350 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 172(). 



and hysteric afFection ; and (what he observes is still more extraordinary) in 

 some cases of dropsy. Also in small-pox ; viz. in the 3d stage thereof, when 

 the patients have been in a dying state, from abscesses in the brain and chest ; 

 pus coming away during the use of the water from the nostrils and mouth. But 

 in all these disorders, food was not withheld during the exhibition of the water; 

 on the contrary, in the chronic disorders here enumerated, it was deemed suf- 

 ficient to give a large dose of the cold water 4 hours before a light dinner, and 

 another dose 8 hours after dinner. 



Dr. C. then remarks, that in the employment of this method of cure, to 

 give too little water is a worse error than giving too much. To produce the 

 desired effects, it must be administered largely and be followed up. This may 

 be done so much the more confidently, if after the first day's exhibition, the 

 water begins to pass off by urine and stool. 



Having thus stated the result of his experience at Naples in favour of the 

 aqueous regimen in fevers ; Dr. C. leaves it to be proved by the physicians of 

 the northern regions, whether this method shall be equally efficacious in the 

 same disorders in colder countries : He is inclined to think, it will, the cold 

 water plan having succeeded at Naples even during the winter season.* 



^ short Account of the different Kinds of Ipecacuanha.-^ By Dr. Douglass, Med. 

 Regin. Extr. et R. S. S. N" 410, p. 152. 



By comparing the several dried pieces as we have them, we may very probably 

 conjecture that a short radical trunk descends from a caulis, and is afterwards 

 divided into several large branches, and these again into smaller ones, in diflfer- 

 ent series, with minute filaments or fibrillae going out from them. 



Each piece is made up of two general parts, an outer or cortical, and an inner 

 or fibrous, which like a white nerve, or smooth compact fasciculus of woody 

 filaments, runs through the centre or axis of the roots, and perhaps encloses 

 within it a small medulla or pith, which however is hardly discernible by the 

 naked eye. The cortical part is corrugated by two sorts of wrinkles, one super- 



• Notwithstanding the praises bestowed both by Dr. Hancock and by this author on the use of cold 

 water internally, in fevers ; it does not appear that this mode of treatment was much adopted in this 

 country at the time of its first recommendation, or that it came to be adopted at any period after- 

 wards ; latterly however cold water has been much and successfully employed extcriudli) in the cure 

 of fevers, agreeably to the directions given by Dr. Currie of Liverpool, in his treatise on this subject. 



t Ipecacuanha has been referred by Linnaeus to the genus Viola ; but since the death of tliat cele- 

 brated naturalist, it has been found that he never saw a specimen of the genuine plant, and was ac- 

 cordingly mistaken in referring it to the viola. It constitutes a new genus called Callicocca, (Calli- 

 cocca Ipecacuanha) of which an account by Professor Brotero has been inserted in the 6th vol. 

 of the Linnaean Trans. — In the Spec. Plant, of Willdenow it is referred to the genus Cephaelis. 

 Cephaelis Ipecacuanha.) 



