pm 
Miscellanies. 185 
_ the most important articles of the Materia Medica, are scarcely less 
curious than satisfactory, and are clearly described by Mr. Carpen- 
ter—for instance, opium, bark, sarsaparilla, and the oil of canthari- 
din. This oil supersedes, most mercifully, the common mode of 
blistering. It is produced by separating in a crystallized state the 
vesicating principle of the Spanish flies, and dissolving that in oil. 
This preparation seems to possess remarkable advantages over the 
% s 
ordinary epispastics. A few drops of it, applied to any part of the 
body, e ually draws, in six or eight hours, a complete blister, and 
with a degree of pain and inconvenience comparatively slight for the 
_ Patient: or a piece of paper, made to imbibe a portion of it, forms 
am excellent blister, which may be adapted to any part however 
regular, and the consequent verification is circumscribed and de- 
fined exactly with the paper.”* 
_____ As. Mr. Carpenter’s valuable manual must soon require a reprint, 
ae Pod 
Sp 
We will beg leave to suggest, that an attentive literary revision of the 
work, will add new attractions to the great intrinsic value which it cer- 
i ly possesses; and if we were to add another remark, it would be, 
that the less of the spirit of trade appears in a work of science the better. 
12. Franklin Institution of New Haven.—A patriotic and enter- 
prising citizen of New Haven, Mr. James Brewster, a practical 
mechanic, and long well known for his extensive manufactory of ex~ 
cellent carriages, has recently erected, at his own expense, an estab- 
lishment for popular lectures. Mr. Brewster has devoted two stories 
= a large and handsome building to this purpose. One of them is oc- 
“upied by the lecture room and laboratory, and the other by a cabinet 
of natural history, and apartments for those who may be connected 
with the institution. + The lecture room will contain three hundred 
Persons; it is airy, well lighted, and finished in good taste. It is 
“qually well adapted to lectures, of an intellectual character only, as 
° those of experiment and illustration by machines and models, and 
by specimens in natural history. An apparatus is already collected, 
and will be, from time to time, enlarged, and the cabinet of natural 
‘Story, of three or four thousand specimens, is rich in minerals, rocks 
and shells, 
Re er eee 
By See the More detailed account of the preparation and properties of cantharidin 
P- 69 of this No. ‘ 
t With apartment also for lodging rooms. 
. 24 
Vou. I—No. 1. 
