30. RHUS RADICANS. 
The first symptom of amendment was an un- 
pleasant feeling of prickling or twitching in the 
paralytic limbs. Dr. Duncan, author of the 
Edinburgh Dispensatory, states, that he had 
given it in larger doses without experiencing the 
same success, although he thinks it not inactive 
as a medicine. 
My own opinion is, that the plant under 
consideration is too uncertain and hazardous to 
be employed in medicine, or kept in apothecaries’ 
shops. It is true, that not more than one person ~ 
in ten is probably susceptible of poison from it. 
Yet, even this chance, small as it is, should deter 
us from employing it. In persons not constitu- 
tionally susceptible of the eruptive disease, it is 
probably an inert medicine, since we find that 
Du Fresnoy’s patients sometimes carried the 
dose as high as an ounce of the extract, three 
times a day, without perceiving any effect from it. 
It is true that the external application of the 
Rhus radicans and Rhus vernix would, in certain 
cases, afford a more violent external stimulus, 
than any medicinal substance with which we are 
acquainted. But since it is neither certain in its 
effeet, nor manageable in its extent, the prospect 
of benefit, even in diseases like palsy and mania, 
is not sufficient to justify the risk of great evil. 
