34 Orobanche Virginiana. 
“As early as 1785, at which time I was a student of medicine, I 
was informed, by the people inhabiting the western parts of Penn- 
rated these fibres in an unbroken state which are generally called the roots of the 
cancer. Upon this account, I think, in an ulcerated cancer it is to be preferred to the 
knife. It has no action upon the sound skin. This Dr. Hall proved by confining a 
small quantity of it upon his arm for many hours. In those cases where Dr, Martin 
used it to extract cancerous or schirrous tumours that were not ulcerated, I have rea- 
son to believe that he always broke the skin with Spanish flies. : 
‘6 2, The arsenic used by the doctor was the pure white arsenic. I should suppose 
from the examination I made of the powder with the eye, that the proportion of ar- 
senic to the vegetable powder, could not be more than one-fortieth part of the whole com- 
pound. I have reason to think that the doctor employed different vegetable substances 
at different times. The vegetable matter with which the arsenic was combined in the 
powder which I used in my experiments, was probably nothing more than the powder 
of the root and berries of the solanum lethale, or deadly nightshade. As the principal, 
and perhaps the only design of the vegetable addition was to blunt the activity of the 
arsenic, I should suppose that the same proportion of common wheat flour as the doctor 
used of his caustic vegetables, would answer nearly the same purpose. In those cases 
where the doctor applied a feather dipped in a liquid to the sore of his patient, I have 
no doubt but his phial contained nothing but a weak solution of arsenic in water. This 
is no new method of applying arsenic to foul ulcers. Dr. Way of Wilmington, has 
spoken in the highest terms to me of a wash for foulnesses on the skin, as well as old 
ulcers, prepared by boiling an ounce of white arsenic in two quarts of water to three 
pints, and applying it once or twice a day. 
©S. I mentioned formerly that Dr. Martin was often unsuccessful in the application 
ef his powder. This was occasioned by his using it indiscriminately in all cases. In 
“ 
