DIGITALIS PURPUREA. 253 
tinue to act thus, homeopathy, according to its doctrine of 
analogies, applies it where alone it can be useful, an immense 
advantage over the ordinary method. 
« A small part of a drop of the quintillionth or rather the 
decillionth dilution will often be found even too strong for 
homeopathic uses (Mat. Med. Pura). 
“The purple Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) causes the most 
excessive disgust at food. During its continued use, therefore, 
ravenous hunger not unfrequently ensues. It causes a kind of 
mental derangement, which is not easily recognisable, as it 
only shows itself in unmeaning words, refractory disposition, 
obstinacy, canning, disobedience, inclination to run away, etc., 
which its continued use frequently presents. Now, as in addi- 
tion to these, it produces in its direct action, violent headaches, 
giddiness, pain in the stomach, great diminution of the vital 
powers, sense of dissolution and the near approach of death, a 
diminution of the rapidity of the heart’s motion by one-half, 
and reduction of the vital temperature, it may easily be guessed 
in what kind of madness it will be of service ; and that it has, 
in fact, been useful in some kinds of this disease many obser- 
vations testify, only their particular symptoms have not been 
recorded. In the glands it creates an itching and painful sen- 
sation, which accounts for its efficacy in glandular swellings. 
«It produces, as I have seen, inflammation of the Meibomian 
glands, and is a certain cure for such inflammations. More- 
ress the circulation, so does it seem to 
over, as it appears to dep 
and to be most serviceable where 
excite the absorbent vessels, 
both are too torpid. ‘The former it assists by virtue of simi- 
larity, the latter by virtue of antagonism of action. But as the 
direct action of Foxglove persists so long (there are examples 
of its lasting five or six days), it may, as ap antagonistically- 
acting remedy, take the place of a permanent curative agent. 
The last observation is in reference to its diuretic property in 
dropsy; it is antagonistic and palliative, but nevertheless 
enduring, and valuable on that account merely. 
