearance keep up a moderate warmth throughout the system by the use of the warm medicines. Anoint the surface with an ointment made of equal parts of yellow lily roots and ■■;age, simmered in fresh butter or lard, with the addition of a little borax or alum. Keep up the temperature as before mentioned, and drive the difficulty out, and dry it up upon the surface with the ointment; it will form a dry scale and come off. [Regular Treatmejit. — Bieeding-, antimojiy, &c., with cooling purga- tives, and refrigerant ap|>lications.] TUNGWORM— Impetigo. This disease comes on with an itching and slight local inflammation. It appears in patches more or less circular, with vesicles, existing prin- cipally on the margin of the patches, the middle portion being red, ten- der, and disposed to peel in scales. A single patch sometimes runs through its course in from one to six days, but a new one springs up in its neigliborhood, and so succeed each other for an indefinite period. TREATME NT, This disease may be cured frequently by the use of tobacco juice. It may also be relieved by washing with hardwood ashes, and when dry wash with vinegar. It may also be washed with lime water, after which Apply the vinegar, and when the surface is rough from the application of the lye and vinegar a .soothing ointment may be used made of the burs of meadow fern simmered in fresh butter, cream, or hog's lard; or any otiier softening ointment may be applied, to soften and sooth tlie rough and irritated surface. [Regular Treatment. — The regailar practice is, witli mercurial oint- ment, and internally with calomel, zinc, and lead.] ITCH-Psora. This is a cutaneous inflammation without fever, consisting of vesicles containing a serous fluid, which may appear on any i)art of the body, but most commonly in the flexures of the joints, and between the fingers and ^ocs. In severe cases or in advanced stages the vesicles degenerate into ]iustules containing a yellow matter, and these sometimes uniting form unsightly blotches. It is usually received by contagion; but may be generated by filthy habits. On its first appearance it is sometimes taken for other eruptions, but on minute examination can easily be distin- guished. TREATMENT. An ointment made of narrow dock, simmered with fresh butter, with the addition of a little sinrits of turpentine and sulphur may be api)lied to tbe eruption upon the surface of the body. Let the patient take some composition powder or gin sling to drive out the disorder. Gunpowder and cream is a good remedy. Spirits of turpentine added to the No. 6, MATERIA MEDICA. iiiV is g^ooci, all of which should be applied upon the body warm by the fire before g'oingto bed. [Regular Treatment. — The treatment with the regular practice woulrf be, the internal use of mercury, anmionia, sulphuric acid, arsenic, and digitalis, with the external application of any of these articles made into salve.] Pebrile Diseases^ The symptoms offerer are a derangement of the balance of power in the fluids of the body. The consequence is the heat and cold no longer correspond with their usual causes. Cold is felt, notwithstanding the pressure of a warm atmosphere and abundance of clothing; and fever in its turn is felt, notwithstanding their absence. Together with this there is a rapid pulse, headache, and frequently nausea at the stomach. Fever in this sense accompanies, or is a symptom of various other diseases, particularly inflammations. But the term fever or general fever is appli- cable to a state in which the febrile action is dependent on no external or visible, local disease. [Regular Treatment. — The treatment of fevers by the regular practice is bleeding, with naercury, nitre, opium, salts, quinine, and sulphate of copper.] INTERMITTENT YEYER—Febris Intermittens, A regular paroxysm of intermittent fever consists of three stages. The patient exhibiting at first languor, debility, unwillingness to move and a disposition to yawn on being disturbed as if aroused from sleep. At this period the extremities will be found colder than usual although no dili'er- ence in the temperature is visible to himself. Presently a chill com- mences, invading the back and then the rest of the body, with a sensa- tion or creeping, crawling, or tremor. The s*ate of chill when per- fect is marked by extreme cold, which requires an immediate application of warmth to raise the temperature, of the body. At the same time there is a degree of tremor or shivei-ing usually more violent than the impres- sions of external cold. At this time the skin is warmer than usual not- withstanding the sensation of chill. After a certain time the sensation of cold begins to remit and occasional hot f}a:^hes are experienced. This state of things indicates the proximity of the Second Stage — Which by degrees commences by the cessation of the cold, and an unnatural heat ensues. With this state the color is increas- ed over many parts of the body, and especially the face, which become."* of a bright scarlet color, the skin becoming dry and disagreeable to the patient. The third Stage. — Perspiration starts, which produces gradual relief to the patient by the mitigation of the febrile symptoms. The surface of the body becomes cold, the countenance gains its wonted aspect, and the functions for the most part return to their natural state. In the Cold Stage the pulse is frequent, small, and irregular, the breathing anxious and sighing, attended occasionally with couq-h. In the //of Stage the pulse becomes regular, hard and full, and in- creases in those qualities till the sweat begins to break out. The respi- ration becomes more full and free and continues frequent and anxious. 790 THE THOMSONIAN In the Sweating Stage the pulse becomes soft and less frequent return- ing- gradually to its natural state, and the anxiety and difficulty of breath- ing are removed. The appetite fails from the commencement to the disappearance of the paroxysm, and in g-eneral llie patient has a great aversion to food, sick- ness at the stomach, frequently vomiting a tiilious matter in both the cold and hot stages. Thirst and excessive dryness in the month and throat, continue during the paroxysm of fever, but subside as jierspiration ensues. Lastly headache, attended witli a peculiar tlirobbing of the temples and back of the head, and j^ain in the limbs. The interval be- tween the paroxysms of an intermittent, is a' period of comparative health, and the term of time between those paroxisms, determine the type of the disease. If the space of time be twenty-four hours, the fever is termed quotidian, or daily; if forty-eight hours, so that the second paroxysm happens on the third day, it is called tertian ; if seventy-two hours, a quartan. A fever having but one paroxism has been termed ephemeral, and was once called the sweating sickness, when it prevailed in England. TEEATMENT, A thorough course of medicine and a continued perspiration will fre- quentl}' break up the fever in twenty-four hours. Should one course not >5ucceed, apply tiie second, and so continue until the complaint is re- moved, making use of the bath daily to throw off the morbid matter that may have accumulated upon the surface; also take restorative medicines for the digestive powers during the intervals. These fevers may all be removed by simple treatment. [Regular Treatment. — Bleeding, mercury, jalap, antimony, copper, ammonia, arsenic, and quinine.] YELLOW FEVER— T't/p/nfs Iderodes. The symptoms which distinguish this from other fevers, are the follow- ing : Slight chills accompanied with faintings; sickness at the stomach constantly from the first, and the inclination to vomit increases with the disease. At first the matter vomited is yellow, and on the second or third day it is green, and towards the fiital termination black, or of a slate color, and resembling coffee grounds in consistency. The yellow color of the skin, which is by no means peculiar to this disease, is first develop- ed on the third or fourth day, in the eyes, neck, and breast, and thence extends over the rest of the body, which in fatal cases becomes yellow ihroughout ; the urine is of a dark saffron color; the tongue is covered with a moist yellowish white coat, then it becomes more dry and dis- colored, and finally quite black. The time for the disease to reach its fatal termination is various ; in some instances in twenty-four hours, in which the skin is less strongly marked. When it runs four or five days it exhibits decided remission, such as would lead a person not experienced to anticipate recovery ; but afterwards the spirits and strength revive only a few hours before death. When the pecidiar variety above mentioned takes place, the disease al- most always proves fatal. TREAT3IENT. This disease should be treated with the most rigorous course of medi- cine, and a continued ]ierspiration kept up. The surface should often be bathed with a strong alkaline wash made of hard wood ashes put into water and allowed to settle, and then mixed with whiskey or West India MATERIA MEDICA. 791 rum, to clear (he glutinous substance from the pores and prevent an ab- :5or})tion of the morbid matter that has worked out by perspiration. Batl;^* should be used daily, and the temperature of the system g;enerallv sliould be kept as regular and as near that of health as artincial means will per- mit. Soups and gruels higldy seasoned, should be taken as food and strong tonic mixtures, such as bitters, symps, &c.to strengthen, should be used as soon as the state of the stomach will permit of such treatment. The saline properties of the blood becomes much reduced by tliis dis- ease, by which means the system becomes very putrid, thei'efore pepper and salt should be used in great profusion in nourishment after thorough courses of medicine. See page 515. [JRes:ular Treatment. — Bleeding, mercun-, jalap, colocjrnth, opium, and cold applications.] SPOTTED FEYE'R—Tvphus Gravlor. This disease derives its name from the dark colored spots it exhibits upon the skin, caused by the extravasation of blood beneath the cuticle. It may be described a nervous fever, in which the stage of reaction i.s wanting, attended with pain in the head, virtigo, paroxysms of gastric sinking, generally with a slow pulse, and no febrile sincll. Petechial eruptions, injection of the capillaries, coma, delirium, palpitation, numb- ness and sinking after evacuations, are more common than in anv other febrile disease. It bears a striking resemblance to mali ty and convulsions. Sometimes the patient laughs and cries in the same breath; beats her MATERIA MEDICA. 