Natrium salicylicum

Volume I — Appendix

Description. — Salicylate of soda is a white granular salt, very soluble in water. Some of the salts in the market have a leaden look or reddish tinge The redness is always present when it is evaporated from an alkaline solution.

It is prepared by putting one part of salicylic acid in two parts of hot distilled water, and gradually adding bicarbonate of soda, until the salicylic acid is dissolved and the liquid has but a slight acid reaction. Filter this solution and evaporate to dryness.

Preparations. — Triturations, or in syrups and elixirs.

(No Proving.)

° Meniere's disease. Vertigo from disease of the ear. ° Ringing in the ears from the abuse of quinine. ° Rheumatism, rheumatalgia. ° Neuralgia. ° Sciatica.

Volume II — Special Therapeutics

This preparation was introduced as a substitute for the acid. It is less irritating in its local action, and less liable even in large doses to cause unpleasant toxic effects. It has not been found as

useful as a disinfectant, but seems to be a good substitute for the acid in any disease indicating the internal use of the acid. It seems to have the same control on rheumatism, rheumaialgia, neuralgia, and allied disorders.

Like the acid, the soda-salt has been found promptly curative in “Monniere’s disease,” in the second and sixth dilutions. Many of its symptoms are so similar to Quinine, that I would suggest that both the acid and the salt be used as an antidote to its toxic effect. In the Quinine cachexia, so common in malarious districts, these remedies, in the lx trituration, will prove to be efficient in removing many of the symptoms.

The Salicylate of soda will prove better than the acid as an injection into the bladder in cases of vesical catarrh, with offensive urine, offensive lochia, and also as a spray, in cases of offensive expectoration in pulmonary gangrene, or vomicce; as a gargle, in putrid sore throat. In cases of acid or putrefactive fermentation of food in the stomach, with evolution of offensive gas, the soda-salt will be found very effectual.

SANGUINAEIA CANADENSIS.

This is one of the most powerful of all our indigenous plants, rivalling in medicinal effects the most active mineral poisons. The following observations illustrate its toxic effects :

In doses of from eight to twenty grains of the powdered root it acts as a poison, producing nausea, heat or burning sensation in the stomach, tormenting thirst, faintness, vertigo, indistinct vision ; finally, violent spasmodic efforts of the stomach, free vomiting, followed by alarming prostration. When the dose is very large the vomiting may not take place.

Professor Samuel L. Mitchell, of New York, published the following case of poisoning from the tincture of blood-root :

Four men who had been employed to clean out and whitewash the apothecary shop of Bellevue Hospital found a demijohn containing what they thought to be brandy or some other spirit, and they each took a good drink of it. They were all soon seized with severe racking and burning pains in the stomach and bowels, with intense thirst. They all died.

In moderate doses Sanguinaria is regarded as an emetic, nauseant, expectorant, and diaphoretic.

In large doses it is in some degree narcotic, sedative, stimulant, alterant, emmenagogue, escharotic, and errhine. In small doses its effects on the pulse re-