158 
ANNALS OF THE 
in a large batch, it has been found useful in rheumatism, more especially in that 
most crippling form — lumbago. 
The root of the cotton plant has been employed by Dr. Bouchelle, of Missis- 
sippi, who considers it to be an excellent emmenagogue, having also similar spe- 
cific physiological properties to the secale cornutum in its action upon the metra, — 
rivalling the ergot in promoting uterine contraction. He further observes, that 
the slaves of the Southern States use it habitually and effectually for producing 
ectrosis ; and he considers that it acts in this way without serious injury to the 
general health. 
It has also been asserted, that in parts of the Southern States, cotton seeds 
have been employed with great success in the treatment of intermittents ; but this 
i-emains to be proved. 
A fixed oil of the drying kind is yielded by the seeds by expression, and the 
cake produced in the process has been employed in feeding cattle, like linseed 
cake. Of late years this cake has given rise to accidents, the husks of the cotton 
seed forming large coherent indigestible masses in the stomachs of the animals. 
The root also has been supposed to possess medical properties, but it has not as yet 
been introduced into any officinal preparation. 
Cotton is without taste or smell, insoluble in water, alcohol, ether, the oils^ 
and vegetable acids ; soluble in strong alkaline solutions, and decomposed by the 
concentrated mineral acids. In chemical character, it bears a close analogy to lig-- 
nin. Gun cotton i^ produced by the operation of nitric acid on it. Collodion is 
an officinal preparation ; and in the form of old rags, cotton is used in the manu- 
facture of paper. 
In India, and indeed in all warm countries, both Europeans and natives have 
found that after a profuse perspiration, linen cloth became damp and cold, first by 
absorption, and then by evaporation ; when cotton cloth remedied these evils,, 
as was soon discovered, its adoption became universal. 
It is worthy of note, that gun cotton, or explosive cotton, was first made in 
America, by the late Professor Ellet, of the University of South Carolina, by the 
operation of nitre and sulphuric acid on cotton ; but with characteristic modesty 
and ingenuousness, he disclaimed the idea as original, from having experimented 
upon the fact which had been communicated to him, that a German chemist had 
succeeded in making cotton explosive. He also yielded the idea of nitre as an 
agent in causing substances to explode, to Dumas, from whom a memoir had then 
recently appeared, which gave an account of the method of rendering bibulous 
paper explosive. However, EUet's product being readily dissolved in ether — 
while other processes furnish a product which sometimes dissolves only partially — 
has displaced all other preparations in the making of collodion, which has itself 