811 breasts and shrieks, although not entirely deprived of consciousness. After continuing for an indefinite length of time, the lits are either succeeded by a lethargic sleep, or leave the patient in a state of entire con- sciousness. TREATSIENT. This disease may be removed by equalizing the circulation of the body by a thorough course of medicine, after the use for a few days of com- position and nerve powder, and bathing the feet with liniment, and the face head and hands in cold vinegar or with cold water mixed with the spirits of camphor. Injections will be found useful when the bowels are disordered. Also, female injections may be used of witch hazel or red raspberry- leaves, made into a tea with the use of nerve powder, cayenne, and emetic. A tea may be made for constant drink from mothenvort, Qconurus cardiaca,) which will be very useful. A pill occasionally may be used of the size of a small pea, made from asafetida; this will expel the wind and quiet the nerves at times very much, and allow the patient to lind rest at night. We have personally experienced the happiest effects from the use of this article in times of great nervous excitement. iJRegular Treatment — Bleeding, blistering, ammonia, carbonate of iron, opium, musk, and camphor.] CATALEPSY OR TRANCE.— Catalepsis. The symptoms which distinguish catalepsy, are absence of voluntary motion, while the breathing and pulse continue; the patient remaining in the same position in which they happen to be taken until removed, and then remain as they are placed. The tit commences without warning-, lasting from a few minutes to one, two, or more days, and usually terminates with sighing. In some cases the breathing and pulse are so feeble, that the patient is liable to be taken for dead. It usually attacks females of a nervous temperament. TREATMENT. The feet may be bathed in hot water until the absorbents have taken up as much of the heat as possible to place the nervous and arterial sys- tems in a slate ready to become more active if possible. Then apply light shocks from a galvanic batter)^ or of electricity, and increase the power as the patient can bear. If that does not answer, give if possible a thorough course of medicine, and change the seat of action from the head to the feet. ^Regular Treatment. — Bleeding, blisters, cathartics, etc.] APOPLEXY.— ^popZma. Apoplexy usually attacks persons of a short neck, large head and a corpulent habit, who unite great mental exertion to bodily inactivity. It does not often occur till advanced life, and most often to those wlio make a too free use of intoxicating liquors. Its genei-al symptoms are a sud- den loss of sense and motion, slow pulse, and breathing, attended with a snoring sound. This is generally brought about by excessive pressui-e to the head 812 THE THOMSONIAN from over excitement. Those most liable to be afflicted are orators, statesmen, members of the bar, or clergymen. They are often cut down when speaking. It is brought on by a gradual loss of vitality, which is thrown off by rarefaction of excessive respiration, which exhausts the regular amount of vitality used in ordinrry business. But over excite- ment in an orator requires an over exertion in point of argument and language to convey to the auditors in the most forcible manner his senti- ments. When the lungs have exhausted in a measure the quantity of warmth to keep them in motion, a supply is called in from the extremi- tities to make up the deficiency, and this in its turn is again used in rari- faction and is again thrown off. In calling in the heat in this manner the blood is also called in, and so it continues until the bloodvessels in the head are crowded to an excessive degree, the face turns purple, the organs of sense become over crowded, and vertigo is the consequence of dethroning the reasoning faculties, the man reels and falls almost sense- less and lifeless. By starting the blood in the arm a temporary vacuum is created and the pressure upon the brain is not quite as severe. But this temporary relief is soon overcome by the cold or absence of heat holding the power in the body. The eyes are blood shot, the countenance purple, having the appearance of strangulation or drowning. So close is the compres- sion of blood in the region of the heart, brain, and lungs, that the feet and legs exhibit signs of immediate dissolution, by a cold, death-like, clam- my sweat, and the skin appears shrunk and shriveled. To restore the blood back to the lower, and relieve the pressure upon the upper or su- perior extremities or organs, is what Ave wish to effect. TREATMENT. In the first place give a dose of cayenne or composition as strong as possible, then put the feet into as hot water as can be borne by the at- tendant, and continue to rub them thoroughly, and as soon as respiration becomes more easy, give warm mint tea sweetened with sugar and milk, and an injection made very stimulating with cayenne and active as an emetic by a free use of the third preparation, and make it produce vo- miting if possible. This will change the scene of excitement from the head to the oppo- site extremity; put a steam stone or brick at the feet and frequently bathe the hands and temples with cold vinegar or water. This will also have a tendency to remove in a measure the unnatural excitement from the head and give ease to the blood vessels in the region of the brain. If the bowels require action, a couple of table spoonsful of castor oil in a dose of composition or cayenne tea will have the most happy effect. Let the diet for a day or two be thin gruel or toast water sweetened with sugar, with the addition of milk: also, soups may be used. [Regular Treatment. — Bleeding, blisters, antimony, zinc, jalap and mercury.] PALSY .—Paralysis Palsy sometimes originates from exposure to the sun, drinking cold water when heated, repelled eruptions, or perhaps more frequently from apoplexy. The attack of itself is sudden, though it may have been pre- ceded by pain in the head, difficidty of moving the tongue, and loss of perception and memory. Palsy is frequently local, and in such cases MATERIA MEDICA. 813 often attacks the left side. This disease is characterized by a loss of life and the power of motion in the affected part. There are but few that recover entirely from this dilficulty, as it is ge- nerally brought on by old age, or in youn«"er persons from overdoing the natural tone of the system by some species of intemperance, either in eating, drinking, exposure to the cold, or to the heat of the sun; or it may be produced by excessive bleeding and taking calomel, and thereby deadening the natural functions of the body, and causing the small ba- lance of active fluids to press heavily upon the brain by which means an over distension of tlie blood vessels take place in the upper part of the body, and a degree of numbness or paralysis in the extremities for the want of circulation is the consequence, by which means the nervous and arterial systems become so much deadened to the sense of feeling that the numbness is experienced in the head, face, and on one side of the body, from its tracing the nerves from tlie seat of the disease into the live and active flesh. TREATBIENT. Bathing and active friction will produce temporary relief in many cases. Sometimes patients have become nearly restored to health by courses of medicine. But in most cases where this disorder has once at- tacked the body and the patient recovered to tolerable health, the effect is manifest to an observer in the appearance of the person, countenance, or in the walk. We think it seldom the case that persons entirely recover from this complaint when once attacked. Powerful courses of medicine may be applied, putting the emetic very strong into the injections, and let the patient take lightly of the tincture. At the same time bathe the feet with the third preparation and wrap them with wet cloths, keeping a hot steam stone at the feet. Take 6 or 8 cayenne pepper pods two or three times a day. [Regular Treatment. — Bleeding, blisters, cantharides, ammonia, ni- trate of silver, mercury and turpentine.] Prominent Symptoms and Accidents, CELLULAR DROPSY.— Anasarca. This form of dropsy usually appears in the lower limbs, marked by cold diffused swelling, which on being pressed leaves the impression for a considerable time. Its progress is slow, first being observed about the feet or ancles, and is diminished during the night, or when in a recum- bent posture. As the disease advances it ascends, sometimes even reach- ing the face, which becomes pale and bloated. If the disease continues, the skin of the legs may give way, and the fluid ooze out in drops. TREATMEXT. This disease may be successfully treated by the common courses of medicine. While under the course, batlie the feet and legs in strong third preparation, rubbing on the grains thoroughly; then wrap them up in towels wet with cold water, and keep a lively steam stone at the feet during the operation of the medicine, and wet the cloth when it gets dry, keeping a constant sweat upon tlie feet 814 THE THOMSOISIAN I have known this course of treatment to take the swelling- entirely from the feet and lea^s in one operation. I once had a patient so bad that the feet near the ankles cracked open, down the side of the foot, nearly three inches, and the water escaped from the orifice; the flesh turned black, and indicated the near approach of mortification. A course of medicine, with the above treatment (applying- the third preparation, wet cloths, and steam stone at the feet,) removed not only the water, but the entire putrid appearance of the flesh. The application of brewer's yeast, with cayenne and emetic, will have the same effect. This method of treating^ the feet is most admirable also in its effects in cases of efout, inflammatory rheumatism, or any bruise or other disorder of the limbs, as it removes the pain immediately, if the patient is under the course of medicine. [Begular Treatment. — Antimony, copper, mercury^ jalap, gamboge juniper, ammonia, foxglove, ajther, tobacco, and cantharides.] WATER IN THE BUAIN .