472 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



hand, exclude the employment of aloetics ; and on the other 

 recommend the use of the oleum ricini. M.M. 



Is the hyoscyamus, as often showing, along with its narcotic, 

 a purgative quality, better suited to this disease than opium ? 

 " We have frequently found the hyoscyamus an agreeable 

 anodyne and soporiferous medicine in persons who, from partic- 

 ular circumstances, did not agree with opium, and particularly 

 because it was less binding to the belly than opium. We judge, 

 however, that it is more ready in full doses to give delirium 

 than opium is : and therefore we have found it in many cases 

 to give turbulent and unrefreshing sleep ; and notwithstanding 

 its laxative qualities, for which we had employed it, we have 

 been obliged to lay it aside. M.M. 



MCCCCXLVI. It is seemingly on good grounds that sev- 

 eral practitioners have recommended the large use of mild oils 

 in this disease, both as antispasmodics and as laxatives ; and 

 where the palate and stomach could admit them, I have found 

 them very useful. But as there are few Scottish stomachs that 

 can admit a large use of oils, I have had few opportunities of 

 employing them. 



MCCCCXLVII. The second set of remedies adapted to 

 the cure of colic, are purgatives ; which, by exciting the action 

 of the intestines, either above or below the obstructed place, 

 may remove the constriction ; and therefore these purgatives 

 may be given either by the mouth, or thrown by glysters into 

 the anus. As the disease is often seated in the great guts ; as 

 glysters, by having a more sudden operation, may give more 

 immediate relief; and as purgatives given by the mouth are 

 ready to be rejected by vomiting ; so it is common, and indeed 

 proper, to attempt curing the colic in the first place by glysters. 

 These may at first be of the mildest kind, consisting of a large 

 bulk of water, with some quantity of mild oil ; and such are some- 

 time sufficiently efficacious : however, they are not always so ; 

 and it is commonly necessary to render them more powerfully 

 stimulant by the addition of neutral salts, of which the most 

 powerful is the common or marine salt. If these saline glysters, 

 as sometimes happens, are rendered again too quickly, and on 

 this account or otherwise are found ineffectual, it may be proper, 

 instead of these salts, to add to the glysters an infusion of senna 



