RANUNCULUS. XI7 



antidotes. Sulphur and Staphysagria made the afFection worse. 

 Drs. Schweikert and Hauboldt, guided by these facts, have 

 healed herpes on the fingers and in the palm of the hand, by 

 giving the E. bulbosus internally, and causing at the same time 

 the herpes to be washed externally with a drop of the tincture 

 diluted in water. 



Violent smarting in the eyes, nose, and fauces, with great 

 lachrymation and discharge of mucus from the nose (the fauces 

 being extremely painful), came on from preparing the juice, the 

 acrid vapour touching the parts ; but these are not merely local 

 symptoms, all of them appear from the internal use of the juice, 

 after it had been so much diluted with water that the acridity 

 of the juice could neither be perceived by the taste nor 

 by the tact externally, hence the cause was purely dynamic; 

 even many of those symptoms which are considered as sympa- 

 thetic, for instance, the symptoms of the brain, temperament, 

 eyes, chest, where no local contact had taken place, came on 

 much sooner than the symptoms of the pharynx, the oesophagus, 

 and stomach, organs which were immediately in apposition 

 with the drug. Except the blisters and redness produced by 



many locally -applied drugs (for instance, cantharides, mezereum, 



etc.), it may be said, perhaps, that there exists no local symptom 



of any drug which cannot be realized by its internal use, 



although much more slowly ; whereas it is very often the case 



that drugs which are applied locally, cause a number of internal 



and external phenomena in distant organs and parts of the 

 body. 



According to Krapf, Pleuk, and Orfila, the deleterious action 

 (hence also the curative action) of R. bulbosus depends upon 

 local inflammation, or sympathetic affection of the nervous sys- 

 tem (Stapf, Add. to Mat. Med. Pur.) 



Violent epilepsy has been recorded as having been induced 

 by this plant, in paroxysms, in a student; also in a sailor, who 



was first seized with headache from inhaling the smoke of the 



plant, which was burnt in a censer with other herbs; after- 



M ^ 



