THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



Some of you will be surprised to hear 

 that the Indians suffer very much from 

 their teeth, and that my informant has 

 practiced a great deal of dentistry dur- 

 ing his residence with them. 



Juniper is used in tnree forms. The 

 berries are stewed and eaten as a diuretic. 

 The leaves are dried and dusted over in- 

 dolent sores, healing them with wonder- 

 ful rapidity, and the root infused is 

 administered in cases of gravel. Though 

 Bright's disease is rare, gravel is very 

 common, and most old men die of it. 

 Hydrangea is used with juniper and 

 with great success. 



Spearmint, sarsaparilla and dandelion 

 are taken for the same complaints as we 

 ourselves take them. 



Hemlock spruce is much thought of. 

 The inner bark of the tree, freshly 

 peeled, is mixed with equal parts of pop- 

 lar and black birch to make a decoction. 

 In the process of boiling an oil is taken 

 from the surface. This oil is mixed in 

 the proportion of two drams to a quart 

 of water, which quantity is drunk in the 

 course of two or three days as an abor- 

 tive medicine. 



the Indian's nursery powder. 



We must no longer pride ourselves on 

 the nursery toilette powders which we 

 present to our customers in such a vari- 

 ety of charming packages. To the In- 

 dian, whose untutored mind, as Pope 

 says, sees God in the clouds and hears 

 Him in the wind, must we go for the 

 most agreeable and most absorbent arti- 

 cle of the kind yet introduced, a sample 

 of which I have with me. It is nothing 

 but the rotten interior of the hemlock 

 spruce, lacking, perhaps, the extreme 

 fineness which could only be obtained by 

 modern methods and machinery. 



We now come to willow bark, which 



is used as a hemostatic in the form of 

 infusion. It is the belief of the Indian 

 that bleeding should be arrested at once. 

 He has an awful fear of death from loss 

 of blood, and an Indian has been seen 

 to faint whilst watching another having 

 his finger amputated. 



Regarding salicin, " the important 

 constituent of willow bark," the Cree is 

 incredulous as to its source. He cannot 

 understand how a white powder can be 

 made from a bark, and it is entirely 

 without faith that he is occasionally in- 

 duced to take this remedy or the salicyl- 

 ates for rheumatism. 



STRONG REMEDIES FOR FEVER. 



The belief that fever can only be cured 

 by vomiting it up has a strong hold on 

 the Cree mind, and he, therefore, swal- 

 lows the strongest remedies by taking 

 what we would consider more than a 

 maximum dose of veratrum viride, or 

 the green hellebore of the Pharmaco- 

 poeia ; but this powerful drug has an- 

 other use, the story of which will, to 

 say the least, be news to some of the 

 gentlemen present. The rootlets and 

 the rhizome are powdered between two 

 stones, and as such is taken as a snuff to 

 reduce hernia. The modus operandi is 

 thus : The patient, naked, of course, is 

 elevated to a horizontal position. He 

 then takes a good pinch of the snuff and 

 during the violent sneezing which fol- 

 lows, a companion standing ready at the 

 side plunges back the rupture with his 

 fist, and if it is not a case of strangula- 

 tion the treatment is sufficient. To undo 

 matters, so to speak, the patient is ad- 

 vised to eat all the pork he can. Mr. 

 Strath is of the opinion that hernia is 

 common with the tribe in consequence of 

 the abundance of grease consumed by 



