Memoirs of Erasmzis Darwin, M.D. 307 



or twice a day. Onions, garlic, slight chalybeates. Issues. 

 Leeches applied once a fortnight or month to the hemor- 

 rhoidal veins to produce a new habit. Emetics after each 

 period of hsmoptoe, to promote expectoration, and dislodge 

 any effused blood, which might by remaining in the lungs 

 produce ulcers by its putridity. A hard bed, to prevent too 

 sound sleep. A periodical emetic or cathartic once a fort- 

 night. 



Also his plan of preventing miscarriages. — Some delicate 

 ladies are perpetually liable to spontaneous abortion, before 

 the third, or after the seventh, month of gestation. From 

 some of these patients I have learnt, that they have awa- 

 kened with a slight degree of difficult respiration, so as 

 to induce them to rise hastily up in bed ; and have hence 

 suspected, that this was a tendency to a kind of asthma, 

 owing to a deficient absorption of blood in the extremities 

 of the pulmonary or bronchial veins ; and have concluded 

 from thence, that there was generally a deficiency of venous 

 absorption; and that this was the occasion of their frequent 

 abortion. Which is further countenanced, where a great 

 sanguinary discharge precedes or follows the exclusion of 

 the fetus. 



M. M. Opium, bark, chalybeates in small quantity. 

 Change to a warmer climate. I have directed with success 

 in four cases, half a grain of opium twice a day for a fort- 

 night, -and then a whole grain twice a day during the whole 

 gestation. One of these patients took besides twenty grains 

 of Peruvian bark for several weeks. By these means being 

 exactly and regularly persisted in, a new habit became esta- 

 blished, and the usual miscarriages were prevented. 



His opinion o^ exlracthig the cataract to remove blindness 

 is so very unexpected, that unless it came from such a 

 source it would scarcely obtain credit, so much has fashioa 

 to do both in medicine and surgery. — 



Cataructa is an opacity of the crystalline lens of the eye. 

 It is a disease of light-coloured eyes, as the gutta serena is 

 of dark ones. On cutting off with scissars the cornea of a 

 calf's eye, and holding it in the palm of one's hand, so as 

 to gain a proper light, the artery which supplies nutriment 



U 2 to 