—Hydrocephalus. This disease is seldom met with after the first seven years of life, al- though it has sometimes occurred to adults. Its first symptoms are, irri- tation generally, much similar to that produced by worms. A heaviness is felt in the head, accompanied by pain shooting from temple to temple; irregular fever; the eyes lose their brightness, the cheeks are pale; the pulse is irregular but quick; the head is hot, with severe pain in the fore- head; and as the disease approaches a fatal termination, the patient screams suddenly, throws back the head, and is taken with delirium, vo- miting, and convulsions. The disease usually terminates in from three to six weeks after its com- mencement; yet it sometimes causes death in two or three days. The chronic form may continue even for years. This disease should be me- dically treated in its first stages, if possible, TREATMEIVT. This complaint originates from cold extremities, and want of suitable action in the bowels. The feet should be bathed (after taking some pre- pared composition) in as hot water as the patient can bear. This will measurably relieve the head. A gentle emetic of tincture may be used, and at the same lime make use of an injection made of composition pow- ders, or of red raspberry leaves, witch hazel leaves, or of the American tea; to which add the usual quantity of cayenne and nerve powder, and two tablespoonsful of the third preparation of the lobelia, well shaken, or one teaspoonful of the pulverized seed, scalded in the tea. When admi- nistered, let it be retained by the patient as long as possible. This will change the field of excitement fiom the upper to the lower extremities, and will in a great measure relieve the head, if the patient is not too fa^r gone . This injection will cause vomiting, by excitement in the bowels, and will most generally afford immediate relief. TViis should always be remembered by pracitioners — to change the loca- tion of the excitement from the upper to the lower extremities, by this course, when there is any distress in the head, or the region of the lungs, either in the quinsy, croup, inflammatory sore throat, or asthma — remem- bering always to bathe the feet in the stimulating liniment, to keep the MATERIA MEDICA. 815 excitement in the extremities, when once you have succeeded in your object. When in bed, a hot stone should be placed at the feet. [Hegulnr Treatment. — Bleeding, mercury, jalap, gamboge, with elec- tricity and cold applications.] HEARTBURN.— Zimosis Cardialgica. Heartburn is a burning sensation at the pit of the stomach, accompa- nied by eructations of an acid fluid. It commences soon after eating, and the acid raised is doubtless generated during digestion. Its cause must be considered a derangement of the digestive organs. TREATMEIVT. A costive or relaxed state of the bowels will produce this complaint, and it is brought about by a deficiency of the gall to act upon the bowels. It may be removed by using a lye made of hard wood ashes, and al- lowed to stand and purify; or clarified lime water, made of rock lime or oyster shell lime, may be used. Take of the clear lye or water from half to a tablespoonful, or if it be too strong reduce it by adding water. This will neutralize the acid. A strong bitter should be used immediately af- ter, to restore the gall and powers of digestion. An emetic would be of service, to throw ofl" the matter which has already remained too long in the stomach. This alkali may be used daily if necessary. Magnesia is an excellent remedy, especially with females in utero gestation. [Regular Treatment. — Jalap, magnesia and ammonia.] WATERBRASH.— Pyrosis. Waterbrash is probably produced by the same causes which produce heartburn; and the eructations occurring when the stomach is empty, they being tasteless and in larger quantities, constitute the only material difiference between the two diseases. TREATMENT. This is generally caused by the want of a suitable degree of animal warmth to throw ofifby perspiration the excess of moisture taken into the stomach. It may be removed by abstaining measurably from drink for a time, or by the use of strong stimulants, such as cayenne pepper, com- position powders, &c., to throw out through the pores, by perspiration, that which is raised from the stomach for the want of a suitable quantity of animal warmth to rarify and dispose of it through the natural channels. Medicines should be used daily to restore digestion, as those powers are measurably affected by this complaint. [Regular Treatment. — Mercury, antimony, colocynlh, cinchona, and sulphuric acid.] FLATULENCE.— Zmosis Flatus. This disease is produced by a weak stomach, and it consists in gas be- ing formed from the food — principally carbonic acid gas — when under 816 THE THOMSONIAN the process of digestion, which cannot take place when the digestive or- gans are healthy. This gas is retained in the stomach, causing- the abdo- men to become swollen and hard; is eriicted, or passed downward. TREATMENT. A little cayenne, ginger, or composition tea, will relieve. A tea made of the dyspepsia powder, or spearmint, peppermint, pennyroyal, sage, or of hemlock boughs, will remove it. The easiest remedy is, to take as much dyspepsy powder as can be held upon the point of a penknife, and it will relieve pain and expel wind from the stomach immediately. With children, a little hemlock, peppermint, or pennyroyal essence, put into warm water, sweetened, with a little milk, and given warm, will act like a charm; it will expel the wind, and put the child to sleep immediately. {Regular Treatment. — Tartarized antimony, chalk, and opium.] COSTIVENESS.— 06siipa«io. When the bowels do not move naturally, as often as once in twenty- four hours, we denominate it costiveness. Its immediate cause is, weak- ness of the bowels, and the strength of the gall not being sufficient to cre- ate action; which may be produced by excessive mental exertion, se- dentary habits, inattention to regular evacuations, and a variety of other causes. TREATMENT. In this case the system should be regulated by a suitable diet — brown bread, crust coflfee, milk porridge, or any other light iood, while the di- gestive powers are being strengthened by bitters, to restore the gall suffi- ciently for it to act upon the bowels. A small paper of the dyspepsy powders may be earned in the pocket, and used occasionally; about the fourth of a teaspoonful will remove the faint sinking sensation occasionally felt at the stomach. Laxative pills may be used, made of equal parts of dried beef's gall, rheubarb, Castile soap, and bitter root, with the addition of one sixteenth part of cayenne, and pilled in the poplar or peach extract. Take from one to three at night. This is an excellent article for costiveness. Or a pill may be made by drying down tlie tomato juice as thick as tar, and adding rheubarb, dried bitter root, and the cayenne, as before mentioned. Either of these is a good remedy. IRegular Treatment. — Jalap, sulphate of magnesia, cassia, rhubarb, and mercury.] INDIGESTION.— Dyspepsia. This disease consists in the incapacity of the stomach to perform its natural functions. Its symptoms are, a faint sinking sensation through the system, especially in the morning; an oppression at the stomach af- ter eating, which is often followed by a great desire to sleep; a heavy, dull pain about the head, a greater or less degree of emaciation, toge- ther wiih a long train of other symptoms, which the frequency of the disease at the present day renders it unnecessary to describe. TREATMENT. This complaint may be relieved by cleansing the stomach by emetics, and making a tea of tlie poplar bark, or by the use of the golden seal tea. MATEfllA MEDICA. 817 in which should be mingled a little cayenne. The feet and legs should be bathed in hot water, and thoroughly rubbed with the stimulating lini- ment. By continuing the friction at the feet, and regulating the bowels, the food will sit better upon the stomach and the patient will be relieved. In extreme cases, courses of medicine must be resorted to, to clear the morbid matter from the system. A light diet should be used for some time, such as gruel, crust coffee, sweetened, with milk, and brown bread; or rye and Indian bread, soda crackers and milk, pudding and milk, sa- go, tapioca, will keep the bowels loose. [Regular Treatment. — Mercur}% jalap, aloes, rhubarb, soap, magne- sia, cassia, cinchonia, iron, &c., with the use of vinous liquors.] SPONTANEOUS VOMITING. Spontaneous vomiting is often a salutary effort of the stomach to rid it- self of offending matter. Morbid vomiting is sometimes occasioned by inflammation of the stomach; and some persons vomit on very slight oc- casions, and even with no apparent cause; and vomiting may continue on the administration of an emetic, after it has produced its ordinary effects. TREAT3IEXT. This disease may be cured, by assisting nature to do what she seems struggling hard to perform. If there was nothing offensive upon the sto- mach, there would be no occasion for spontaneous vomiting. The best way, therefore, is to give an emetic, and rid the system of the offensive matter. Frequently, a dose of prepared composition powders will an- swer. A tea made of cayenne will frequently effect the object; but a more thorough emetic will be the most likely to answer the purpose, and is the surest course. [Regular Trealment. — Bleeding, opium, and aether.] UlCCOVGU.