101 [—EMM, 
eral system. Much less forward should we be to 
admit that they do this, even when they effect it, 
by any specific agency. Our reluctance to admit 
the reality of such powers in material substances, 
is justified by the experience of any one whose op- 
portunities of practice with them, have been fre- 
quent, with aim at their usually accredited power, 
in cases at all difficult, perplexing or obdurate. It 
requires but an ordinary share of observation to de- 
tect the fallacy of any remediate expectation found- 
ed onan idea of specific agency or determination of 
effect on the uterus. At least this remark may very 
safely be extended to nine tenths of the substances 
and agents employed as emmenagogues. The ac- 
tion of even the remaining tenth part, is not so 
strikingly and unequivocally marked by such un- 
erring and peculiar action, as to demand for 
them the epithet of specific agents. I am borne out 
in these observations by the majority of practition- 
ers of ten years standing. My own conviction of 
their truth, together with my belief in the fruitfal 
production of uterine derangements by pure moral 
causes more than physical, has fixed my belief in 
the irrationality of retaining as a separate class of 
remedies, numerous substances. which, if they act 
as the name of the class requires they should,—do 
so. by collateral and devious influences, from 
which, as a seat of action, the uterus is, in as many 
instances remote, as adjacent or contiguous. The 
class under notice has, for these reasons, always 
appeared to me untenable, and egregiously at va- 
riance with any of that persistency or certainty of 
action in its subjects, called for by its name and 
the assumed principle of foundation. It is no new 
observation, that under the head of general stimu- 
Jants or tonics, and cathartics affecting the pelvic 
portion of the bowels, all emmenagogues may be 
