NAR. | - 186 
advantages, and to be on your guard against all the 
‘Inconveniences, which its multifarious subjects 
present. The primary stimulant operation does ap- 
pear. from its transitory effect. to be often really 
trifling: while the depression ensuing immediately 
after. being excessive, many have denied altogeth- 
er, a stimulant effect to the substances thus acting ; 
and have called them direct sedatives. Hence you 
will find that Cullen speaks of the subjects of this 
class, as sedatives. refering the incitant power — 
which he could not but perceive betonged to their 
first impulse, to the vis medicatria nature, which 
makes an effort to rid the vital powers of the intrud- 
ing agent threatening to suspend or destroy them. 
The celerity of accession of the secondary effect, 
Which we designate in common parle by the word 
narcotic, seemed to him to give much strength to 
the idea of immediate sedative action—an action 
he considered as the sole one produced by the tribe 
of agents now refered to a distinct class called 
narcotic, but which he designated as the first sec- 
tion of his class Sedantia, embraceing such 
sedatives as he maintained to act ‘* more immedi- 
ately on the nervous system” while the second 
section ‘ Refrigerants,’ he conceived to have an_ 
effect “ more immediately on the sanguiferous sys- 
tem.” His theory of the operation of his first 
section, which he also called soporifics and hyp- 
notics, is, that as all sense and motion are derived ~ 
from the brain; and that as these medicines die 
minish motion and power not only in parts to — 
which they are directly applied, and which are 
remote from the brain, but also produce a similar 
diminution of sense and motion when applied to- 
parts having no connexion with the rain— 
that they must do this by acting upon some matt 