— Singultus. Hiccough has its seat in the diaphragm, and is a spasmodic affection of that organ, though its cause is usually an irritation of the stomach. It is frequently induced by flatulence and overloading the stomach. In itself it is never dangerous, but is in some diseases one of the surest signs of approaching dissolution. TREATMENT. A warm cup of mint tea will frequently relieve this complaint. We have known it to stop instantaneously by a sudden fright while the parox- ysm was on, by some one going up unperceived, behind the person, and giving them a sudden blow, or speak sharp, as if in trouble. With the sick, anti-spasmodics should be used ; such as asafetida, nerve powder. West India rum, Holland gin, &c., in small quantities. [Regular Treatment. — Opium, aether, musk, sulphuric acid, blisters, and cold water.] CRAMP. Considered alone, cramp is never dangerous. It is most usually expe- 818 THE THOMSONIAN rienced in the feet and calves of the Ic^s, though any part of the body is liable to be affected by it. It consists m a contraction of the muscles. TREATMENT. Lively friction, if in the limbs, will frequently remove the cramp. If more powerful means are required, take a little tincture of camphor, asafetida, or cayenne, after which bathe the feet, to cause a general glow to pass throughout the body. [Regular Treatment. — Opium, sether, oil of amber, jalap, &c., with bleeding and electricity.] BLEEDING FROiM THE ISiOSE.—Epistaxis. This often happens in catarrh, and may be induced by a pressure of blood to the head, and a variety of other causes. TREATMENT. This complaint may often be relieved by running, or violent exercise, to throw the blood into the feet. Putting the feet into hot water, and a cloth wet in cold water, applied to the temples, after taking a dose of warm medicine. If this does not relieve, and the patient is in danger, give an injection of composition, made strong with cayenne, and add, when the liquid is hot, two teaspoonsfuU of the brown emetic, and a table-spoon full of the third preparation. Let tliis be gi\en as warm as it can be bome. This will change the field of excitement to the lower extremities, and the vomiting will relieve the patient. A valuable astrin- gent snuff may be made by pulverising witch-hazel leaves tine, and using it when bleeding. [JRegular Treatment. — Alum, zinc, lead, sulphuric acid, opium, and muriate of iron.] STRANGUARY .—/scAuria et Bysuria. Stranguary is a painful emission of urine, which usually flows only b} drops, with a scalding sensation. Its cause is doubtless an inflammation of the neck of the bladder, which is most commonly induced by the ap- Klication of cantharides, either internally or in the form of blisters. It as also in a few cases been produced by colds. TREATMENT. Get the system into a moderate perspii-ation, and apply a hot brick to the back, and use the diuretic remedies mentioned under the head of diuretics. If they do not relieve, take the course of medicine, and make a free use of a tea made of hemlock boughs, of strawberry leaves, or of wild lettuce, parsley roots, or the syrups directed to be made under the head of diuretics. A warm plaster may be applied to the small of the back, and the feet should be stimulated, to call down the circulation from the head, and create activity in the back and region of the kidneys. The most simple way to remove this disease, is to heat several gallons of water to a boiling temperature, which pour into ? large tub, then add cold water and reduce tlie heat to that point so that it can be borne by the patient with some inconvenience. Then let him take off his clothes and sit down into the water, which should come up above the navel, com- MATERIA MKDICA. 819 pletely immersing the small of (he back. Be covered with a blanket, to keep off the extenial air. This will relieve, in a few minutes, all distress occasioned by blisters, or from any other cause except calculus or the stone, and will then afford temporary relief. \_Regalar Treatment. — Opium, aether, balsum copaiva, tobacco, mer- cury, and the use of the catheter.] DIABETES.— -SaccAanne Urine. This disease consists in an excessive discharge of urine. Its symptoms are, thirst, debility, a voracious appetite, a drj', harsh skin, a clammy tongue, and general debility. TREAT3IENT. The perspirable matter has turned in, and passes off" by the urinary- organs : this course must be stopped by creating an active circulation to the skin, and keeping it up at the same time by gi^T^ng internally some of the most powerful astringents used in our practice, such as a tea made of white lily roots, witch-hazel leaves, or tincture of kino, made strong, of which take a tea-spoon full two or three times a day, miless it dries the mouth too much. In the first stages, it may be cured by the free use of loaf sugar and rosin, one thiid of rosin to two thirds of loaf sugar, made fine — and a teaspoonfuU used several times in course of the day. A tea may be made of avens-root, or cranes-bill, which will be sufficiently astringent to do much good in this disease. But the operation of a full course of medicine, and a continued perspiration for some time, with a free use of astringents, will answer the purpose. The bowels should be kept in good order. [Hegular Treatment. — Nitric acid, ammonia, bleeding, alum, zinc, and opium.] GRAYEL.—Lithiasis. Gravel is produced when the alkaline matter which the urine contains bears a too great proportion to its acid principle, to be kept in solution by it: in that case, the alkali becomes concreted, usually in the bladder. It may also be occasioned when the acid principle exceeds its due pro- portion in relation to the alkaline. In this case, the deposite is com- monly made in the bladder, which appears in the form of red sand, but is concreted in the kidney, from whence it passes, and is deposited in the bladder. Sometimes a nucleus is formed of these deposites in the bladder, which becomes solid, and attains a greater or less size, according to cii'cum- stances, and is then called stone. TREATMENT. Take two pounds of wild strawberry leaves and vines, and fruit, if to be had, and put them into a stone jug, and add two gallons of the best Holland gin, and half a pound of parsley roots, and quarter of a pound of juniper benies, all pulverised, and sweeten it with two pounds of boiled strained honey. Let this compound be well shaken together, and stopped down for use. Take from a quarter to half of a glass two or 820 THE THOMSONIAN three limes a day. It is an excellent remedy. If the complaint is very distressing-, a steam bath may be applied, and the patient having his feet in a paU of water, as hot as he can bear it, until the circulation in them is as free as in the hands. This will generally relieve; if not, the tincture of emetic may be taken to relax the system, and at the same time, all the drinks taken should be sweetened with clarified or boiled honey. A steaming stone or brick may be placed to the small of the back, as hot as can be tolerated, or cloths wet with hot water, applied as frequent as they become coolish, so that the heat can be increased and comfortably borne by the patient, may be used. Spirits of turpentine may be taken in small quantities, upon sugar, with much advantage, or mixed with boiled honey. These are all simple means, to which people will generally have re- course before they will apply more thorough remedies. But if these things fail, (as it is seldom the case but some of them will relieve the patient,) then try the thorough course of medicine, applying the heat to the feet by hot water while in the bath, and bathe with Ihument when out. A tea made of poplar bark may be constantly used, and much benefit will be derived: also hemlock boughs may be made into tea, and freely used for the same purpose, with advantage. [Regular Treatment. — Opium, aether, turpentine, soda, lead, and alum.] DROWNING. When, by immersion in water, the animal functions become suspended, so as to cause death, we call it a case of drowning. The I'eason why immersion in water causes death, is supposed to be the prevention of air from being inhaled into the lungs, and thus the blood is not changed from the properties of venous to arterial, but is passed from the left side of the heart to the brain in the venous state, in such quanti- ties as to impair the vital power. TREATMENT. The raising of the temperature of the body should be as nearly natural as possible, that is, as natural and uniformly through the body. The heat may be raised to ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, but not over one hundred. The body should be laid upon a mattress, between blankets, the head and shoulders elevated — the feet extending over the foot of the bed, and immersed in as hot water as the attendant can bear, in order that the absorbents may raise sufficient heat of vitality to cause respira- tion as soon as the lungs can be moved by suitable oscillations. The evidence of improvement, or returning life, may be noticed by the in- crease in the size of the veins in the hands and feet. While the feet are in the water and the body is becoming warm, light shocks may be applied from a galvanic battery or of electricity, which will have a tendency to give that oscillating motion to the lungs so ne- cessary in respiration. As soon as possible pour into the mouth one tea spoonful of the third preparation, to create an excitement at the roots of tlie tongue and glands of the Uliroat, which will give action. If the pa- tient begins to recover it will first be perceived by the pulse and then by respirations "few and far between." In this case the efforts should be redoubled to apply the shock of galvanism light or heavy as the circum- stances of the case will waiTant. Rub the feet and arms to increase the circulation. Do not suffer any thing to be put into \he mouth that would MATERIA MEDICA. 