240 
CRAB  ORCHARD  SALTS. 
pearance  of  New  Orleans  brown  sugar,  frequently  mistaken  for 
that  substance  by  children,  contains  a  considerable  quantity  of 
oxide  of  iron,  and  leaves  a  sediment  of  earthy  carbonates,  when 
dissolved  in  water,  proving  that  it  has  not  undergone  the  process 
of  purification  mentioned  above.  By  some  of  the  manufacturers 
much  attention  is  paid  to  this  process  of  purification  of  the  salt, 
so  that  it  is  entirely  freed  from  oxide  of  iron  and  the  precipi- 
tated carbonates,  and  is  perfectly  white ;  but  whether  the  re- 
moval of  these  ingredients  of  the  water  is  not  injurious  to  the 
full  medicinal  virtue  of  the  saline  matter  may  well  be  questioned. 
We  should  much  prefer  to  let  the  iron  remain  in  the  salt. 
Although  the  sulphate  of  magnesia  is  the  principal  ingredi- 
ent of  this  saline  mixture,  the  presence  of  the  other  saline  matters, 
and  of  the  carbonate  of  iron,  modifies  greatly  the  action  of  that 
well-known  salt,  so  that  the  medicinal  effects,  from  the  use  of  the 
waters  or  their  salts,  are  considerably  different  from  that  of  a 
pure  solution  of  sulphate  of  magnesia,  and  they  are  applicable  to 
a  greater  variety  of  cases. 
The  medicinal  virtues  of  these  salts  have  been  so  highly  ap- 
preciated of  late,  that  many  thousand  pounds  of  them  are  an- 
nually prepared,  and  the  demand  in  western  drug  stores  and 
doctor's  shops  is  greater  for  them  than  for  the  classic  salts  of 
Epsom.  Physicians  find  these  salts  much  less  drastic,  and 
more  tonic,  than  pure  unmixed  Epsom  salts,  and  more  likely  to 
act  on  the  liver  in  the  manner  of  calomel,  when  taken  in  small 
doses.  They  are  especially  efficacious  in  the  treatment  of  head- 
aches and  other  affections  resulting  from  gastric  disturbances. 
Several  terrible  cases  of  periodical  headaches,  with  sick  sto- 
mach and  general  derangement  of  the  economy,  which  had  re- 
sisted, for  years,  every  other  mode  of  treatment,  were  entirely 
and  permanently  cured  by  the  use  of  these  salts. 
They  are  usually  administered  in  one  or  three  teaspoonful 
doses,  thoroughly  dissolved  in  a  tumbler  of  water,  and  taken 
before  breakfast.  A  very  agreeable  manner  of  taking  this 
medicine,  is  to  dissolve  a  dose  in  the  smallest  possible  quantity 
of  water,  and  fill  up  the  tumbler  from  the  jet  of  a  soda  foun- 
tain, and  drink  it  while  effervescing ;  or  have  your  apothe- 
cary to  prepare  it  in  the  form  of  bottled  mineral  water,  each 
bottle  containing  a  dose. — Louisville  Monthly  Medical  News, 
Feb.,  1860. 
