ATROPA BELLADONNA. 81 
juice through linen, and immediately spread it, about as thick 
as the back of a knife, on flat porcelain plates, and expose it to 
a draught of dry air, and the moisture will evaporate in a few 
hours. We stir it and spread it out again with the spatula, so. 
that it may harden uniformly, until dry enough to be pul- 
verized. The powder is to be kept in a warmed and well- 
stopped bottle. 
“To prepare from this the prophylactic remedy, we dissolve 
a grain of this powder in 100 drops of common distilled water, 
by rubbing it up in a small mortar; we pour the thick solution 
into a one-ounce bottle, and rinse the mortar and the pestle 
with 300 drops of diluted alcohol (five parts of water to one of 
alcohol), and add this to the solution, and render the union 
perfect by diligently shaking the liquid. We label the bottle 
Strong Solution of Belladonna. One drop of this is intimately 
mixed with 200 drops of the diluted alcohol, by shaking it for a 
minute, and marked Weak Solution of Belladonna ; and this is 
our prophylactic remedy for scarlet fever, each drop contain- 
ing the 24,000,000th part of a grain of the dry Belladonna 
juice, | 
“ Of this weak solution we give, to prevent liability to infec- 
tion, to an infant, one drop; to a child of a year old, two drops; 
two years old, three; three years old, four; to a child of four 
years old, according to the strength of his constitution, from 
five to six; at five years, six to seven; at six years, from seven 
to eight; at seven years, from nine to ten; eight years, from 
eleven to thirteen; nine years, from fourteen to sixteen; and 
with each successive year up to the twentieth, two additional 
drops; from twenty to thirty, not above forty drops, a dose 
well stirred in any kind of drink, as 
every seventy-two hours, 
and for four or five weeks after- 
long as the epidemic lasts, 
wards. 
“Should the epidemic be very violent, it would be safer, if ; 
the children could bear it, to give the second dose twenty-four 
hours after the first; the third, thirty-six hours after the 
