1822.} [ 
1B) 
MEDICAL REPORT. 
Report of Diseases and CasuasTies occurring inthe public and private Practice 
of the Physician who has the care of the Western District of the City Dispensary. 
——— 
GUES, and other disorders stamped 
with an intermittent mark, have with- 
in thelast month er two been comparatively 
frequent, in those parts of tlre town to which 
the writer’s observation is more especially 
summoned,—comparatively, he says, siuce 
to see a case of actual ague in the metro- 
polis, some years ago, was to witness a 
solitary and rare exception to the general 
erder of things. ‘The fact of the renewal 
ef this species of fever does not appear of 
easy explication; and, indeed, the altoge- 
ther of febrile production and prevalence 
is still obscured by a mist of uncertainty. 
Agues are among those maladies from 
which the idea of contagion is usually se- 
parated; but the Reporter has not only 
had recent occasion to remark their appa- 
rent origin in the very centre of the city, 
but he has just attended a family, three 
‘individuals of which fell, one after ano- 
ther, into the horrors* of the disease, in 
the same sort of succession, in respect to 
time and mode, as is seen in instances of 
what is vulgarly and vaguely called ty- 
phus-fever. Were the two last members 
of the above family infected by Malaria, 
or did they sicken in consequence of com- 
munication with the sick? 
Stemach and intestinal derangements 
still, also, continue to prevail; but the 
eases to which the term cholera might une- 
quivocally be applied, are by no means so 
common as we find them in the autumnal 
season, when the exceeding heat of the day 
becomes contrasted with the evening and 
morning cold. The greater number of 
those bilious affections that are now of 
daily occurrence might be prevented from 
proceeding to any extent, by the timely 
taking of a little tincture of rhubarb,— 
than which there is scarcely an agent in 
the whole list of pharmaceutical com- 
pounds more worthy of domestic appre- 
ciation. That irritative action of the liver, 
* The Latin term horror, which is ap- 
plied to the first stage of an intermittent, 
has no actual synonyme in the English ian- 
guage. Shivering, by which it is trans- 
lated, is too feeble an expression; for the 
sensation is very different from the mere 
feeling of cold.. Dr. George Fordyce used 
forcibly to say in his lectures, that nature 
seemed to be shuddering at the ravages 
about to be committed upon the frame. 
by which the complaints allied to cholera 
are accompanied, is often likewise consi- 
derably controlled by five grains of Pilula 
Hydrargyri; but, for the most part, when 
blue pill is introduced, it is time for the 
domestic prescriber to make his exit. The 
writer is more than suspicions, that mer- 
curial alteratives are employed by a great 
part of the public with an injurious free- 
dom, under the prevailing notion of diges- 
tive derangement being the “fons eé origo 
malorum omnium.” 
_Oil of turpentine continues to be em- 
ployed by the Reporter with happy result 
in many of those maladies in which, with 
a cathartic operation, a something is re- 
quired that shall powerfully influence both 
the secreting organs and the sentient sys- 
tem. Dr. Prichard has, in a late Treatise 
on the Nervous System, shown that he 
appreciates highly, and prescribes exten- 
sively, this very powertul, but, if pro- 
perly applied, highly useful medicine. In 
cases where the mucous membrane of the 
intestinal canal is in that state of morbid 
being in which a stimulating and control- 
ing agency are together demanded, the 
medical practitioner will often find his 
accent in cailing to his recollection the 
almost specific virtues of, the drug now 
referred to. 
A person has just attended upon the 
Repoxter, with a statement of the great 
good he has received from a compound of 
sulphuret of potass and hemlock, pre- 
scribed for violent prurigo.. This compo- 
sition will be often found to subdue inor- 
dinate itching and irritation of the skin, 
after along list of other medicinals shall 
have been unavailingly administered. 
Stramonium the writer wishes again to 
recommend as applicable, among other 
disorders, to those derangements of the 
pulmonary organs that at the same tine 
partake of a spasmodic and inflammatory 
nature, without being absolutely either 
one or the other. . Half-grain doses of the 
extract will frequently prove an efficacious 
adjunct to expectorant drugs, and will 
serve the purpose of an opiate, wien the 
sedative qualities of opium are called 
for, while its use is contra-indicated by its 
constringing tendency. 
D. Uwins, M.D. 
Bedford- Row ; July 20. 
REPORT OF CHEMISTRY AND EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 
—a 
+ Vicar has made some valuable 
experimental researches on water ce- 
ments, mortar, and lime.» "Lhe following 
are some of his inferences : 
Ist. Excess of lime in water cements 
retards the setting, which bears a direct 
proportion with the hardness, 
gd. Active puozzolanas set better with 
fat than with hydraulic limes; but hydrau- 
lic limes are most active of all with mid- 
dling puozzolanas. 
3d. Slacking by immersion, and by at- 
mospherical exposure, are preferable to 
that by affusion, for speedy setting. 
Tracin§ 
