PILULES  METALORUM  ET  AMARUM. 
69 
The  range  of  morbid  conditions  to  which  this  pill  is  applicable 
is  astonishing  to  any  but  the  educated  of  the  medical  profession. 
It  is  applicable  to  all  cases — saving,  perhaps,  organic  disease  of 
important  organs,  and  here,  indeed,  it  could  do  no  harm, 
although  it  might  be  impossible  to  cure — when  the  object  is  to 
improve  the  quality  of  the  blood.  But  it  is  more  particularly 
applicable,  and  useful,  and  curative,  in  the  whole  list  of  what  I 
will  take  the  liberty  of  calling  malarial  cachexia?.  My  native 
country,  and  that  of  my  early  study  and  practice,  is  one  bathed  in 
malarial  poison,  and  through  which  flow  the  Ouachita  of  Arkan- 
sas, and  the  lied  River,  dividing  the  latter  State  from  Texas. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  composition  of  this  pill  is  to  be  found 
in  any  book.  The  manner  in  which  I  was  led  to  its  combina- 
tion was  natural  enough,  and  the  only  wonder  is  that  the  com- 
bination had  not  been  made  before. 
It  was  and  is  a  very  easy  matter  to  stop  the  paroxysms  of  a 
quotidian,  tertian  or  quartan  ague,  but  in  a  good  many  cases  the 
paroxysms  return  at  the  end  of  one,  two  or  three  weeks,  and  in 
some  cases,  at  the  end  of  four  weeks — -the  latter  giving  rise, 
doubtless,  to  the  designation  mensce  in  the  older  writers.  They 
were  known  among  the  people  as  one,  two  and  three  weeks' 
"  chills."  My  father  being  a  physician,  I  necessarily  saw  much 
of  the  treatment  of  these  maladies,  according  to  the  ideas  and 
teachings  of  the  time.  When  a  tyro  in  medicine  and  a  com- 
mencing practitioner,  they  continually  met  me,  and  were  among 
the  opprobria  medicorum. 
I  reasoned  thus  :  Sulphate  of  quinia  is  an  excellent  remedy 
for  the  ague.  Its  great  value  is  unquestionable.  So  is  and  was 
that  of  the  Jesuits'  bark,  from  which  quinine  is  made.  Iron, 
also,  is  good  in  chronic  ague,  and  enters  into  many  or  most  pre- 
scriptions for  its  cure.  So,  too,  of  arsenious  acid.  Its  reputa- 
tion is  older  than  that  of  the  bark,  or  of  quinine,  and  it  is  still 
resorted  to  when  the  latter  fails.  Late  investigations,  too,  have 
shown  that  all  the  bitters  were  antagonistic  to  the  malarial 
poison,  and  that  strychnia  more  particularly  was  especially  so. 
The  inference  was  obvious.  I  would  do  a  sort  of  "  shot-gun  " 
practice  in  these  cases,  and  combine  the  whole  of  these  drugs  in 
appropriate  proportions.    I  have  never  had  cause  to  condemn 
