An essay on the Rhus toxicodendron : with cases of its effects in the cure of paralytic affections, and other diseases of great debility / By Johnn Alderson.

  • Alderson, John, 1757-1829.
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the Rhus toxicodendron : with cases of its effects in the cure of paralytic affections, and other diseases of great debility / By Johnn Alderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/74
    by large dofes early employed, yet I have always recommended caution in the exhibition of this plant, for I have feen convulfions brought on by a too rapid increafe of the quantity. This uncertainty of efFe£t, though a confiderable objection to the employment of the Toxicoden- dron, is not peculiar to it, all the other vegetable poifons are liable to the fame inconvenience, and I am perfuaded, that the beneficial effeCts thefe plants are capable of producing by perfeverance, are too often loft by their being prematurely re- jected, either as inert or unfafe, and the good which might have been obtained, from a careful and long continued courfe, has been thus thrown away.* Another * I muft alio deprecate the practice of making up any of the dry powders of thefe plants into pills, with mufilage of Gum Arabic, for I once faw the moil deleterious effedts produced from a large dofe of the Foxglove, which had been incautioufly given, in confequence of feveral former dofes made into pills having had no eiFedt whatever on the pulfe; but thefe pills had been made up with Gum feme days before, were grown extremely hard, and in the weak ftate of the organs of digeffion, had paiTed through the ftomach undiiTolved. The increafed dofe was given m powder, and adied fo powerfully on the adtion of the heart, that the patient was with difficulty faved from immediate death, by the moil adfive exertions.