821 create sh-angulation with those that are well. Do not snffer any hea\y weig-ht to lay upon the breast as it will prevent the inflation of the lungs, so far as the weight is concerned. As soon as tlie patient can swallow, a sufficient quantity of the third preparation should be a.dministered to create vomiting and thereby throw otf all foreign matter from the sto- mach, as well as to excite i>erspiration, to quiet the nervous system, in- duce sleep and quietness, and restore the body to its accustomed vigor. [Regular Treatment. — Inflation of the lungs by the bellows, rolling on barrels, friction, electricity, bleeding, with the use of stimulants.] HYDROPHOBIA.— Canme Madness. This disease usually arises from the introduction of poison into the sys- tem by the bite of a rabid animal, though perhaps in some cases it arises spontaneously. It commences with great anxiety, timidity, sighing, dryness of the tongue, a horrible sensation when attempting to swallow any kind of liquid, a small weak pulse, accompanied with slight fever. As it progresses, it is marked by continual watching, difficult respira- tion, abhorrence of light and the motion of the air, and frothing at the mouth; and the sufferer's life ^usually tenninates in comiilsions. TREATMENT. The patient should be got into an active perspiration, and the courses of medicine applied daily, and the tincture of emetic should be used free- ly at intervals until nausea is induced. Continue this course, keeping up a moisture upon the surface and a regularity of the bowels until all symp- toms of the disease disappear. Continued perspiration alone has cured canine madness in some cases, but this cannot be continued without the free use of strong counter-poi- sons, for which purpose use the lobelia in tincture or as an emetic, in the course of medicine, and in every other form in which it has been success- fully employed in other complaints. A number of cases of this disease have been cured by the Thomsonian practice after having been given up as incurable under the regular treat- ment, and having been exercised with the dreadful paroxysms incident to that complaint. [Regular Treatment. — Copious bleedings, scarifying, copper, opium,. ammonia, salts, cold bathing, and musk.] VENEREAL DISEASE.— Syphilis. Syphilitic poison being applied to a part which is soft or covered with a mucous membrane, or otherwise where a puncture of the skin exists, produces an ulceration or inflammation of the part to which it was com- municated. This disease may remain local, or it may nm into a consti- tutional affection. When local , it shows itself in form of inflamed ulcers, very sore and painful, unequally rigid, the edges prominent and of an ash color, and with a disposition to spread rapidly over the adjacent parts. When constitutional, the fluids throughout the whole system are taint- ed, and other parts of the body besides the genital organs are liable to break out in obstinate ulcers, or a sort of scrofulous affection; and in lliis form of the disease, unless arrested by efficient medical treatment, it sooner or later proves fatal. 822 THE THOMSONIAN TREATMENT. Courses of medicine should be used two or three times in the course of a week, and the tincture of lobelia taken at intervals, to keep the sto- mach sickened. The evacuation of the bowels should be regular and daily. This course will generally relieve all distress. Then make a wash of the lobelia and yellow lily root. This tea may also be used as injec- tions lor the penis or per ani with good success. A poultice may l)e ^used for any syphilitic sores, compounded of the lobelia and yellow lily root tea, thickened with slippery elm and spong'e crackers, or Indian meal. If these articles cannot be had, make use of brewer's or baker's yeast, and thicken it with the crackers and the elm, with the addition of the green emetic. This will draw out the virus and heal the sores. Keeping the body cool, and the stomach nauseated by the lobelia or bitter root, with the use of the compounds for poultices and injections, there will not be much dilficulty with the patient. [Regular Treatment. — Mercury, opium, salts, nitre, ammonia, bal- sam copaiva, lime water, light diet, and cool temperament.] TIC BOVLOXJREVX.— Neuralgia. This is a disorder that often occurs in this country. It attacks the cheek and upper jaw, is a painful affection of the nerves, and takes its name from its sudden and excruciating darts of pain. The distress is frequently most intolerable without the least apparent signs of any affec- tion of the cheek, teeth, or jaw. It is oftentimes by unskilful physicians attributed to the teeth, and many have ver}' injudiciously extracted all on that side; but it is never succeeded by any mitigation of the pain. It is therefore always commendable for those who have sound teeth in their head, to let them remain in such instances, as not the least possible be- nefit can be derived from their extraction. TREATMENT. We are seldom called upon to meet this disease. One case of it was treated by us the past year, it was that of a young lady who had been seriously afflicted with it for upwards of a year, so that at times she could take no rest day nor night. We commenced our treatment by giving her compositition, to create an action in the system, and bathing the feet with stimulating liniment, to take the pressure from the head. The second ■day she took the vapor bath, and afterwards four or five emetic pills daily, which sickened, and caused slight vomiting; then put a stimulating plaster upon the cheek, which counteiacted the constringent effects the ■cold air would naturally produce while taking the warm nifdicine, be- sides relaxing the muscles so as to aljate the pain. For four or five of the first days and nights she was constantly exercised with the most in- tense pain in that cheek. We then administered a full course of medi- cine, and followed up the bath every day, with bathing the feet and warm medicine internally, until the ninth day, when she returned home in the steam-boat, without the least pain, and has not since, we leani, been af- flicted with tlie least symptoms of the tic douloureux. We should not feel authorized to declare that the above course would cure every case of the complaint; but we know it was effectual in this instance, and this shoidd be an inducement to make a trial of it in other cases. N. B. — We have had several cases since the one above mentioned, and have generally been successful with them. J. T. MATERIA MEDICA. 823 A VALUABLE SALVE, For violent Inflammatory Sores, Barns, Canker or Fever Sores, Sfc. Take of beef's gall, and dry it down to the consistence of salve, and apply it to the part affected, and it takes out the inflammation immediate- ly, and prevents the contraction of the muscles. This is a much better remedy for old sores than the black salve, in which is compounded the red lead, mentioned on page 734, and should be used in its stead. [This article was overlooked, and not put in its proper place, but is too valuable to be entirely omitted.] Cookery for tJie Sick. After a satisfactory operation of medicine, the next most important subject to be attended to is the appetite. The food should be light, and such as to set well upon the stomach, for which purpose we have selected the following articles. TO MAKE CHICKEN BROTH. Dress a fowl; wash it in boiling water, with a portion of salt; take eight quarts of water, and four or six ounces of pearl barley; boil it an hour and a half; put in the fowl and boil it, with the addition of the white of leeks and parsley. When the fowl is sufficiently done, add a pint of sweet milk; let it just come to the boiling point; take the soup oiT the fire, have the fowl covered with a small quantity of good butter and par- sley, with a few pieces of lemon peel. A little pepper and salt or aro- matic s may be added. ANOTHER METHOD. Take a chicken and cut it in pieces ; put the gizzard in with it, opened and cleaned, but not peeled. Boil it till the moat drops from the bone. Begin to give the broth as soon as there is any strength in it; and when boiled, edt some of the meat. Let it be well seasoned. This may be given instead of milk porridge, and is very good for weak patients, par- ticularly in cases of dysentery. |jg ANOTHER METHOD. Put the body and legs of the fowl, after taking off the skin and rump, into the water it was boiled in, with one blade of mace, one slice of onion and ten white pepper coins. Simmer till the broth be of a pleasant fla- vor; if not water enough, add a little. Beat a quarter of an ounce of sweet almonds with a teaspoonful of water, fine; broil it in the broth; strain, and when cool remove the fat. BEEF, MUTTON, AND VEAL BROTH. Put two pounds of lean beef, one pound of scrag of veal, one pound of scrag of mutton, three ounces of pearl barley, sweet herbs, and ten pep- per corns, into a nice tin sauce-pan, with seven quarts of water; to sim- mer to three or four quarts, and clear from the fat when cold. Add one onion, if approved, or the white part of leeks. Soup and broth made of different meats are more supporting as well as better flavored. To remove the fat, take it off when cold, as clean as 824 THE THOMSONIAN possible ; and if tliere be still any remaining, lay a bit of clean blotting or cap paper on the broth when in the basin, and it will lake up ever}- particle. TO MAKE MILK PORRIDGE. Put a quart of water in a kettle, with a proper quantity of salt, and while heating mix a gill of flour in a bowl with water, made thick, and when the water is boiling hot drop this into it with a spoon; let it be well boiled, then add half a pint of milk. This is to be eaten while under the operation of the medicine ; and is also good food for the sick at any other time, especial!