556 THE PATHOLOGY OF NIGHT-SWEATIXG IN PHTHISIS. 



lessening irritability of the sensory nerves in the lung, of 

 stimulating the respiratory centre, and of paralysing the ends 

 of the secreting nerv-es in the sweat glands. But it possesses 

 other actions which may render its employment inadvisable. 

 It may so influence the salivary glands as to arrest their secre- 

 tion, and cause very great discomfort to the patient by the 

 dryness of the mouth thus occasioned. In such cases we may 

 use Dover's powder, but if this, again, should interfere witli 

 digestion, we may resort to strychnia or nux vomica. The cases 

 in which strychnia seems to be specially indicated are those in 

 which the cough is not so violent as to be very distressing, and 

 where the general debility and weakness of the circulation and 

 digestion are prominent symptoms. It not unfrequently has 

 liappened, probably owing in some measure to the difficulty of 

 obtaining correct statements from hospital patients, who are so 

 readily influenced by any bias of the physician, that a remedy 

 has had in the hands of its proposer a success which has not 

 been observed by those who have tried it subsequently. It may 

 be so with strychnia also as a remedy in night-sweating, but if 

 this should not be the case, and it proved in the experience of 

 others to have the same marked power of arresting the night- 

 sweats of phthisis which it has had in the trials I have made of 

 it, it will be interesting as being another remedy whose thera- 

 peutical use has been arrived at by a knowledge of its physio- 

 logical action, and of the pathology of disease discovered by 

 experiments upon anm^als. 



