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pliny's view of medicine. 
to say, in their passive form ; and as it exerts a specific and 
peculiar influence upon mucous surfaces generally, we may 
look for good results in other parts of the body, of which the 
bronchi are most certainly not the least important.— Lancet . 
ASSAECETIDA AND ALOES IN ASCARIDES. 
Dr. Nathaniel Smith states that during a practice of 
more than forty years he has never known assafostida and 
aloes to fail of an immediate cure. He has usually employed 
the tincture, sometimes clearing out the bowels first by a 
smart purgative —Boston Journal. 
NEW ESCULENT. 
The French Academy of Sciences has just received in¬ 
formation of a new esculent of the tubercular kind, called 
shicama, which grows in the neighbourhood of Cueuza, New 
Granada. The plant is a shrub which grows to the height 
of about three feet; its roots engender two different sorts of 
tubercles—those nearest the surface of the soil are yellowish 
and bitter, and are only used for the propagation of the plant; 
the second sort, situated much deeper, are white, juicy, and 
so sweet that they can be eaten raw. The shicama will bear 
cold weather extremely well, and might, therefore, be easily 
introduced into Europe, where it would be a formidable rival 
to the beet root, since it is an annual and richer in sugar. 
PLINY’S VIEW OE MEDICINE. 
Every’ disease is either curable or incurable, a man re¬ 
covers of it, or is killed by it. Both ways physic is to be 
rejected: if it be deadly it cannot be cured ; if it may be 
helped, it requires no physician. Nature will expel it of 
itself .—Medical Times. 