}' when the stomach is weak. ANOTHER MKTHOD. Take of water gruel, when it has stood a little while to cool, and add half the quantity of unboiled new milk. It may be eaten salted or fresh. Milk poiTidge is exceedingly cleansing, and easy of digestion, and may be given to the weakest stomach that is able to receive food. WATER GRUEL. Take a spoonful and a half or fresh ground oatmeal, mix with it gra- dually a quart of river or spring water, and set it on a clear fire. When it is rising or just ready to boil, take it off and pour it from one basin in- to another, backwards and forwards five or six times; then set it on the fire agam till it is ready to boil, but before it does boil take it off and let it stand a little in the sauce-pan, that the coarse husks of the oatmeal may sink to the bottom. Then pour it out, add a little salt, and let it stand to cool. When water gniel is made with grits it must boil gently for some time. The longer it boils the more it will jelly. But moderation must be ob- served in this respect, for if it be very long boiled and very thick it will be flat and heavy. A mistaken idea very generally prevails, that water gruel is not nou- rishing. It is, on the contrary, a light, nourishing food, good either in sickness or health, both for young or old. TOAST AND WATER. Toast a thin piece of bread, at a distance from the fire, till very hard and brown, but not the least burnt; then put it into a jug of cold water, cover it close, and let it stand an hour before it is used. The Avater will be of a fine brown color if properly made. This is of particular use in weak bowels, and by the addition of a small portion of brandy is a very proper drink when the bowels are disordered . ORANGEADE OR LEMONADE. When you have squeezed out the juice, pour boiling water on a little of the peel and cover it close. Boil sugar and water to a thin syrup, and skim it well. When thoroughly cold, mix the infusion, the sjTup and juice, with as much more water as will make it a rich sherbet, and strain it through a jelly bag; or it may be made by squeezing the juice, strain- ing it, and adding capillaire and water. RICE MILK. To four large spoonsful of whole rice, washed very clean in cold water, add a quart of new milk, and stew them very gently for three hours. Let it stand in a basin to cool before it is used. MATERIA xMEDICA. 825 GENERAL INDEX. Vocabulary of Botanical Terms, page Index of Anatomy, Index of Dr. Thomson's early practice. 150 485 577 ♦ Abdomen, diseases of the, Accidents, Prominent Symptoms and, Achillea Millefolium, 652, Active, the. Air, atmospheric, Aletris Ferinosa, 620, Alkalies, Allspice, Altitude and location of Plants, Althaea Rosea, 671, Alumina, American Aspen, American Senna, 656, Amygdalus Persica, 624, Amara, 628, Anasarca, Anatomy, outlines of, Angelica Archangelica, Angina Pectori?, Animal Physic, Animals, on. Animation, Antacids, Anthemis Cortula, Nobilis, Antidyspeptic Restorative, (/Onserve, Antiseptics 709, Antiscorbutic and Compounds, 712, mk Antiscorbutics, 711, ^m Antiscorbutic Ointments, Antiseptics, to prevent mortifica- tion, (No. 6,) 629, Antispasmodics, Apium Petroselinum, 663, Apocynum Andros'emifolium, Canabinum, 619, Apoplexia, Apoplexy, Archangel, Arctium Lappa, 641, Aromatic Compound, Aromatics and Tonics, Arrangement of this Book, Arteries, taking up of, wounding of, S03 813 712 189 205 205 705 697 674 118 724 175 615 719 707 707 813 211 6S7 800 717 204 23 676 6S5 (W) 70S 709 727 711 04 J 713 709 632 721 618 705 811 811 687 711 675 673 3 777 778 53 Artemisis Asynthium, 690 Artificial Classes and Orders, 142, 143 Arum TriphilJum, 672, 724 Asafctida, 634, 7n Asarum Canadense, 689 Aster Hyssopifolius, 607, 703 Asthma, 742, 800 Astringent Compounds. 703 Avens Root, 608, 703 Balmony, 613, 704 Balsam Fir, 676 Copaiva, 676 Balsamodendron Myrrha, 629, 709 Balsams, 676 Barber's Itch, 716 Barberry, 617, 705 Barytes, 171 Bath, steam or vapor. 692 Bathing the feet. 729 Bayberry. 597, 701 Baybush, 649 Benne Plant, 670, 724 Berberis Vulgaris, 617 Betula Lenta, 686 Beverage, a healthy, 747, 752 Bile, to correct, (No. 4,) 613. 704 Biles, 725 Birch, black, spicy, or cherry. 686 Birth Root, 688 Bitter Almond, 628, 707 Bitter Herb, 613 Bitter Root, 61S, 619, 705, 718 Bittersweet, 639, 711 Bitter Wintergreen, 644 Bitters, and Compounds of, 704 } 705, 706, 690 Bitters, simple, 690 Black and White Population, lia- bilities to disease. 750 Black Snakeroot, 711, 643 Blackwell, E., 88 Blain, Dr., opinion of. 19 Bleeding at the nose, 742, 818 Bleeding, how to stop. 778 Blessed Thistle, 689 Blood Root, 681 Blood, transfusion of, 767 loss of, 771 Boneset, 681 826 THE THOMSON I AN Botanic Terms, a Vocabulary of, Botany, Improved System of, Boxwood, (521, Bruises, sheep's pelts for, Buck Thorn, 720, Horn Brake, 669, Buds of Plants, Burdock, 641, Susks of steel, Butternut, 718, Calculi, Caloric, theory of, fluidity of, radiation of, Calx, Camomile, wild, Camphor, 636, Canada Snakeroot, Cancer Plaster, Canine Madness, Canker, remedies for, (No. 3,) 797, Canker Sores, Capsicum Baccatum, 590, Annuum, 590, Carbonate of Soda, Cassia Marylandica, 656, Castor Oil, 657, Caialepsis, Catalepsy, Catarrh, 735, Catarrhus, Catesby, M., Cathartics, 654, Catnip, Catmint, Cathartic Compound, Caustics, Cayenne, Ceanothus Americana, 606, Ceingles, Celular Dropsy, Centaurea Benedicta, Chapped Hands and Feet, Chelone Glabra, 613, Cherevisise Fermentum, 667, Cherry, black, or wild. Chicken, its growth from the egg. Chicken Pox, Chimaphila Umbellata, 644, Chincopins, Chocolate Root, Cholera, Asiatic, Cholera Morbus, Chorea Sancti Viti, Chrysanthemum Parthenium, Cinnamon, Circulation, equalization of, Classes, artificial, 133, Cleavers. 150 30 121 705 769 659 724 61 711 742 658 806 189 195 195 199 678 685 685 711 6S9 671 821 701 725 700 701 677 719 719 811 811 793 793 108 716 684 718 679 590 702 787 813 689 739 704 723 026 14 784 711 590 608 752 803 809 686 675 692 142 661 Climate, influence of, • 751 Clivers, 661, 721 Clove Tree, 673 Cocash, 607 Cochleria Armoracia, 683 Cohosh, 643 Cold, artificial, production of. 201 Colic, 804 Painter's, 804 Colica, 804 Comfrey, 623, 705 Composition Powders, 710 Compounds of No. 3, 703 No 4, 705 No. 5, 707 No. 6, 710, 711 Consumption, 769, 796 Contusions, 779 Convulsions, 810 Cookery for the Sick, 823 Copaiferffi ofticinalis. 676 Coptis Trifolia, 622, 705 Corns on tiie toes, 741 Cornus Circinati, 646, 712 Cornus Florida, 621, 705 Costiveness, 816 Cough Mixture, 727 Drops, 673, 728 Syrup, 729. Council of the Senses, 764 Courses of Medicine, 695 Cramp, 817 CranesbiU, 609, 703 Crooked Leg, to straighten. 745 Croup, 742, 802 Cubeba, 653, 712 Cubebs, 653, 712 Cutaneous Diseases, 733 Cynanche Pharyngaj, 794 Parotidgea, 801 Maligna, 801 Trachealis, 802 Cypripedium, 632, 710 Dandelion, 664. 721 Dedication, ^Bf 3 Diabetes, 723pF 819 Diarrhoea, 803 Diarrhoea and Dysentery, articles for, 725, ' 708 Digestive powers, to restore. (No. 5,) 624, 707 Disease, treatment df. 693 Diseases, 780 eruptive. 780 Diuretic Compounds, 722 Diuretics, 660,721, .722 Docks, 648, 712 Dog's Bane, 618, 619 Dogwood, 621 Dropsy, 721, 813 Drowned, resuscitation of the 775 Drowning, 773, 828 MATERIA MEDICA. 827 Dysentery, 804 Dyspeptic Powders, 706 Dyspepsia, 816 Earth and Water, 170 Egg and its vitality, 14 Elder Tree, 723 Elecampane, 688 Elm, slippery, or red, 723, 668 Emetic Herb, 581 Emetic Pills, 700 simpLe, 680 Emetics, preparation of, 099 Enemas, 698 Epilepsia, 810 Epilepsy 810 Epistaxis, 818 Erysipelas, 792 Erysipelatous Affections, 792 Essence, how to make, 740 Eugenia Caryoph)'llata, 673 Eupatorium Perfoliatum, 681 Exercise, 772 Eye, film in, a cure for, 736 Eyebri2;ht, 581 Eye Water, 647, 735 Falling of the AVomb, 738 False Aloes, 620 Fatigue, lo prevent after excess- ive labor, 746 Febrile Diseases, 789 Febris Intermittens, 789 Feet, take care of the, 743 Felon, how treated, 724 Females, a syrup for, 738 obstructions for, 739 Females, remedies for, 737 Ferula Asafoitida, 634, 711 Feverfew, 686 Fever, Intermittent, 789 Fibrous Tissue, diseases of, 807 Fistula, 741 Fir Tree, 676 Fire, 189 Flatulence 815 Flesh, reunion of, g| 770 Flowers, ^ 76 Fluor A Ibus, a cure for, 737 Foetus, the growth of, 14 Foot, setting a bone in the, 744 Fragaria Virginiana, 660, 721 France, crime in, 771 Freezing Mixtures, 201 Galium Aparine, 661, 721 Gall Stones, 806 Gardens, Botanical, 111 Geranium Maculatum, 609 Gesner, Conrad, 104 Geum Virginianum, 608, 703 Ginger, 594, 701 Ginseng, 687 Glucina, 177 Golden Rod, 685 Golden Seal, 613, 705 Goldthread, 622, 705 Gout, 808 Gravel, 722, 819 Green Osier, 646, 712 Growth and extractive malter of vegetation, 165 Hamamelis Virginica, 603, 702 Hoemoptysis, 799 Healthy Beverage, 747 Heart, 1st view of, 246 2d do 247 Heartburn, 815 Heat, theories of, 189 nature of, 190 methods of producing, 190 general effects of, 191 measurement of, 192 expansion, exceptions to, 192 equal distribution of, 193 propagation of, 193 conve5'ed by change in the situation of fluids, 194 capacity of bodies to con- tain, 198 Heat Animal, diminution of, in sleep, 776 Hedeoma Pulegioides, 683 Hemlock, 599, 748, 742 Hepatitis, 805 Hiccough, 817 Hollyhock, 671, 724 Horehound, 622 Horse Radish, 683 Hydrastis Canadensis, 613, 705 Hydrocephalus, 814 Hydrophobia, 821 Hysteria. 