118 TREATMENT OE INELAMMATION. 



efficacy we ascribe to antimony, in the doses we usually 

 exhibit that drug, is rather gratuitous than demonstrative. It 

 requires very large doses to make any sensible impression ; 

 and even when taken in quantity, I have never witnessed an 

 instance of actual diaphoresis. My father, many years ago, 

 experimented on two horses. He commenced with an 

 ounce of crude antimony morning and evening, augmenting 

 the dose until the fourteenth day : each swallowed four 

 ounces thrice a- day, which was continued for seven days 

 afterwards. During this time they voided their urine 

 largely, lost their appetites, and fell away in condition; on 

 discontinuing the medicine, however, they recovered their 

 appetites and their condition, soon looking as well as ever. 

 In twenty days each horse had consumed eight pounds 

 twelve ounces of the mineral ! 



Nitre is a remedy in general use, and one to which 

 various beneficial effects are ascribed. " Nitre,^^ says 

 Nimrod, ^^ has been much used by grooms as a cooling 

 diuretic, and a preventive of disease from such causes ; but 

 it must be borne in mind that nitre is a strong repellent, 

 and of a debilitating nature.^^ From the place which nitre, 

 as a neutral salt, occupies in human medicine as a refrigerant 

 and febrifuge remedy, it has obtained a similar reputation 

 in veterinary practice. The chief end we have in view 

 when we employ it is its diuretic effect ; there can be no 

 doubt that it augments other secretions besides the urinary 

 — perhaps, in some degree, those of the bowels. So far it 

 is useful as an adjunct in inflammation ; and so far it may 

 be ranked among febrifuges and alteratives. It is, however, 

 a remedy we could do very well without ; at the same time 

 it is one that, since we possess, we can find uses for. 



Among the medicinal agents most potent in combating 

 inflammation, and preventing as well as causing the removal 

 of its injurious efi'ects, must be accounted mercury. In vete- 

 rinary and in human practice, wfe have, by frequent expe- 

 rience of its uses, and the variations in the manner of 

 exhibiting it, discovered that, in membranous aftections — in 

 that destructive and frequent disease of horses, pleurisy, in 



