134 
It sometimes occurs, that in the urgent necessity for alleviating 
pain, man is obliged to use whatever remedy he imagines eflica- 
cious; and without reflecting on the ill consequences that may en- 
sue, he affords to the scientific observer considerable li ght for pur- 
suing his investigations with greater certainty and promptitude. | 
_ Sach has been the case with the first trials of this new re- 
medy of the Yallhoy ; because the Faculty in Huanuco, finding 
that none of the remedies in medical use were adequate to arrest 
the fatal progress of an epidemical dysentery which prevailed in 
that city in the years 1788 and 1789, prescribed clysters of the 
decoction. of barks of the root.of the Yalthoy. They were in- 
duced to do this by observin g that the natives already used the 
bark with success for evacuating the intestines: when affected 
with irritating diarrheeas. Observing the good effects resulting 
from these clysters, the Faculty made a further step, and admi- 
nistered internally the infusion ofa : spall quanti of the barks 
made in hot water. 
_ By these aids a considerable ameBoastione eranstivereud: totake 
place among the sick in a few days; and by frequent use the Phy- 
- Sicians succeeded in radically curing the epidemic, to their own 
great satisfaction, and to the admiration of all persons. 
Since that period the Physicians in Peru have ritedicml 
the bark of the root Yallhoy to that of the Simarouba or 
Quassia of Linneus, as a cure for dysenteries ; and some of: 
them, reasoning solely from the effects produced by these barks, 
give them the ‘at oper name of Simarouba Peruviana, which 
ought not to be adopted in medical use; because, though they 
agree in their effects, yet being plants of distinct asats both 
‘naturally and artificially, the common term would in time occa- 
sion much doubt and confusion in materia medica; wherefore 
the terms Monnina polystachya and Yallhoy should always be 
employed to designate the genuine antindyncntesic: plant of Peru. 
