340 HORSE AND CATTLE MEDICINES. 



• 



An active poison, and one of the garden plants of parts of 

 Europe. The tincture is that portion whicii is used in 

 diseases of horses and cattle. 



Tincture of Aconite Root. — One of the most power- 

 ful, certain and successful sedatives which can be used. It 

 has done away with bleeding, blistering and physicking, 

 which were formerly thought proper agents wherewith to 

 combat and cure disease. It is not only sedative, but it is 

 a nauseant, calmative, anodyne, stimulant, diaphoretic and 

 antiphlogistic. It controls fever, and allays pain and in- 

 flammation ; and is the only medicine, excepting hellabore, 

 whicli can excite the horse, the ox, or the elephant, to 

 vomit. Although these animals cannot vomit, it is the 

 one to cause them to make the effort. If, according to the 

 founder of homoeopathy, mercury was a divine metal, no 

 less surely may aconite be considered a divine vegetable ; 

 for without it, or something as good, what can be so suc- 

 cessful in curing lung fever, founder, inflammation of any 

 part of the body, colic from eating green food, and fever 

 accompanying cattle diseases of w^hatever kind? ]N"othing 

 controls the circulation and action of the heart so promptly 

 as aconite. The nervous centres of the body are no less 

 ready to obey its action- Hence, its value in allaying 

 fever, irritation, excitement and pain, from whatever cause. 



Hoio to use it. Aconite should never be carried too far, 

 or prostration and weakness will follow, ^ever give 

 more than eight doses, when twenty drops are the dose, 

 nor more than six doses when twenty-five drops are the 

 dose. Or, in other words, never, in any disease, give more 

 than two drachms, or one hundred and twenty drops, 

 whether the dose has been ten, twenty or* twenty-five 

 drops. In pleuro-pncumonia and^ other diseases, iron and 

 the mineral acids should follow aconite. 