810 Hysterics, 810 Ichtodes FcEtidus, 638 Icterus, 806 Illustrations of Anatomy and Bo- tany, 4, 5 Impetigo, 788 Important to be remembered, 679 Index, Anatomical, 485 of Dr. Thomson's practice, 577 Indian Tobacco, 58I Indigestion, 816 Inflammation of the Kidneys, 805 Influenza, 794 Injections, 698 Insects in the ears, 741 Intemperance, 748 Introduction, 5, 691 Inula Helenium, 688 Ischuria et Dysuria, 818 Itch, 788 Jaundice, 806 Joints, sprained, 779 Juglans Cineria, 658, 718 Juniper, 666, 721 828 THE THOMSONIAN Kercuma, Key lo the Arrangement of this Book, Knee JointS; debility of, Kine Pox, Lactuea eiongata, 662, Ladies' Slipper, 632, Language to designate Plants, Laurus Camphora, 636, Laurus, Cinnaraomum, Laxative Pills, Leaf, Leakage of a Joint, to stop, Leontodon Taraxacum, 664, Leonurus Cardiaca, Liberty Tea, 606, Lichen, Light, nature of, terms of, explained, sources of, properties of, Ligusticum Levisticum, 652, Lily while pond, Lime, 173, Limosis Cardialgica, Flatus, Liniments, 729, 730, Linneus, his Classification, Lithiasis, Liver Complaint, Lobelia Inflata, Lovage, 652, Love Apple, Lung Fever, Macrotys Serpenlaria, 643, Magnesia, 174, Merubium Vulgare, 622, Marsh Rosemary, 601, Matter, organized, passive and active, 170, Mayweed, Meadovs' Fern, 649, Measles, Medical Compounds, Mentha piperita, Mentha viridis, Merian, M. S., Miliaris, Miliary Fever, Millfoil, Milkweed, wandering, 618, Miscellaneous Recipes, Mixtures, freezing. Mother's Relief, Mucilagenous substaaces, 667, Mullein, Mumps, Mustard, 613 3 744 784 721 710 117 711 675 720 64 743 721 739 702 787 202 202 203 203 203 712 598 678 815 815 731 98 132 819 805 581 712 655 795 711 677 705 702 170 211 189 6S5 712 785 699 682 682 89 78& 786 652 619 73& m 723 688 801 684 Myrica Gale, 649, 712 Myristica Moschata, 674 Myrrh, 629, 709 Myrtus Pimenta, 674 Myrica Cerifcra, .597 Natural Physic, 716 Nepeta Cataria, 684 Nephritis, 805 Nerve Root, 632 Ointment, 640 Nervines, 710, 632 Neivous Irritability, 739 Nervous People, 776 Nettle Rash, 787 Neuralgia, 822 No. 1, Emetics, 581, 699 2, Stimulants, 590 700 3,, Astrinsent's, 597, 701 4, Bitters, 613, 704 5, Restorative Tonics, 024, 707 6, Antiseptics, 629, 709 Northern People, directions for, 752 Numerals, Latin, and Greek, 131 Nutmeg, 674 Nyrnphsea Odorata, 598, 701 Oak, black, 610, 703 Avhite, 611 Observations, useful, 760 Obstipatio, 816 Oil Nut, 658 Oils of Plants, 83 Ointments, 647, 712, 713, 732, 733 Oleum Ricini, 657, 719 Orders, artificial, 137, 143 natural. 144 of Linneus, 144 Orobanche Uniflora, 688 Osmunda Regalis, 669 Our Countrywomen, to, 86 Outlines of Linncus's System of Vcsretables, 93 Palsy, 812 Paralysis, 815 Parsley, 663, 721 Panax Quinqiwfolia, Peach, 624, 7ff^ 687 718 Pearlash, 67S Pennyroyal, 683 Peppermint, 682 Pepper, W. f. or Bird, 590, 700, 717 Red, 593 Black, 701, 596 Perspiration, 773 Physic, 720, 719 Phthisis Pulmonalis, 796 Piles, 733 Pinus, Canadensis, 599, 702 Piper Nigrum, 596, 701 Pipsissewa, 644, 711 Plants, food and seed of, 38 nourishment of, 41 MATERIA MEDICA. 829 Plants, language to designate, 117 Respiration, decomposition of, 46 Respiratory Aparatus, diseases seed of, 50 of. anatomy of, 51, M Restorative Compounds, form and structure of. 60 Rhamnus Catharticus, 659, essential oil of. S3 Rheumatic Drops, classification of, 90 Rheumatism, 731, location of. 118 Rhcumatismus, germination of, 121 Rhus Glabriun, propagation of, 121 Ringworm, increase of. 122 Ring, tight, to remove from the elementary organs of, 123 finger. calyx of. 123 Round leaved Dogwood, corol of, 124 Rubeola, stamen of. 125 Rules to be observed, pistil of, 125 Rumex, 648,. pericarp of. 125 Saccharine Urine, seed of, 126 Sage, 611, receptacle of. 12G St. Vitus's Dance. flowers of. 126 Saleratus, inflorescence of. 127 Salt, medical properties of, roots and herbage of, 127 Salt Rheum, 733, stems of, 128 Salva Officinalis. 611, leaves of, 129 Salves, 732, 734, 735, Plasters, 734, 735 Sanguinaria Canadensis, Pleurisy, 794 Sarsaparilla, Pleuritis, 794 Satureja Hortensis, Pneumonia, 795 "Scald-Head, Podagra, 808 Scarlatina, Poisons, 736 Scarlet Fever, 741, Poisoned Wounds, 792 Sea Lavender, Poisons, rules for avoiding. 149 Seed of plants, Poisons, to extract, 737, 702 Senna, American, Polygonum Punctatum, 689 Sesimum Orientale, 670, Polypus, 740 Shingles, Poplar, 615, 705 Silica, Population, white and black. 750 Sinapsis Nigra, Populus, 615, 705 Singultus, Potassae Carbonas Imptsrus, 678 Skeleton, Bicarbonas, 678 plate of front view. Poultices, 66S, 723, 725, 715 back view, Practitioners, to. 748 Skunk Cabbage, 633, Prickly Ash, 650 Sleeping, the young with the old Prickly Heat, 787 Small Pox, Princess Pine, 711, ^ Prolapsus Uteri, 644 Smart Weed, 738 Smellage, Prunus, Virginiana, 707, 626 Snake-head, Prominent Symptoms and Acci- Soda:, dents, 813 Solanum Dulcamara, 639, Psora, 788 Solanum Lycopersicum, Public Speakers, to, 749 Solidago Odora, Pulmonary Complaints, 727 Solids, conversion of to a gas- Pyrosis,, 815. Purging, 803 eous state, Quercus Rubra, 610, 703 Sore Eyes, Alba, 611 Sore Mouth, Quinsy, 742, 801 Nipples, 73S, Reader, to the, 4 Throat, Rubus Strigosus, 604, 702 Spearmint, Red Clover, 671 Spice Bitters, Red Raspberry, 604, 702 Spitting of Blood, Refrigeration, artificial. 198 Spotted Fever, Relax, 70% 726 Sprained Limb, 17 793 707 720 709 807 807 602 788 740 646 785 691 712 819 703 809 678 760 734 703 823 681 712 €83 733 785 785 601 38 656 724 787 176 684 817 218 228 230 711 , 747 780 689 652 613 677 711 655 685 196 735 738 739 742 682 706 799 791 747 830 THE THOMSONIAN Sprains, Squaw Root, Squaw Weed, Stamina and Fistula, Star Flower, Star Grass. Statice Limonium, 601, Steaming, Stimulants, 682. 590, Stranguary, 719, 721, Strontia, Substances, simple, Sumac, 602, Sweet Gale, Symphytum Officinalis, 623, Symptoms, Prominent, and Acci- dents, Syphilis, Syrups, 642, 651, 653, 662, 664, 665, 666. 707, 70S, Tanacetum Vulgare, Tansey, Tea, American, or Liberty, Teeth, 740' Tetter, Theory, Thomsonian, Thomsonian Theory, Thorax, view of by plate, Throat, diseases of, Tic Douloureux, To be remembered, Tomato, Tonics, simple, Tooth ache, Tooth-ache Bush, Tournefort, Tournequet, Trance, Treatment of the Surface, Trifolium Pratense, 671, Trunk, description of the, view of by plate, Typhus Icterodes, Gravior, Ulmus Fulva, 668, Unicorn, 620, Urine, suppression of, Urticaria, Valerian, Vapor, condensation of, Varicell/, Variola, Vaccine, Vegetable anatomy, 51, growth, &.C., skeleton. 779 Vegetables, Linneus' systens^, onl ;. 6SS lines of, 93, 132 607 Vegetables, 203 80 Venereal, 733, 821 607 Verbascum Thapsus, 688 620 Verbena Hastata, 680 702 Vermes, 807 736 Veronica Beccabunga, 739 700 Vervain, 680 818 Viscera, internal, 1st view, 234 172 2d do 236 680 3d do 238 702 4th do 240 649 5th do 242 705 6th do 244 Vitality, 23 813 Vocabulary, 150 821 Volatile Tincture, 731 Salts, 731 738 Vomiting and Purging, 803 690 Vomiting, spontaneous, 817 690 Wake Robin, 672 606 Water, 71, 170, 179 741 distilled. 183 780 rain. 185 13 ice and snow, 185 249 spring. 186 801 river. 187 822 stagnated. 188 694 Water Pepper, 689 655 Water in the Brain, 814 686 Brash, 815 740 White Swellings, 724 650 Whitlows, 724 107 Wild Strawberry, 660, 721 778 Lettuce, 662, 721 811 Turnip, 672 715 Camomile, 685 724 Witch Hazel, 603, 702 232 Woman's Friend, 707 248 Women, to our fair country, 86 790 Woody Nightshade, 639 791 AVorms, 807 723 Wormwood, 690 705 Wounds, 777 723 stitching of, 778 787 Xanthoxylum Fraxineum, 650, 712 632 Yarrow, 652, 712 198 Yeast, 667, 723 784 Yellow Fever, 790 780 Yttria, 178 784 Youth, advice to, 742 54 Zingiber Officinale, 594, 701 165 Zirconia, 1S7 147 NOTICE. The Anatomical Index not only refers to pages, but is also a complete and' useful Dictionary, to explain all Anatomical Technicalities to which a refev ence is made. See page 485, MATERIA MEDICA. 831 IMPORTANT N O T I C b: . The following objections to the different articles and compounds in this book, were made by Dr. Samuel Thomson, after the work was printed. And in justice to him, and out of respect to his opinion, we insert them here, that every one may know that his opinion is not changed in relation to cathartics, and that what is said upon that subject is done on our own responsibility, and for which Dr. Thomson is not to be held responsible. The following are the •objections, viz. All cathartic medicine, of every kind ; also, the compounding of the black salve, on page 734 (for which we have inserted a substitute on page 823); borax for sore mouth, page 738; maple charcoal to prevent mortification. page 727 ; a paper saturated with salt pelre, and burned, to relieve asthma, page 742; Peruvian bark to clean the teeth, page 740 ; poke root made into ointment for the piles, page 741 ; sulphate of zinc compounded in poultices for sj'philitic ulcers, page 733 ; burnt alum for dysentery, page 726 ; tobacco ointment for salt rheumj page 713 ; gin to quiet nervous irritability, page 711; emetic pills, page 700 ; asafetida for hysteria, page 634 ; blood root for emet- ic, page 634; black cohosh to cure rheumatism, and to regulate the monthly turns with females, page 643 ; and, page 695, the injection should be given before steaming. It is to be understood, that he objects to the use of those articles, in every form or shape whatever, except the enemas. JOHN THOMSON. CORRESPONDENCE. We subjoin the correspondence between his Honor the Mayor of the city of Albany, and the Rt. Hon. Horatio Gates of Montreal, Lower Canada, in re- lation to our visit to that Province in time of the Cholera in 1832, and our treatment of that disease while at the latter place. BOARD OF HEALTH, ) City of Albany, June 18th, 1832. \ Horatio Gates, Esq. — The bearer, Dr. John Thomson, of this city, is de- sirous of proceeding to Canada, in order to attend some cases of cholera now existing in your city. I beg leave to commend him to your favorable consi- deration, and ask the favor that you will give him anintroduction to your Board of health, and such other authorities in your city, as may be thou,<'ht advisable. Respectfully Yours, JOHN TOWNSEND, Mayor of Albany. Montreal, June 23, 18.32. Hon. John Tovvnsend — Sir: Yours by the hand of Dr. John Thomson, (by whom this goes) was duly received, and I have to inform you that he has been very industrious while here in searching out cases of the cholera, most of which, however, were of a bad type, and had been too long neglected : He has prescribed to a number free of expense such medicines as he brought with him, which I understand he makes, and from the testimony of two or three individuals of respectable standing who accompanied Dr. Thompson, and saw him administer his medicine, together with my own personal obser- vation, having conversed with two who are convalescent, and who described the relief obtained from Dr. Thomson's prescriptions as almost immediate and complete. I cannot but think good may result by his practice wherever that terrible disease, the Cholera, prevails ; yet as I have no knowledge of the science of medicine, my opinion must be taken for what it is worth. Yours, HORATIO GATES. ^ OPINIONS Of Medical Men and of tlie