H^EMORRHAGIES. 295 



cold bath is a more powerful tonic than either chalybeates or 

 the bark." 



MV. The action of the vessels of the uterus may be ex- 

 cited : First, By determining the blood into them more copious- 

 ly ; which is to be done by determining the blood into the descend- 

 ing aorta, by purging, by the exercise of walking, by friction, 

 and by warm bathing of the lower extremities. It is also prob- 

 able, that the blood may be determined more copiously into the 

 hypogastric arteries which go to the uterus, by a compression 

 of the iliacs; but the trials of this kind hitherto made have 

 seldom succeeded. 



MVI. Secondly, The action of the uterine vessels may be ex- 

 cited by stimulants applied to them. Thus, those purgatives 

 which particularly stimulate the intestinum rectum, may also 

 prove stimulant to the uterine vessels connected with those of 

 the rectum. The exercise of venery certainly proves a stimulus 

 to the vessels of the uterus ; and therefore may be useful when, { 

 with propriety, it can be employed. The various medicines re- 

 commended as stimulants of the uterine vessels, under the title 

 of Emmenagogues, have never appeared to me to be effectual ; 

 and I cannot perceive that any of them are possessed of a speci- 

 fic power in this respect. 



" The writers on the materia medica, both ancient and mo- 

 dern, particularly the former, mention many medicines as em- 

 menagogues ; and I have employed a great number of those 

 recommended by them ; but I have been so very often disap- 

 pointed of the wished for effects, that I have ventured to al- 

 lege, that the ancient writers had not on this subject spoken 

 from experience. These disappointments which I have met 

 with, I find to have also happened to my fellow practitioners ; 

 and I have not, among the most experienced, found any one 

 who does not acknowledge his failure in employing the emmen- 

 agogue medicines recommended by writers, nor who does not 

 own, that he cannot, almost in any case of Amenorrhrea with 

 much confidence promise success in curing it. M.M. 



" Aloes may be said to determine to the uterus ; but it is by de- 

 termining to the haemorrhoidal system. All the fetid gums have 

 somewhat of the same quality of stimulating the haemorrhoidal 

 vessels, and therefore the vessels of the uterus : but they have no 





