ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY STYPTIC. *2*29 
tion is immediate. Imagine a powerful man attacked suddenly 
and unexpectedly by a wolf ; his fear for a few seconds will have a 
stunning (sedative) effect upon him. But a re-action soon takes 
place, his courage, his strength, his resolution, are greater than 
natural, and he makes the most frantic efforts to release himself from 
being torn in pieces. Suppose the same person to be of a super- 
stitious turn of mind, and to be assailed suddenly in the dead of 
night, the hour most dreaded by the superstitious, by some very ap- 
palling and apparently supernatural combination of circumstances ; 
his fear will in this instance be so great as to subdue the power of re- 
action ; he either expires or sinks exhausted in a state of complete 
syncope. 
In nature we invariably find a high degree of excitement, or 
violent and long-continued muscular exertion, to be followed by 
a proportionate degree of depression or weariness ; how, then, can 
we suppose the sedative effect of a narcotic to be secondary to a 
stimulant one, inasmuch as there is no proportion in their relative 
degrees of intensity ? But we find in nature, as in the instance of 
the power of fear, that a slight depression of the vital power is 
followed by a reaction and a violent depression by no reaction at 
all. Let us, then, be guided by this very evident analogy in our 
estimation of the power of these medicines. Why should nature 
alter her laws so completely, and so fantastically, in this single 
instance of narcotic medicine? 
The Lancet. 
ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY 
STYPTIC. 
In a late number of a French journal, entitled “ Bulletin Gene- 
rate de Therapeutique Medicate et Chirurgicale ,” is an article 
from the pen of the editor, of which the following translation is 
presented : — 
“ Messrs. Talrich and Halma-Grande, on the 26th of September 
last, deposited at the Academy of Sciences a packet, containing 
the ingredients of a styptical liquor, which will be opened when 
these physicians have completed the experiments upon which they 
are occupied, and which they are pursuing with unremitting care 
and observation. The carotid arteries of fifteen sheep have been 
opened, four of which were cut lengthwise and nine across ; from 
each of two of them an oval piece of the substance was taken out, 
and yet, in four or five minutes after the application of the styptic 
the effusion of blood was stopped, and in a few days the wound 
VOL. XVIII. I i 