Press in relulion to this ¥ork, AND THE THOMSONIAN SYSTEM OF PRACTICE GENERALLY. Extract of a letter from Professor Bankfton, Dean of the Southern Medical College, bearing date FoKSYTH, Ga,., August 14, 1841. Dear Sir : — Yours of the 2nd has duly arrived and is now before me ; as also 632 pages of your new work, with plates, &c. ; all you mention. It affords me much pleasure to see issuing from the press, a work under Doctor Thomson's sanction, of the appearance and character of the Thomso- nian Materia Medica. Such a work has long been wanted, and the Thomso- nian system has suffered much for the want of such an one. Its style is real- ly genteel — ^such as the worth of the cause demands. The matter I consider well arranged, and is calculated to do credit to the writer and compiler. The theory I conceive to be good, and the articles of medicine, so far as I have seen, will meet the views of the large body of Thomsonians, or Eotanics. if you please. The plates, both anatomical and botanical, are neatly executed, and cannot be complained of by any. In a word, I entertain no doubt but more real benefit will result from it, than have from all other botanic works combined. In the first place, its ap- pearance will command the attention of the first minds — sufficient, no doubt, to secure it a perusal — and its reasoning is such as to convince. I think it might profitably be extended oven to one thousand pages, in giving the parti- cular treatment of important diseases. On the subject of evacuants you carry the thing as far as necessary, and none too far. Pliysiology sustains about your position on that subject ; and it will, I doubt not, remove the cause of that hair-breadth splitting, which has seemed to give you so much trouble at the North. As for active cathartics I have no use, but to excite some action upon the bowels is as necessary as up- on the skin in many diseases ; and I have no doubt is oftener called for in this climate than in yours. To attempt to criticise I think would be rather a useless business, for what I might find fault with, would no doubt, please many others. I conceive the arrangement and style of the work as very good, and will give general satisfaction ; it carries upon its face the evidence of no small share of labor in so short a time. Yours, L. BANKSTOJf. To Doctor John Thomson, Albany. MATERIA MEDICA. 833 From the Pougkkeepsie Thomsonian, edited by Doctor Thomas Lapham. THE NEW BOOK AT HAND. We are informed that Doct. Thomson's new work is now ready for bindin;^* It contains upwards of 800 pages, and 120 plates and cuts, wliich serve to il- lustrate in a familiar manner the structure of the human bodj', and a variety of medicinal plants, See. The vegetable remedies are represented by colored engravings, which are neatly executed. Many have been anxious to have this work completed, and at the same lime some have almost dreaded its appearance, lest it should cause disturb- ance in the Thomsonian ranks. But we are happy to inform our readers that this publication will probably do more towards harm.onizing the conflicting opinions which have prevailed for some time past, than all other things coni- bined. We do not wish to be understood to say that Doctor Thomson's book is perfectly free from errors ; but we do believe that it will meet the approba- tion of Thomsonians generally in this state, and in the southern and western slates. Both parties will probably rally under the influence of this produc- tion, and again acknowledge Doctor Thomson as their leader and benefactor. We cordiaiiy unite with Professor Bankston in the opinion that this book will take the lead of all botanical works, and do more good than all of them put together, in doing away with that hair-breadth splitting which has caused so much trouble at the North. V/e presume that Doctor Thom- son will never have occasion to regret the time, money and labor spent in getting up this new publication. How could the old gentleman spend the evening of his life better, or more satisfactory to himself and the public, than by recording in a plain and familiar manner his experience in the art of heal- ing for half a century ? The time will soon arrive v/hen Doctor Thomson's labors will be appreciated by every son and daughter of America, and all, without a dissenting voice, will say " Well done, thou good and faithful ser- vant," &c. NOTE BY THE EDITOR OF THIS WORK. We are under a compliment to Dr. A. Curtiss, Editor of the Botanico Medi- cal Recorder, of Cincinnatti, Ohio, for a very flattering notice of this work, embracing upwards of two columns of his valuable and extensively useful paper. The article has been mislaid, which is our apology for its non-appear- ance at this time and place. Also to several other periodicals are we under a like indebtedness, among which are the Southern Botanical Medical Journal) published by the Trustees of the Medical College, Forsyth, Ga., Professor Lee, Editor; the Botanic Sentinel, Philadelphia, Penn.j the Thomsonian Manual, Boston, Mass. ; and the editors and proprietors of the other nume- rous daily and weekly publications who have had a fatherly care over, and have noticed and encouraged us, b)' their favorable opinion as we have pro- gressed, has had its favorable influence, for which we return our grateful ac' knowledgements. Qcj- And especially do we render our acknowledgements to tlie veyy tal- EWTED editors and proprietorx of the Boston Tkue Thomsonian ; also, to the learned "Professor" ! ! of the tc? Boston DispensarYj/31 Lecturer on Physi- ology, the Practice of Medicine, etc., etc., who have rendered signal service by their frequent notice of us, our venerable Parent and our Book as it has progressed, which has been peculiarly happy in its influence, in bringing it and us into notice so extensively throughout the United States. 83i THE TIIOMSONIAN From the Boston Thomsonian Manual of October \st, 1840. It is with much pleasure that we lay before our readers tlie following letter from Benjamin Wateiuiouse. m. d., ll. d., Fellow of the American Academy af Arts and Sciences ; of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and of Bath and Manchester, En;^land ; Fellow of the Medical Society, London, of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Belles Lettres, Inscriptions, and Com- merce, Marseilles, and of the National Medical School of France, and late Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the University of Cam- bridge, Mass. ; which last high and responsible station he held for about THIRTY YEARS. We give his titles, because many of the learned faculty when told of his favorable viev.s of Thomsonism, pretend that they Lave never heard of the man, and do not believe what is asserted. Dr. Waterhouse has been acquainted with the Thomsonian System for many years, and has given repeated testimonials in its favor. That many other eminent men and phy- sicians would do likewise, had they the same moral courage, we do not doubt. Cambridge, Sept 24. 1S40. Sir — To the inquiries respecting the System, or rather the Theory and prac- tice of your Father, I reply, that had not its principles been founded in Truth and Nature, it could not have maintained its reputation thus far, but would long since have been swept into non-entity, and been numbered among those things which rise to-day, and are vanished to-morrow. Yet amidst opposition and even persecution. Dr. Samuel Thomson has the solid satisfaction of know- ing that time has increased its reputation, and imparted firmness to a prac- tice hitherto untried among us. Thomson does not attempt to magnify himself bj' the arts of secrecy ; but performs his curative process openly, and fairly appeals to his patient's feel- ings, and the judgment of his friends, to pronounce on the sick man's altera- tion for the better. The wonder with me has been that so many have been effectually relieved, with so little suffering. The oldest practitioners, and physicians of the most extensive business, are the best judges of its success : For my part I know no victims to the process under consideration, when it has been judiciously and fairly conducied ; and I confess that I have been rather surprised that so many have been relieved, who have long suffered under the hands of others. As far as my knowledge extends, I consider Dr. Thomson well acquainted with chronic disorders generally ; and without the aid of scholastic instruc- tion, he has made his M'ay, by the force of his own genius, and peculiar turn for the healing art, to the respectable stand he now occupies in the medical world; and without running into any invidious comparison between him and others, who are looking at the same object and traveling the same way, I pro- nounce him a public benefactor. I remain with sentiments of respect and esteem, vour steady^ friend, BENJAMIN AVATERHOUSE. To Dr. John Thomson, Albany, N. Y. Extract of a Letter dated Columbus Ohio, Dec. 31, 1832. Dear Sir — Dr. Piatt being in the office. I saw a letter he had written. Ob- serving a vacant page, I thought I would place my pen to paper — for by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. I have been more than forty years ensaged in the regular practice of medi- cine. I was a surgeon during the last war in the army of the United States. I was by an election surgeon (extraordinary) to the Petcrsburgh Volunteers and Major Stoddard's two companies of Artillery. I was one of the founders of the Western Medical Society of Pennsylvania, and also am a member of the Medical Society of the State of Ohio. My practice has been extensive — my experience and opportunity for obser- vation has seldom been exceeded : but I venture to pledge myself upon all I hold sacred in the profussion, that in my estimation the discoveries made by your honored father, have a decided preference and stand unrivalled by all that bears the stamp of ancient or modern skill. The number of literary friends are continually on the increase. T. HERSEY. To Doctor JoH.N Thomson, Albany. University of Connecticut Libraries