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is more materially affected, and paralysis of the lacteal fyftem is induced; whence a total abhorrence from fleshfood and general emaciation. In others the lymphatic fyftem is affected with paralyfis, and dropfy is the confequence. More frequently the fecretory veffels of the liver become first paralytic, and a torpor with confequent gall-stones or schirrus of this vifcus is induced with concomitant jaundice; otherwise it becomes inflamed in confequence of previous torpor, and this inflammation is frequently transferred to a more fenfible part, which is affociated with it, and produces the rofy eruption of the face, or fome other eruption on the head, or arms, or legs. In fome enebriates the torpor of the liver produces pain without fchirrus, gall-ftones, or eruption, and in these epilepfy or infanity are often the consequence. All which will be more fully explained in Part IV. of this work.

REMEDIES.

The fame effects arife from an imprudent ufe of TONIC We have a very remarkable instance of this in the hiftory of the Portland Powder, called fo from its having cured, of an hereditary and inveterate gout, one of the dukes of that name. It confifts of equal parts of the following herbs, viz.

Vide Law III. On the Accumulation of Irritability.
3 C

Take

Take the roots of round BIRTHWORT,

and GENTIAN,

The tops & leaves of fmall GERMANDER,

leffer CENTAURY,

and ground PINE. Equal parts. Powder

them.

A dram of this powder was ordered to be taken, in fome convenient liquid, in a morning, fafting, the patient tasting nothing for an hour and an half after it; it must be used in this dofe for three months without the least interruption. Forty-five grains are to be taken daily in the fame manner for the fucceeding three months: half a dram every day for the next fix months: and half a dram every other day during the fecond year.

From very ancient times down to the prefent, aromatic bitters have been recommended and employed for the gout; and as this remedy, on its first coming into use in England, seems to have been of service, and to have cured several, it might have been expected, had not its confequences been often found hurtful, that the use of it would have continued, and this disease would have ceafed to be one of the opprobria medicorum. We find, however, that while at one period a courfe of bitters, prolonged above a year, has been in fashion in this dif

ease,

cafe, at another it seems to have been entirely neglected; and this I can impute only to its being attended often with confequences more ferious than the gout itself. That the latter was the cafe, we may prefume from the accounts of the ancients, who, though they recommend the remedy in certain conftitutions as highly beneficial, allow that in other cafes it has been as highly pernicious.

In nine inftances, fays Dr. CULLEN, I had occafion to know, or to be exactly informed, of the fate of perfons who had taken the Portland Powder for the time and in the quantities prescribed. These perfons had been liable for fome years before to have fits of a regular or very painful inflammatory gout; but after they had taken the medicine for some time, they were quite free from any fit of inflammatory gout; and particularly, when they had completed the course prescribed, had never a regular fit, or any inflammation of the extremities, for the reft of their life. In no inftance, however, was the health of these persons tolerably entire. Soon after finishing the course of their medicine, they become valetudinary in different fhapes; and particularly were much affected with dyfpeptic, and what are called nervous complaints. In those whom I knew, 3 C 2

fome

fome hydropic symptoms appeared, which gradually increafing in the form of an afcites or hydrothorax, especially the latter joined with anafarca, in less than two, or at most three years, proved fatal. Thefe accidents happening to perfons of some rank, became very generally known in this country, and has prevented all fuch experiments fince.

ANIMAL and VEGETABLE POISONS exhauft in like manner, but with more expedition, the irritable principle

in the fibre.

I procured, fays FONTANA, fifty of the strongest and largest frogs I could meet with. I preferred thefe animals because they are livelier than others; because they die with greater difficulty; and laftly, because their mufcles contract even feveral days after they are dead. I had each of them bit by a viper, fome in the thigh, others in the legs, back, head, &c. Some of them died in less than half an hour, others in an hour, and others again in two and three hours. There were likewife others among them that fell into a languishing state, their hind legs that had been bitten continuing very weak and paralytic. In fome of them I contented myfelf with introducing cautiously into a wound, made with a lancet at the very inftant, a drop of venom.

These

These last lived longer than those I had had bit; neither of them however efcaped. A fhort time after these animals had either been bit, or wounded and venomed, the lofs of their muscular force was very evident. When they were set at liberty, they no longer leaped, but dragged their legs and bodies along with great difficulty, and could scarcely withdraw their thighs when violently irritated by degrees they became motionless, and paralytic in every part of the body, and, after continuing a very fhort time in this state, died.

I now opened the abdomen, and ftimulated the nerves that pass through it in their way from the vertebræ to the thighs. I employed the strongest corrofives, but could excite no motion or tremulus in the lower extremities. I pricked the muscles with as little effect, and thrust a long pin into the spinal marrow, without producing any motion or trembling either of the mufcles or limbs. In none of these parts was there a veftige of fenfibility or irritability. The nerves were no longer the instrument of motion. The muscles no longer contracted, or were fenfible to ftimuli. The heart alone, in a few of them, continued to move languidly, and its auricles were filled and blackened by the blood which it seemed incapable of

dispelling.

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