Medicines, their uses and mode of administration : including a complete conspectus of the three British pharmacopoeias, an account of all the new remedies, and appendix of formulae / by J. Moore Neligan ; with notes and additions, conforming it to the pharmacopoeia of the United States, and including all that is new or important in recent improvements by David Meredith Reese.
- Neligan, J. Moore (John Moore), 1815-1863.
- Date:
- 1851
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medicines, their uses and mode of administration : including a complete conspectus of the three British pharmacopoeias, an account of all the new remedies, and appendix of formulae / by J. Moore Neligan ; with notes and additions, conforming it to the pharmacopoeia of the United States, and including all that is new or important in recent improvements by David Meredith Reese. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![successful treatment will very frequently depend on the employ- ment of remedies calculated to remove the more immediate cause or source of irritation by which the spasmodic affection is produ- ced. It follows, therefore, that under peculiar circumstances, the remedies which will be found most successful in counteracting spasm must be derived from very different divisions of the Materia Medica; and thus the term Antispasmodic will become applicable to a narcotic, a sedative, a stimulant, a cathartic, or a tonic. There are, however, certain medicines which appear to exert a direct control over spasmodic action independent of any influence upon its exciting causes, and these will form the subject of our inquiry in the present chapter. [The foregoing remarks are discriminating and judicious, and yet no allusion is made to three of the most potent means which our art recognises among its resources for subduing spasm, and with- out which neither of those here named can always be relied on. Emetics are among our most useful and efficient antispasmodics, and even when given only in nauseating doses, often without being carried far enough to excite vomiting, by relaxing the muscular fibre, upon the constriction of which spasmodic diseases depend, will afford speedy relief. But the lancet is our most certain, speedy, and effectual antispasmodic, and a. full bleeding drawn from a large orifice, the patient being placed in an erect position so as to favour syncope, will be found best adapted to relieve those violent and rapid spasms which endanger life, and even when all the rest may have been used in vain. The warm bath, of which valuable reme- dy in spasm no mention is made, though it may be called non- medical, is, nevertheless, an agent of great importance singly em- ployed, and invaluable as an auxiliary in severe and protracted spasm, especially when the bowels are involved in the disease.] Assafoetida, D. L. E. Gummy, resinous exudation of Ferula assafoetida; probably, also, of Ferula Persica (Edin.).—A native of Persia, especially the provinces of Khorasan and Laristan; be- longing to the Linnsean class and order Penlandria Digynia, and to the natural family Umbellifera?. B. C.—The root is long, tapering, of the thickness of a man's leg, black external- ly, white and juicy internally; of a powerful alliaceous odour, sending up many radical leaves, about two feet long ; and after some years a round stem, clothed with leafless sheaths, eight or nine feet high, and bearing yellow flowers in umbels, succeeded by flat, thin, reddish-brown fruit. The whole plant dies after it has once flowered and ripened its seed. M. of Prep.—When the plant is four years old, the root-leaves are removed, and in forty days afterward the top of the root is sliced off; a fetid juice exudes, which concretes in a couple of days, is then scraped ofT, and a fresh slice of the root made ; more juice exudes, is collected as before, and the same process repeated from ten to twelve times within six weeks, until the root is completely exhausted. The juice is exposed to the sun to become harder, packed in casks and cases, which are sent, by way of Bombay, to Europe. P. P.—Assafoetida is met with in commerce in irregular lum PS from half a pound to three pounds in weight; of a pinkish-yellow and reddish-brown colour externally ; when recently cut, of a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21143614_0052.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
