of a creek of the river, in which I was informed the greatest mortality happened. The symptoms differ in different cases; but all the cattle, feeding indiscriminately, are seized with a swelling of the abdomen, attended with convulsions, and die with horrid bellowing, in the space of a few days. No person dares venture to flay the recent carcases, it having been found by experience that not only the hands, but even the face, in consequence of the warm steams from the body, become inflamed and gangrenous, and that death finally ensued?

"I was asked whether this disease was a kind of plague; whether the meadow in question produced any venomous spiders; or whether the yellowcoloured water was poisonous ?

"That it was no plague appeared from its not being contagious, and from the spring being its most fatal season. I saw no spiders here, except what are common throughout all Sweden; nor was the yellow sediment of the water any thing more than a common innocent ochre of iron.

"I had scarcely landed from the boat in which I was taken to this meadow, than the Cicuta presented itself before me, and explained the cause of all this destruction. It is most abundant in the meadow where the cattle are first seized with the distemper, especially near the shore. The slightest observation teaches us that brute animals distinguish, by natural instinct, such plants as are wholesome to them, from such as are poisonous. The cattle therefore do not eat this hemlock in summer or autumn; whence few of them perish at those seasons, and such only as devour the herb in question incautiously, or from an inordinate appetite. But when they are first turned out in the spring, partly from their eagerness for fresh herbage, partly from their long fasting and starvation, they seize with avidity whatever comes within their reach. The herbage is then but short, and insufficient to satisfy them; probably also it is in general more succulent, immersed under water, and scarcely perceptibly scented; so that they are unable to distinguish the wholesome from the pernicious kinds. I remarked every where that the radical leaves only were cropped, no others; which confirmed what I have asserted. In a neighbouring meadow I saw this same plant cut with the hay for winter food; so that it is no wonder if in that state some, even of the more cautious cattle, are destroyed by it." Fl. Lapp. ed. 2. 76.

PART

PART II.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS.

I.

A Letter to Dr JONES on the Composition of the Eau Medicinale d' Husson. By JAMES MOORE, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Surgeon to the Second Regiment of Life Guards, and Director of the National Vaccine Establishment. 8vo. pp. 46. Johnson, London, 1811.

WE E took an early opportunity of noticing the pamphlet of Dr Jones, in which a French nostrum, under the title of Eau Medicinale, was first announced in this country, as a specific for the paroxysm of gout. The medicine, in consequence of being adapted to a gentlemanly disease, and administered to men of wealth and rank, soon became the subject of general conversation, and the mystery which accompanied it, rendered it still more interesting. The sum of Dr Jones's knowledge of the medicine amounted only to the result of a few cases of gout, in which it had been administered with success, during the paroxysm. For he professed a total ignorance of its composition, and stated merely that it was the discovery of a French officer, of the name of Husson; that it was not gratiola, nor some other vegetable substances, from which it had been supposed to be prepared; and that he believed it to be a vegetable drug hitherto, as Husson had asserted, unemployed in medicine.

The fame of the medicine, however, rapidly extended: for that opprobrium medicorum, the gouty paroxysm, was seen to yield in the course of a few hours, or at the most of one or two days, to this triumphant nostrum. Noblemen and philosophers concurred in sounding its praises, if not in dancing hornpipes in testimony of the new agility and flexibility of toe, with which it had endowed them; and the president of the Royal Society, who experienced the most extraordinary deliverance from his arch-enemy, is said to have made it almost his pocket-companion. Then the chemists began to ply their analytic art, to detect the nature of its ingredients; VOL. VII. No. 28.

Ff

but

but they only discovered that it was not mineral. The regular practitioners, guided by the information of their olfactory and lingual organs, set about administering medicines of analogous properties, and fancied that digitalis, tobacco, digitalis lutea, and some other narcotic plants, constituted the basis of the magic water: While the quacks did not lose so favourable an opportunity of public ignorance and curiosity, and immediately advertised the genuine eau medicinale, which some pretended to have prepared, after accurate analysis, and others to have imported from France; but which all knew just as well as the inventor.

In this bustle of wonder and inquiry, without any adequate success, Mr Moore has come forward with the ingenious little pamphlet, which lies before us, and we are disposed to believe has developed the mystery.

It must be stated, that M. Husson, like the rest of the fraternity of rostrum-mongers, from whatever origin they spring, extolled his remedy as a cure for almost every malady that can afflict the human body, as well as for madness in dogs, and all distempers in cattle. Under this indiscriminate recommendation, it produced, as might be anticipated, considerable mischief; for it is obviously a medicine of active powers: and, in consequence, the sale of it was prohibited at Paris by order of the police. Its fame spread over Germany, however, and reached Warsaw, where an acute physician, Dr Wolfe, detected its peculiar virtues in the cure of gout: and the knowledge of this fact, it appears, was acquired by Dr Jones, at Montpellier, and produced the publication of his pamphlet on his return to England, where it excited the bustle just described.

