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syphilitic affections, enlargement of glands, especially those of a scrofulous nature, 
as a sedative in mania, chorea, epilepsy, laryngismus stridulus, pertussis, and various 
forms of nervous diseases. 
Like all other drugs used by the dominant school of medicine then and now, 
many physicians failed to get any effect whatsoever from this drug in the diseases 
specified by Stérck and others; so frequent were the failures that most careful 
and protracted experiments in gathering, curing, preserving, and preparing the 
drug were resorted to, analyses were made, essays written, and finally serious 
doubts expressed as to Baron Stérck’s cases;* without once a thought that it 
might be adaptability to his cases, and not pharmaceutical preparation that caused 
the drug to cure. It is well known to us as homceopathists that Baron Stérck had 
a “peculiar notion” as to the adaptability of drugs to diseased conditions, a notion 
very like the law that guides us to-day. I can personally testify to the cure of 
one well-marked case of mammary scirrhus, by Conium. The case is as follows : 
Mrs, B complained to me of having experienced, for some months past, sharp 
stitching pains in the left mamma, extending thence in all directions, but especially 
through to the shoulder-blade, and upward and outward into the axilla; these 
stitches would awaken her at night, causing her sleep to be interfered with seri- 
ously. On examining the breast I found the nipple retracted and surrounded by 
a hard nodular lump, just movable, and about the area ofa silver dollar. Her 
mother died of ‘a cancer of the breast” several years before. I prescribed 
Conium in a potency, one dose per diem. Within six weeks the subjective symp- 
toms entirely passed away, four months after, the “tumor” was much softer and 
the nipple less cupped. The remedy was then stopped, and upon examining her 
to-day (nearly four years after the first dose), 1 find no vestige of the growth 
whatever, the mamma appearing entirely normal. 
Concerning the root of this virulent plant, Lepage { corroborates the asser- 
tion of Orfila, that the amount of alkaloid therein is very small; this accounts for 
the following experiences : Ray relates § that Mr. Petiver ate half an ounce, and 
Mr. Healy four ounces without experiencing any remarkable effect. Curtis says: || 
“Mr, Alicorn assures me that he has tried this (eating the roots) in every season 
of the year, and in most parts 0 ‘our island, without feeling any material difference 
and Mr. T. Lane informs me that he also, cautiously, made some experiments of 
the like kind, without any inconvenience; after many successive trials, he had some 
of the larger roots boiled, and found them as agreeable eating at dinner with meat 
as carrots, which they somewhat resembled;” Mr. Steven, a Russian botanist, 
states that the Russian peasants eat it with impunity, and concludes that the colder 
the climate the les 
poisonous is the root, Pliny says: §[ “as for the stems and 
% Woodville says (Med. Bot. i, 108): - + + + 
Nay, it never succeeded so well as when under his own direction 
or confined to the neighborhood in which he resided, and to the practice of those physicians with whom he lived in habits 
dship. [A base imputation, unworthy of the author—c. F.M.] The general inefficiency of Hem- 
a il ray country, induced physicians at first to suppose that this plant, in the environs of Vienna and 
Berlin, differed widely from ous, and this being so stated to Dr. Storck he sent a quantity of the extract, _— by 
himself, to London, but this proved equally unsuccessful, and to differ in no respect from the — extract. a 
+ Note also Baron Storck’s use of Stramonium, as cited under that drug. t Four. Phar. et Chim., 1885, 10. 
* * © * * t a 
4 Phil. Trans., xix, 634- Hor. Lendinentis. —— 
