MISCELLANY. 
175 
exact amount employed, as he may thereby be enabled not only to form 
a much more correct estimate of its influence, but to increase or diminish 
the quantity in definite proportions as the indication may require. 
In large cities, where carbonated waters are manufactured on a large 
scale, the most easy plan of all to obtain the use of this new therapeutic 
agent, and in a perfectly pure condition, is to affix the elastic tube to a 
bottle of soda water, as it is called, and having introduced the canula into 
the vagina, to compel the gas to pass over by immersing the bottle 
in a basin of boiling water, by which means a quantity of gas would 
be obtained equal to about five times the volume of the soda water em- 
ployed. 
The exact quantity of pure carbonate of lime required to furnish a gal- 
lon of carbonic acid, is 242.86 grains, near enough to half an ounce to 
allow that weight to be substituted for it. To decompose this quantity, 
a fluid ounce of common muriatic acid will be sufficient. By adopting 
these proportions the gas may be administered in definite doses, as it 
were, and its effects be much more satisfactorily observed and deter- 
mined. 
Am. Med. Lib. and Intelligencer, Baltimore, April 2d, 1838. 
Medical properties of Codeia. — With regard to this remedy we have the 
following statement of Dr. Miranda, of Havana: "Desirous for a long 
time of possessing an efficacious remedy in gastritis, I had recourse to a 
number of remedies recognised as anti-nervous, if 1 may be permitted thus 
to express myself; thus 1 employed the martial preparations, which have 
been vaunted for this kind of affections of the stomach. I have never 
obtained by these means but imperfect cures, which, according to me, 
resulted only in metastasis, and could not justify the pretended efficacy 
of these remedies. 
"I sought in vain to study the temperament of patients, to know if, under 
circumstances nearly identical, I could count upon happy effects, either 
from anti-spasmodics, or from martial preparations; but the result always 
left me in uncertainty as to the true effect produced by the agent employed, 
and I remained little satisfied with my medication. 
"An intelligent gentleman, one of the most so upon the island, who has 
honored me with his friendship, M. Lobe, informed me of codeia discovered 
by M. Robiquet, and indicated, at the same time, the properties that had 
been attributed to it in France, principally by M. Barbice d'Amiens. I 
made trial of it, and to be convinced by my own experience of the degree 
of energy and efficacy of this new product in great nervous irritation of 
the mucous membrane, which I regard as the seat of this sort of affections, 
I had recourse to the syrup of codeia,* which I employed alone. I can 
* See the formula in the Ninth volume of this Journal, p. .352. 
