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Show 5O4 FOXGLOVE, FOXGLOVE. Fromthis recommendation I have known Miss C 92 Coach. maker’s daughter, and others, in consumptions, sdllcak the fresh in the cultivation and application of chemical science, we are plant and force out the juice, and take the enormous dose here indebted for a novel class of remedies, which bids fair to remove recommended, three spoonsful (dessert-spoonsful), four times a day, and with manifest advantage. This remedy is found advantageously employedin the follow. ing diseases : 1. In inflammatory diseases. 59 have prematurely laid aside. To your indefatigable perseverance or alleviate some of the mostdistressing complaints incident to humanity. ‘To the disease under consideration you have particularly turned your attention, and sought for assistance, not only from pneumatic chemistry, but from every quarter which held forth the prospect of aid. It is therefore with peculiar The pulse is sometimes remarkably diminished bytheuse of pleasure that, complying with your request, I now communicate digitalis, and sometimes as remarkably resisting to the powersof to you two cases of phthisis, in which the digitalis purpurea of this remedy. We haveseen the pulse sink downina patient at Linneus has been employed with permanent success. Though Guy’ s Hospital to thirteen beats in a minute, and in other in- the exhibition of digitalis in consumption be uot absolutely new, stances as much as three ounces of the tincture has been taken yet I trust the mode in which I have administered it has a claim to that appellation ; and the facts brought forward prove, what assuredly is of vast importance, that by the use of this medicine the pulse may be lowered to forty strokes in a minute, without any previous sickness, and the depression continued for weeks together with the happiest consequences. without the smallest alteration in the pulse. Insevere colds, and inflammations of the lungs, we have orderedthe digitalis instead of bleeding: also in measles. Considering that scarlet fever is a mixture of high inflammation and putrid diathesis, the one running into the other, this remedy was tried by us in large doses, as twenty drops ofthe tincture of digitalis with ten drops As every physician is supposed maturely to weigh his motives of antimonial wine, in children of twelve years of age and under; for the administration of any medicine, and to form some theory and in a large experience in the St. James’s charity school, and in private practice, we have had abundant reason to approve of this discovery, whereby even in the most desperate cases none have diec 1 An account of these cures, with some experiments of its operation at least, and probable effects, it may not be un- made with the foxglove by two of our pupils, was given to the Bolt Court Medical Society, and maybeseenin their Memoirs. 2. In active hemorrhages, and in phthisis. lere the foxglove does essential advantage ; it lowers the pulse logists, among whom John Hunterstands foremost, that pus is necessary in this place briefly to state my views in prescribing this plant in cases so apparently desperate. It has been lately maintained by the most celebrated physio- té as phthisis pulmonalis, and Sir, In a disease so generally fatal for which, though frequently sought for, no certain remedy has a secreted fluid, the consequence of certain diseased motions of the extremities of the blood-vessels 3 it has been likewise ascertained, that hectic fever arises only from the matter of an open ulcer; that ‘vhat is termed Jaudable pus, when secluded from the air, is neither capable of creating fever, nor, except byits gravity, can it irritate the parts on whichitrests. Whhen pus, however, is exposed to atmospheric air, it rapidly attracts oxygen, an acid of a peculiar kind is generated, and hectic fever, the ef. fect of the absorption of aérated matter, is produced. Now as an ulcer of the lungs is perpetually exposed to a stream ofair, and of course an ichorous poison continually forming by the union of oxygen with secreted matter, an important curative without at the same time diminishing the strength, and should be given in twenty drops of the tincture four times a day. 1 Letter to Dr. Beddoes, containing Observations on the Use of Digitalis in Pulmonary Consumption, with two Cases in which at proved permanently successful. By Natuan Drake, M.D, Memberof the Royal Medicinal Society of Edinburgh. hitherto been discovered, it seems the duty of every intelligent process would seem to arise from promoting absorption so ras physician to pursue, if pos sible, an original plan, to ascertain the effects of new mediciines, or to re-apply those which, though pidly from the surface of the diseased parts, that the pus shall possessing strong powers, caprice, ignorance and aj prehension tion with oxygen prevented. be taken up as soon as secreted, and consequently its combina. If at the same time the medicine 2e2 |