CANTHARIS. 



step to "authoritative" medication he immediately bled the boy. He 

 next applied a Cantharides plaster over the entire back, from the neck 

 down, and administered blue mass as a fortifying agent. This treat- 

 ment, "fortunately" (according to Dr. Graves), "acted promptly and 

 admirably," the back of the child becoming, within the specified time, 

 a monstrous blister, the serum possessing (as is its nature) a most 

 virulent power of vesicating whatever flesh it touched. This was 

 shown, as the writer can testify, by its creeping action upon the sides 

 arid limbs of the boy. Near to death's door, struggling for life, the 

 sunstruck child hovered long on the brink of eternity, the question each 

 day being, whether he would be alive the day that followed. Excru- 

 ciating was his agony. The pain he suffered brought tears to the 

 eyes of all who saw him or heard his cries. The memory of that 

 event, vivid to-day in the mind of the writer, became one of the fac- 

 tors that led to a lifetime of crusading in behalf of kindness to the 

 sick, as opposed to medication wrongs and cruelties, whether instituted 

 "by authority" or otherwise. Happily between that period and the 

 present the old-time barbarisms, then "authoritative," have largely dis- 

 appeared. 



No longer does the physician, in the case of a sun-struck child, a 

 consumptive girl, or a fever-parched man, apply the Cantharides blis- 

 ter, the tartar-emetic or the Croton oil vesicant, as a "first step" in 

 professional treatment. 



Let the description of the foregoing case, that yet vividly ap- 

 peals to the writer, excuse his dislike of the very word Cantharides, 

 which yet brings mental torture. With these remarks, let us pass to 

 the uses of Cantharides in the days of its professional glory, as recited 

 in Ccxe's American Dispensatory. 



Medical Use. — Cantharides have a peculiar nauseous smell and an ex- 

 tremely acrid, burning taste. Taken internally, they often occasion a dis- 

 charge of bloody urine, with exquisite pain; if the dose be considerable, 

 they seem to inflame and ulcerate the whole intestinal canal; the stools be- 

 come mucous and purulent; the breath fetid and cadaverous; intense pains 

 are felt in the lower belly; the patient faints, grows giddy, delirious, and 

 dies. Applied to the skin, they first inflame, and afterwards excoriate the 

 part, raising a more perfect blister than any of the vegetable acrids, and 

 occasioning a more plentiful discharge of serum. But even the external ap- 

 plication of cantharides is often followed by a strangury, accompanied with 

 thirst and feverish heat. — Coxe's Amer. Disp., pth ed., 1831, p. 172. 



Let us seek now, more directly, the Mediaeval uses of the Can- 

 tharides blister, as voiced "atithoritatively" in the first edition of the 

 United States Disp'ensatory, 1833. 



Blisters are calculated to answer numerous indications. Their local 

 effect is attended with a general excitement of the system, which renders 

 them valuable auxiliaries to internal stimulants in low or typhoid conditions 

 of disease; and they may sometimes be safely resorted to with this view 

 when the latter remedies are inadmissible. The powerful impression they 

 make on the system is sufiicient in many instances to subvert morbid asso- 

 ciations, and thus to allow the re-establishment of healthy action. Hence 

 their application to the cure of remittent and intermittent fevers, in which 

 they often prove effectual, when so employed as to be in full operation at 



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