REVIEW. 
537 
have had many demonstrations. It was formerly our prac¬ 
tice to produce, to the extent we were able, nausea in cases 
of pectoral disease; and there was no medicinal agent we 
found so useful and effectual for this purpose as white helle¬ 
bore (veratrum). In doses of 3 SS to 3 j, of the recently-dried 
root, we were able to produce and keep up a sense of nausea, 
which was found very influential in lowering the pulse, both 
in strength and frequency; and, by thus depressing the cir¬ 
culation, abating, at the same time, the inflammatory action. 
But there was this drawback on its beneficial operation, 
which was, that every now and then a spasmodic or convul¬ 
sive action of the muscles of the body and neck was excited, 
with “ gulpings,” which we regarded at the time as so many 
efforts to vomit . This was in the worst cases attended with 
great prostration, cold sweats, anxiety in the extreme, sink¬ 
ing, and death; though, sometimes the prostration, &c., was 
present without any efforts to vomit.” Percivall, in his 
c Lectures/ published in the year 1825, has the following 
paragraph in immediate reference to the subject: 
Though this (the horse’s) power of rejecting the contents 
of the stomach is no longer questionable, it may, and with 
truth, he maintained that Nature has not endowed the horse 
with the faculty of vomition. Whenever it happens, whether 
the act be a voluntary or an involuntary one, it must be ever 
regarded as one out of the course of Nature . The opinion 
has been current that whatever a horse vomited must neces¬ 
sarily all pass through his nose ; and certainly the anatomy 
of the fauces appears to warrant such a conclusion. This 
is a mistake, however; for the depression of the larynx in the 
act of retching admits of the escape of some of the dis¬ 
charged matters, and occasionally of a good portion of them, 
into the mouth. In the case of gastric tympany I have 
relajed, the animal had, shortly before death, three copious 
liquid ejections from the stomach, much of which was 
vomited by the mouth. That we have not ready means of 
exciting nausea is still more hypothetical. A dose of aloes 
seldom fails to cause it; and we may at any time produce it 
to any degree we wish, and often with the most beneficial 
results, by the administration of white hellebore. This may 
be carried so far as to excite painful efforts to vomit , but I 
have not seen the act itself occasioned by it . Henbane and 
wolfsbane, Professor Peall assures us, have similar effects.” 