Mr Moore began by examining the sensible and operative properties of the eau medicinale, which, by the way, is sold in bottles containing two drachms each, the half of which is commonly found sufficient for a dose.

says,

"I

"The first time I opened one of Husson's bottles," he was struck with its having a smell of opium, and when I tasted it I was confirmed in that belief. Several persons of whom I made inquiry, were also of opinion that the eau medicinale contained some flavour of opium. When to this was conjoined the fact of its fre quently relieving very acute pain and promoting sleep, I was led to suspect, that opium formed part of the composition of the medicine. "The next point was to find out what other ingredients it contained; for it is evident, that there is at least one possessing qualities very different from those of opium. To detect this I turned my thoughts to the sensible operations of the medicine on the human body; especially this, that in the small dose of two drachms, it often acts with considerable violence as an emetic and purgative, notwithstanding the opium which appears to be in the mixture. The

vegetable

vegetable productions which are known to possess such active powers, are few in number; that which suggested itself most fequently to my mind, was the root of white hellebore," &c.

With some ingenuity Mr Moore, reflecting that Husson was not a medical man, set about analysing, not the man's nostrum, but his mind, and therefore turned to the books, which it seemed probable that such a person might refer to for information. On consulting the account of the properties of white hellebore given by Pliny, Mr Moore found that that ancient author's detail of the diseases, in which that herb was beneficial, as well as of the circumstances which were deemed adverse to its use, accords, in several striking points, with the detail given by Husson; so as to render it highly probable that he took the hint of his medicine from Pliny. Among the diseases enumerated by both, are epilepsy, hydrophobia, gout, insanity, &c.; and the list concludes in Pliny with the words, " Eodem et phthiriasis emendatur *;" which is thus translated in that of Husson, "Elle a la meme empire sur la maladie pediculaire." A singular coincidence, most assuredly, and strongly corroborating the probability of Mr Moore's suggestion. But when Mr Moore observes upon this passage, "thus by copying Pliny, he bestows upon the eau medicinale a power of curing a disease of which there has hardly been an authenticated case, since the death of Sylla," he betrays a singular want of information upon the subject of lousy diseases, of which we have seen a number of instances †. Among other prohibitions against the use of hellebore, Pliny particularly mentions ulcerations of the chest, spitting of blood, or any disease in the side or fauces; and Husson acknowledges that the "eau medicinale n'est point propre aux pulmoniques.' But to proceed to the synthetical experiment. Mr Moore

made

*Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. XXV. Cap. v.

Dr Willan has the following observation upon this subject: "These insects (viz. body-lice,) it is well known are bred abundantly among the inhabitants of sordid dwellings, of jails, workhouses, &c. and in such places prey upon persons of all ages indiscriminately. But in the prurigo senilis they arise notwithstanding every attention to cleanliness or regimen, and multiply so rapidly that the patient endures extreme distress from their perpetual irritation," &c. "Many marvellous stories are related by Forestus, Schenckius, and others, respecting lice bred under the skin, and discharged in swarms from abscesses, strumous ulcers, and vesications. The mode in which pediculi are generated being now so well ascertained, no credit can be given to these accounts: It is probable, however, the authors of them had mistaken for lice some other species of insects, which are not unfrequently found in putrefactive sores. In the same manner may be explained the accounts given by Aristotle, Pliny, Cælius, and Josephus, of the deaths of Phe ecydes, Alcmeon, Ennius, Antiochus, and Herod." On Cutaneous Diseases, P. I, p. 90.

made a vinous tincture of the white hellebore, which had a striking resemblance in taste and smell to the eau medicinale. He mixed with it some tincture of opium, as well as some crude opium, and extract of opium; but although the taste and appearance could easily be given, he found that there was a peculiarity in the smell of the eau medicinale, which none of his mixtures had. But as Husson was a Frenchman, our author concluded that he would probably adopt some French form of the opiate; and on examining Beaume's Elemens de Pharmacie, he found that the Parisian physicians had adopted Sydenham's prescription for their laudanum; which is an infusion of crude opium with saffron, cinnamon, and cloves, in Spanish white wine." I immediately procured a phial of Sydenham's laudanum," Mr Moore. adds, " and on mixing it with the wine of hellebore, I found that this mixture approached very near to the eau medicinale in colour, in taste, and even in smell; and when the mixture had stood for some time, there gradually formed the same cloudy deposit, which is so remarkable in Husson's medicine." He found, however, that there was a variety in the smell in different specimens of the eau medicinale, in consequence of the difference of the wine. With respect to the proportion of laudanum, Mr Moore observes, "half a bottle, that is one dram of the eau medicinale, frequently relieves acute pain. This could not be effected with less than twenty or thirty drops of laudanum. And as in severe cases a whole bottle is requisite, this double quantity will contain a full dose of laudanum. In mixing the two infusions, round numbers would probably be employed, I therefore conceive that in the two drams, which one of Husson's bottles holds, one fourth is laudanum. This quantity seems to correspond with the effect of relieving pain, and also with that of mitigating and retarding the evacuant powers of the white hellebore."

Mr Moore then put this mixture to the test of experiment, and had administered it in four cases of gout, when he committed this pamphlet to the press. "In these four cases, the effects of the mixt infusions were precisely the same with equal doses of the eau medicinale. In two of the cases, where two drams were given, vomiting and purging were produced; and in one case, the medicine occasioned constipation, which happens also with the eau medicinale; and the gout in all was relieved." p. 35.

On the whole, therefore, the evidence at present appears to be as conclusive as the nature of the subject will admit of, and requires only a farther experience in the use of the remedy to establish the identity of its curative powers. The invalid will have at least this advantage from the discovery; he will procure relief

at