2 
ON  OXALATE  OF  CERIUM. 
given  in  doses  of  from  one  to  two  grains  in  the  form  of  pills, 
three  times  a  day,  and  is  said  to  require  but  a  very  few  doses  to 
give  relief. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  oxalate  of  cerium,  or  any  other  pre- 
paration of  this  metal,  have  been  seen  but  by  few  of  our  phar- 
maceutists, and  that  the  formulas  for  their  preparation  as  con- 
tained in  the  text  and  hand-books,  including  Gmelin,  will  not 
produce  a  pure  compound,  nor  is  the  material  from  which  the 
metal  is  to  be  obtained  to  be  had  every  day.  The  latter  cir- 
cumstance, however,  does  not  stand  in  the  way  of  the  intro- 
duction of  the  preparation  as  a  remedy,  since  the  doses  used 
are  very  small,  and  the  stock  now  in  market  will  be  found  suf- 
ficient for  the  period  of  trial  which  it  will  undergo  previous  to 
its  more  general  application. 
Cerium  occurs  principally  in  two  minerals,  one  of  them, 
Cerite,  exclusively  in  Sweden ;  the  other,  AUanite,  also  in  this 
grains  of  it,  three  times  a-day  or  oftener,  in  the  form  of  a  pill,  or  mixed  with 
a  few  grains  of  gum  tragacanth,  in  the  form  of  a  powder.  The  vomiting 
usually  ceases  after  a  few  doses  have  been  taken  ;  but  in  some  cases  it  does 
not  abate  till  the  remedy  has  been  persevered  with  for  several  days.  The 
effect  is  sometimes  instantaneous.  I  had  a  patient  some  time  ago  from  the 
west  of  Scotland,  and  when  her  husband  first  came  to  ask  me  to  visit  her  I 
was  engaged  and  could  not  go,  but  after  hearing  his  account  of  the  case,  I 
gave  him  a  prescription  for  cerium  pills,  which  I  desired  him  to  administer 
to  his  wife  till  I  could  get  to  see  her.  He  came  back  next  morning,  asking 
what  the  medicine  was  which  I  had  given  him,  for  the  effect  of  it  had  been 
like  magic.  The  vomiting,  which  had  been  going  on  almost  incessantly, 
and  which  nothing  seemed  to  have  any  power  of  alleviating,  ceased  upon 
the  administration  of  two  doses  of  the  cerium.  In  a  previous  pregnancy 
in  this  patient  it  had  been  made  a  question  for  a  medical  consultation 
whether  abortion  should  not  be  induced,  to  save  her  from  the  effects  of  un- 
controllable sickness  and  vomiting.  But  the  good  result  is,  unfortunately, 
not  always  so  immediate.  One  of  the  earliest  cases  in  which  I  employed 
it  was  in  the  case  of  a  lady  who  came  from  Greenock,  when  she  was  preg- 
nant for  the  fourth  time,  and  had  arrived  to  between  the  third  and  fourth 
months  of  gestation.  For  these  three  or  four  months  she  had  been  always 
vomiting  many  times  a-day,  and  often  during  the  night  also;  and  that 
whether  the  stomach  was  empty  or  full.  She  could  take  but  very  little 
food,  for  she  always  sickened  at  the  sight  of  it.  It  had  been  the  same  in 
all  her  former  pregnancies ;  and  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  of  them  the 
vomiting  was  so  severe  as  to  bring  on  a  miscarriage,  and  the  patient's  own 
