638 
ON THE ACTION OF DIURETICS. 
increases daily more and more on the shoulder, and is now (the 
30th of November) the breadth of a man’s hand. The hindermost 
spot which was inoculated, as well as the other two spots, are now 
covered with healthy wool. From the 1st of December the dis- 
ease was treated with mercurial ointment, and on the 10th of 
January 1828 the cure was complete. On the 10th of February 
this same sheep was subjected to the experiment No. 14. 
Lynn Advertiser. 
[To be continued.] 
Foreign Extracts. 
Chemico-Physiological Considerations on the Action of 
Diuretics. 
By M. Tabourin. 
[Continued from page 351 of The Veterinarian for June*.] 
Sedative Diuretics ^ . 
The medicaments composing this important group of diuretics 
are thus named, because, independently of the abundant diuresis 
they determine, they produce a sort of depression, a debility of the 
vital energy of organs, and especially of the centre of circulation. 
To a certain degree they may be ranked among acrid narcotics , 
inasmuch as they irritate the surfaces with which they come in 
contact, while they depress the nervous energy. By the disciples 
of Rasire they are classed among the counter-stimulants. 
The mechanism through which medicaments excite urinary 
secretion remains in much obscurity. Some authors regarding 
their local operation chiefly, give it out that diuretics act princi- 
pally on the kidneys by irritation of the glandular substance of 
the organs, and that thus they occasion diuresis. This is an action 
which assuredly takes place whenever such remedies are long 
continued, since we find them to become expelled through the 
urinary passages the same as all unassimilated matters are, circu- 
* The irregularity with which we are apt to receive the Foreign Journals 
must plead our apology for so long an interval between the publication of the 
sections of this paper. — Ed. Vet. 
t In the tabular account of diuretics in the former part of this paper (at 
p. 345), turpentine is placed by mistake among the class now under notice, 
viz. sedatives; whereas it belongs to “ Balsamic Diuretics.” 
