ON MONESIA. 
59 
syrup, has an immediate effect upon the digestive passages, and 
quickens the action of the stomach in a very remarkable man- 
ner. If the dose of the remedy is pushed to four grammes 
(74 grains) of the extract, daily, for fifteen or twenty days, the 
appetite increases, but the patients sometimes experience a 
feeling of heat in the epigastrium:* tenesmus and obstinate 
constipation may also come on ; hence its action upon the di- 
gestive tube should be moderated by diminishing the dose ac- 
cording to the effect produced, and administering emollient or 
laxative clysters, as may be required. 
Monesia ointment may be employed externally upon sores, 
in every case, but with more or less success, according to cir- 
cumstances: thus I have seen it succeed in large and exces- 
sively painful ulcers, arising from the action of blisters, in 
sores produced by burns, in varicose ulcers and old wounds; 
in a word, whenever the sore is painful, and depends on a 
merely local affection. When this is not the case, and the ul- 
cer is kept up by syphilis, scrofula, scurvy, or cancer, it is 
impossible to effect a permanent cure by merely applying the 
monesia ointment, washing the sores with the tincture, or 
sprinkling them with the extract or acrid principle contained 
in it. Yet, by employing these different preparations in a 
proper manner, we may hope to modify the sores, and even 
to cure them for a time. Generally speaking, the ointment, 
when applied to a sore, calms the local pain; the tincture thus 
used, produces a sensation of heat, which ceases immediately; 
the powdered extract more or less excites the sore, and the 
acrid principle in powder, when well prepared, has a special 
activity greater than caustic: hence it is a powerful remedy 
against fungous or atonic ulcers of a bad appearance; but as 
soon as these sores become painful, and especially when they 
are covered with a whitish pellicle, the use of the acrid princi- 
ple should be discontinued; for it is usually this pellicle which, 
by preserving the surface of the sore from contact with the 
* Showing that it does irritate the stomach, contrary to the assertion 
made a few lines before. — Translator. 
