BY THE Nil'll ATE OF POTASH. 
533 
linseed meal balls, and the horse did well. 1 have occasionally 
lost horses in influenza; and, on examination alter death, l have 
found those patches of inflammation — those ecchymoses — in 
various parts of the intestinal canal, which I did not expect even 
in a disease whose frequent, character is that of being inflamma- 
tion of the mucous membranes generally, but which I could 
easily understand as the effect of some irritant poison ; and I 
have pondered the matter, and have suspected that 1 had used 
the nitre too freely and too long. I could not blame the digi- 
talis, for the intermittent pulse would always warn me when I 
had given enough of that; I could not accuse the antimonial 
powder, for, although I have now and then doubted whether it 
had a tenth part of the good effect which some of us attribute to 
it, 1 never knew it do harm beyond some degree of purging, ex- 
cept I had foolishly given it when the increased vascular action 
had all passed over, and a disease of a decided typhoid character 
had supervened. No ! I suspected, and I think not wrongly, 
the nitre. 
How stands the history of this drug? When given in doses of 
two or three drachms, it destroys the dog by producing violent 
intestinal inflammation, with mucous and bloody purging. 
Eight ounces were given to a horse at Lyons in 1819. He died 
in twenty-four hours, with all the symptoms of violent intestinal 
irritation ; and, on opening him, the mucous membrane of the 
whole intestinal canal exhibited symptoms of intense inflamma- 
tion. Mr. Hayes, of Rochdale, says, “ that one of the wise 
descendants of Vulcan told a gentleman who had a broken - 
winded horse, that if he would give him an ounce of saltpetre at 
night, and the same quantity in the morning, it would cure him 
of the broken-wind ; and that he had cured a great many horses 
in that way. Accordingly the nitre was given as directed, night 
and morning. On the following night Mr. Hayes was sent for 
in great haste : the horse was suffering dreadfully, and he died 
on the third day. Both the large and small intestines were in a 
high state of inflammation ; the stomach also, particularly the 
cuticular portion, was nearly black. The neck of the bladder, 
and the whole length of the urethra, bladder and all, was in a 
state of gangrene. 
In this case, we have some lambs who lick the effloresced 
nitre from the wall of their sheep-house. Some of them die in 
one or two days; others linger on four or five days : they labour 
under violent diarrhoea; and, after death, the fourth stomach pre- 
sents a great number of patches of inflammation or ecchymoses ; 
the mucous membranes of the whole of the intestines exhibit the 
