NERVINES. Pe Fe  O9 
the demulcents.) A case occurs to our mind of a gentleman 
living in Invercargill. We had been sending him some 
medicine for another complaint. He wrote asking our advice 
as to the best doctor we knew at operating for stone, as he 
said he had made up his mind to undergo an operation. We 
gave him our opinion along with a quantity of slippery elm 
bark. He took it for about a month. We heard from him 
then, and were agreeably surprised when he told us that he 
did not require the operation, as his painful symptoms were 
gone. Uva ursi, formerly described as diuretic, is also a 
lithontryptic. In fact nearly all the diuretics are. When the 
stone or gravel is of an acid nature, the carbonate of soda 
and potash have been used with much benefit and success. 
Dr. Skelton, in his large work, from which we have already 
quoted, gives the first place in this class to peletory of the wall, 
and parsley pert, or, as the old Saxons called it, ‘* break-stone.”’ 
NERVINES. 
The doctrine of special affinities in the suitability of certain 
remedies to separate parts of the system is doubtless correct in 
the main, although some philosophers in medicine carry it too 
far. One proof that may be adduced is the action of poisons. 
One is fatal by its action on the stomach, another on the brain, 
another through the blood, &. The class of remedies which 
we shall now introduce have their power over the nerves, thus 
they are called nervines. 
VALERIAN, ENGLISH (Varerrana OFFIctNALis) 
The great wild valerian is a large, handsome plant, with a 
perennial, fibrous root, an erect stem, and grooved, two to four 
