M MEMOIR OF DR WRIGHT. 



held by the respectable and gallant officer to whom 

 the government of the island had been entrusted. 



It was in 1775 that Dr Wright made known the 

 Cinchona Jamaicensis, a species of the Jesuit Bark tree 

 which he discovered in the island, and of which a full 

 description was afterwards published on his return to 

 Great Britain. The inner bark of this species he re- 

 commends as equally efficacious in medicine with that 

 which was formerly known to apothecaries, but like 

 it as losing some of its valuable qualities by the ne- 

 cessary process of desiccation. 



It was in this year also, that Dr Wright first ap- 

 peared before the world as an author. A medical 

 paper of his was read before the Philosophical Society 

 of Philadelphia, and published in the second volume 

 of their Transactions. In this paper a medicine is 

 recommended which is well deserving the attention of 

 the professors of the healing art at the present day. 

 It respects the treatment of diabetes, a disease which 

 continues to baffle the skill of the most eminent phy- 

 sicians. Some have attempted to cure it by restrict- 

 ing the patient from vegetable aliment, and confining 

 him to the use of animal food and a stimulating regi- 

 men ; some by the copious exhibition of opium ; some 

 by blood-letting ; and some by the use of emetics ad- 

 ministered in such doses as to occasion nausea. Dr 

 Wright's remedy consisted of lime-juice, saturated 

 with sea-salt ; and in addition to the more direct and 

 satisfactory evidence which his own experience afford- 

 ed, it is right to notice the theoretical advantages 

 which are claimed for it by one of the most eminent 



