176 
ETHERIZED  COD-LIVER  OIL. 
phosphorus  ordinarily  emits  when  in  contact  with  air,  and  ap- 
parently prevents  the  slow  combustion  from  taking  place.  Its 
influence  in  protecting  the  workmen  may  be  due  to  this  property. 
Dr.  Andant  relates,  in  the  'Bulletin  General  de  Therapeu- 
tique,'  a  curious  case  to  show  the  influence  of  turpentine  in 
phosphorus  poisoning.  A  workman,  sixty-three  years  old, 
wishing  to  commit  suicide,  masticated  the  tipped  ends  of  a  boxful 
of  wax  matches.  Immediately  afterwards,  thinking  to  assist  the 
action  of  the  poison,  he  swallowed  about  half  an  ounce  of  essence 
of  turpentine  mixed  with  a  pint  of  water.  After  some  time, 
finding  the  poison  did  not  act,  he  chewed  the  ends  of  two  more 
boxfuls  of  matches,  and  then  lay  down,  as  he  thought,  to  die. 
He  suff"ered  from  extreme  thirst,  some  pain  in  the  bowels,  ac- 
companied by  constipation,  but  nothing  more.  He  had  taken 
the  phosphorous  contained  on  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  matches, 
but,  thanks  to  the  turpentine,  he  recovered,  enduring  no  ill 
eff'ects,  and  with  no  medical  treatment  beyond  a  dose  of  castor- 
oil. — Lond.  Pharm.  Journ.  Jan.,  1869. 
ETHERIZED  COD-LIYER  OIL. 
In  a  paper  recently  published  in  the  '  British  Medical  Journal,' 
by  Dr.  Balthazar  A.  Foster,  there  are  certain  results  of  his  in- 
vestigation and  observation  stated,  on  the  advantage  of  combin- 
ing ether  with  cod-liver  oil,  which,  although  in  the  main,  for  the 
consideration  of  the  physician,  may  not  be  uninteresting,  nor 
perhaps  unimportant,  to  the  pharmaceutist.  Taking  it  as  an 
established  fact,  that  the  difficulty  of  assimilating  fat,  is  a  con- 
stant characteristic  of  the'  dyspepsia  of  phthisis,  and  further,  that 
a  marked  improvement  in  such  patients  is  observed  when  the 
ability  to  digest  fatty  matter  is  restored,  Dr.  Foster  has  set  him- 
self to  work  to  determine  the  best  means  of  "  augmenting  the 
secretions  ivhich  are  specially  devoted  to  the  digestion  of  fatty 
matterSy'  and  has  determined  to  his  own  satisfaction  that,  ether 
not  only  obtains  for  uH  the  secretions  required  to  digest  fats,  hut 
'promotes  the  absorption  of  these  fats  when  digested."  In  some 
cases  the  ether  has  been  given  in  water  alone  before  the  oil ; 
but  the  favorite  method  seems  to  be  to  combine  the  two,  in  the 
