Pharmacologia. 363 
relieve diseases of the intestines, and the hard seeds of the 
gromwell alleviate calculous disorders. Eyebright acquired 
fame incomplaints of the eye from the black spot upon its 
corolla ; and the blood-stone from its red specks was deemed. 
efficacious in hemorrhage from the nose. 
Under the head of “ devotion to authority and established 
routine,” Dr. Paris very justly animadyerts upon the absurdities 
of the French Pharmacopeeia, which still cherishes many of the 
pharmaceutical monsters of former days in all their original 
deformity, and of which we have given some accountin a former 
number. r 
The same devotion to authority (observes our pai which induces 
us to retain an accustomed remedy with pertinacity will always,oppose the 
introduction of a novel practice with asperity, unless, indeed, it be sup- 
ported by authority of still greater weight an consideration. The history of 
various articles of diet and medicine, will prove, in a striking manner, how 
greatly their reputation and fate have depended upon authority. It 
was not until many years after ipecacuan had been imported into Europe, 
that Helvetius, under the | pra mag of Louis XIV., succeeded in intro- 
ducing it into practice ; and to the eulogy of Katherine, Queen of Charles 
IL. we are indebted for the general introduction of tea into England. 
The history of the potato is equally extraordinary ; its intro- 
duction was opposed by the vulgar for more than two cen- 
turies, until Louis XV. wore a bunch of its flowers upon a gala 
day at court. The history of the warm bath, of Peruvian bark, 
and of tobacco, are also adverted to by Dr. Paris, as affording 
analogous instances of the influence of devotion to authority in 
effecting the introduction and use of articles of the Materia 
Medica. 
Fashion, however, has not confined her interference to the 
selection of remedies, but has also decided upon the nature of 
diseases. Queen Anne was subject to hypochondriacal attacks, 
which her physicians called the spleen, and recommended pearl 
cordial for its cure. The spleen and the cordial were thus ren- 
dered fashionable complaints and remedies. After Dr. Whytt’s 
. publication on nervous diseases, no lady of fashion was trou- 
bled with the spleen, but now became nervous ; and this term 
has lately yielded to bilious, and to the fashionable practice 
among certain medical men of pummelling their patients in the 
region of the liver, till they persuade them that they feel a ten- 
derness there. 
Under the head of “ assigning to art that which is the effect 
of unassisted nature, or the consequence of incidental changes 
of habit, diet, &c.” Dr. Paris offers further specimens of the 
delusions to which his profession is especially open. His re= 
marks on Watering Places are particularly amusing. 
» The Chemist (he says) will tell fus that the springs of Hampstead and 
Islington rival those of Tunbridge and Malvern ; that the waters of Bag- 
nigge Wells, as a chalybeate purgative, might supersede those of Chelten- 
ham and Scarborough ; and that an invalid would pet aoe the spring in the 
vicinity of the Dog and Duck in St, George’s Fields with as much ad- 
