SPASMODIC AFFECTIONS. 473 



or of some other purgative that can be extracted by water. The 

 antimonial wine may be sometimes employed in glysters with 

 advantage. Hardly any glysters are more effectual than those 

 made of turpentine properly prepared. " The power of tur- 

 pentine of stimulating the intestines appears especially when 

 it is employed in glysters, when to the quantity of half an 

 ounce or an ounce it is very diligently triturated with yolk of 

 egg, so as to be perfectly diffused and suspended in watery 

 liquor, and in this state injected into the rectum. We have 

 found it to be one of the most certain laxatives that could be 

 employed in colics and other cases of obstinate costiveness. 

 M.M. 



When all other injections are found ineffectual, recourse is 

 to be had to the injection of tobacco-smoke ; and, when even this 

 fails, recourse is to be had to the mechanical dilatation to be men- 

 tioned hereafter. " Tobacco is generally very effectually employ- 

 ed in glysters in cases of more obstinate costiveness. It is indeed 

 a very effectual medicine, but attended with this inconvenience, 

 that when the dose happens to be in any excess, it occasions severe 

 sickness at stomach, and I have known it frequently occasion 

 vomiting. In cases of obstinate costiveness, the smoke of burn- 

 ing tobacco has been thrown into the anus with great advan- 

 tage. It reaches much further into the intestines than injections 

 can commonly do, and is thereby applied to a larger surface, 

 and may therefore be a more powerful medicine than the infu- 

 sions. In several instances, however, I have been disappointed 

 of its effects, and have been obliged to have recourse to other 

 means. M.M. 



MCCCCXLVIII. As glysters often fail altogether in re- 

 lieving this disease, and as even when they give some relief they 

 are often imperfect in producing a complete cure ; so it is gener- 



I ally proper, and often necessary, to attempt a more entire and 

 certain cure by purgatives given by the mouth. The more 

 powerful of these, or, as they are called, the Drastic Purgatives, 

 may be sometimes necessary ; but their use is to be avoided, 

 both because they are apt to be rejected by vomiting, and be- 



| cause when they do not succeed in removing the obstruction 

 they are ready to induce an inflammation. " A third reason for 



