698 
ON THERAPEUTICS. 
two to four ounces in the animal’s water, twice a day, until 
the desired effect be produced. 
Sulphur is commonly combined with other agents as a 
cathartic for cattle. For the horse it is hardly likely to be 
used in any quantity sufficient to cause purgation. 
In selecting any of these agents, according to circum¬ 
stances, we are prepared to expect, in most cases, an action 
corresponding to the amount or frequency of the dose; thus 
a laxative, instead of a purgative effect, may follow in the 
event of a small dose being given. Again, most of the 
agents possess the power of destroying and expelling worms 
from the intestines, and thus they rank as anthelmintics. Or 
still further, if given in doses too small to produce either of 
these results, they may occasion nausea, or vomition, and 
thus become nanseants or emetics. Also under judicious 
management, their effects may be so regulated as to modify 
the condition of the system, without any of the usual in¬ 
dications of their action being present, when they may be 
termed alteratives. 
The diversity of property is more apparent than real, 
depending upon quantity, or method of administration, or 
some circumstance which prevents the development of their 
characteristic action. No confusion, however, results, and 
the term cathartic continues to express that medicinal effect 
which consists in the following phenomena—mucous secretion 
in excess, and excited muscular action, followed by fluid or 
softened alvine evacuations. 
As therapeutic agents, cathartics are employed to lessen 
plethora, to overcome constipation in inflammation of various 
organs or parts, in general excitement from pain or any other 
causes, in indigestion, and in fine it is almost impossible to 
mention a single active disturbance of the functions of the 
frame where purgatives do not form part of the ordinary 
curative treatment; therefore their exclusion from the phar¬ 
macy would leave many practitioners, we fear, powerless. 
This universal resort to these powerful medicines is not pro¬ 
ductive of so much mischief as we might suspect, in conse¬ 
quence of the energetic action preventing the accumulation of 
any amount of the drug in the system. Nevertheless, the 
effects of excessive evacuation are by no means beneficial to 
the animal body, nor is the comparative smallness of the 
injury done a justification for the indiscriminate use of a most 
energetic remedy. Without detracting from the merits of 
cathartic agents in the least, we must protest against their 
present excessive and injudicious administration, especially in 
