^54 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I694. 



For these great and painful swellings the remedy is, to drink the decoction of 

 marrubium, or the powder taken inwardly, and a fonnentation with the decoc- 

 tion, applying the rest on the place. Aristolochia is also a strong and powerful 

 antidote against the viper, so that if one be bit on the tongue, he need only 

 take a slice of this root, heat it and apply it, and it cures it.* 



Pontaeus, a chemical mountebank, a native of England, and an apothecary 

 by trade, from whom I had the above-mentioned observations, was one day 

 accidentally bit by a fresh viper on his right wrist, he thought it would have 

 killed him : one of the greatest pains he suffered was almost an insupportable 

 tension of the palm of his hand. He composed his antidote of extract of ju- 

 niper berries, drawn with a decoction of roots of round aristolochia, of succisa, 

 marrubium album, flower of brimstone, and white vitriol. For poisons not 

 corrosive, such as those of animals and vegetables, and even for the plague 

 itself (which he believes he can cure by the same remedy) he uses no 

 vitriol. But if the poison be sublimate, which of itself excites vomiting, 

 he adds vitriol, not in a proportion to vomit, as 3J, but only 9j or 3ss, 

 the vomiting being assisted by the corrosive poison itself. To increase the 

 value of this antidote with the people, when the experiment is made on 

 dogs, to that dog which he would have die of the bite of the viper, he gives 

 with the antidote a quarter of a nux vomica, not powdered, but only cut in bits, 

 and the next day the dog dies ; if it were j)Owdered the dog would die in half an 

 hour. He says nux vomica is so called by contraries, for it never vomits, but 

 shuts up the stomach, and contracts the nerves by its poison. To preserve the 

 dogs alive, you must give them, with the antidote, or any thing else, 3 or 4 

 grains of sublimate which immediately sets them a vomiting, and so saves 

 them. He much esteems morsus diaboli, succisa, or devil's-bit, against all sorts 

 of poisons; he laughs at the poison of a toad, which he says has none at all, 

 no more than a frog. 



His sugar or remedy for worms in children, is 15 grs. of mercurius dulcis, 

 with 5 grs. of scammony, and 2 or 3 times as much sugar made up in lozenges. 

 He says, that this dose, which in France purges grown persons, afl^ects not 

 in England those above 15 years old, and ought to be augmented. His mer- 

 curius dulcis is made without vitriol, which though good is yet corrosive ; he 

 takes only ashes with decrepitated salt. 



The manner of the acting of the viper's poison is thus ; in about three 

 quarters of an hour, a syncope or swooning seizes the patient, with tremblings 



* The vol. alkali, either in the form of the vol. spirit (spir. ammoniae vel alkohol ainmoniatum) 

 or in the more compound form of what is sold under the name of eaa de luce, i* now generally con- 

 (ideted as the best antidote against the viperine poison. 



