608 
ABSTRACTS AND GLEANINGS IN BOTANY, 
time she had been treated by her mother, firstly, with purgatives to work off 
the imagined bile and after with aromatic confection to stop the diarrhoea. She 
had, from being a remarkably robust child, with regular and good appetite, 
become thin, pallid and appetiteless, and on the day before I saw her, slight 
bronchitis had supervened. This was then the only history I could elicit. 
Her father was coachman to a lady in the neighbourhood, and it was much at his 
mistress’s desire that the child was brought to me. There appeared nothing 
remarkable about the case, and I was content to order her a bland nourishing 
diet with a gentle cordial tonic. 
I heard no more of my little patient until the following Sunday, when I 
was summoned to her as she was reported to be sinking. I found her more 
emaciated with slight fever, more bronchitis and entire loss of appetite, much 
exhausted, apparently from the dj’-spncBa accompanying the chest symptoms, 
and complaining of considerable pain in the bowels, the abdomen being tympa¬ 
nitic. I then ascertained for the first time that on the day previous to her 
illness beginning, she had been found with some wild berries in her hand, of 
w'hich she had apparently been eating, she was afterwards sick and had a rather 
profuse attack of diarrhoea, which her mother regarded as a good symptom, 
and, as before said, encouraged by means of purgatives, hoping thereby to get 
rid of the berries, which she supposed had made her child bilious ; this was 
allowed to go on nearly a fortnight, it was then checked by the conf. arom.; 
and she was a day or two after first brought to me. During the week which 
passed between the first and second time of my seeing her she had been taken 
to a town, some miles distant, to see another practitioner, she had meanwhile 
had occasional returns of diarrhoea. 
At this my second visit, I found the bronchitis the most urgent symptom, 
and ordering her cream, milk, and port wine as a diet, a turpentine application 
to back and chest, with a mixture of ammonia and ipecacuanha wine, I left her 
till next day, I then found her rallied and much better of the iDronchitis, 
which never again required special treatment, in other respects there was but 
slight change. I advised a continuation of the same diet and withheld the mix¬ 
ture, giving small doses of ol. jecoris in milk. Her thirst now increased, and 
she would always take any fluid. I should mention that there never was at 
any time any appearance of blood in her evacuations, which were never much 
other than little altered food; the liver acted very slightly. The tympanic 
abdomen never softened, but during the last week of her illness there was a 
hardened mass to be felt in the right iliac fossa gradually increasing to the 
size of a tennis ball. The diarrhoea and pain were only kept in check by the 
regular exhibition of small doses of Dover’s powder, from this period she con¬ 
tinued under similar treatment, the tongue at no time being either much furred 
or reddened, she occasionally took a little beef tea made from the essence of 
beef. I continued to see her daily and saw her sinking, I could not think from 
simple direct poisoning, to all appearances not from ordinary disease alone. 
The matter of the berries had never been laid much stress upon, although I 
gave it as my opinion that they had originally caused the mischief. I should 
also observe that, during the fourth week of her illness, two large worins {lum- 
hrici) were passed by the bowel. She was precocious in intellect, very tract¬ 
able and quite conscious to the last; she died quietly, after a slight convulsive 
movement of the left side, on the thirty-seventh day of her illness. 
During her life, I could not ascertain the nature of the berry she was sup¬ 
posed to have eaten, but with some inquiry after death, I was able without doubt 
to determine it to have been the Liyustrum vulgare. 
Mudar, a Substitute for Ipecacuanha in the Treatment of Dysentery. 
Mr, J. J. Durant states (Indian Med. Gazette, May, 1866), that he has foimd 
