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remedy to the test of experiment. She says: "We should take then a quantity of iron filings, any quantity, and put it into a crucible, such as goldsmiths use, which being placed among hot coals, the fire should be kept up until the crucible becomes as red-hot as the coals; when thus heated, let the heat be kept up for about a quarter of an hour, then take it off, and it will be quite black. It is next to be pulverized in a mortar until it is as fine as possible. To four drachms of this powder, add four drachms of cinnamon, sifted very fine: mix them well, and then take four ounces of sugar, and mix with it a little water; boil it into a syrup, and make it clear of scum. Then, little by little, add the powder, and stir it all the time until the process is finished. To test this, put a drop now and then on the edge of a plate, to see if it is sufficiently candied. As soon as it has become sufficiently done, pour the whole out upon a sheet of paper, and then work or beat it with a spatula, and make it into lozenges of convenient size."

There are a great many martial preparations.

Vallet's mass, which is the same article as the pil. ferri carb. of the U. S. Pharmacopoeia, is a very serviceable thing, and the purple precipitated carbonate of iron is also one of great power, but not unapt to prove irritating to the stomach, especially in the extravagant doses commonly allowed-as a teaspoonful twice or thrice a day. The pills of Dr. Blaud, of Caux, have also acquired a great celebrity for their emmenagogue power. They consist of carbonate of iron, combined with sulphate of potash.

Now, as, in the exhibition of ferruginous medicines, it is understood that the iron is the therapeutical agent on which reliance is placed, there seems to me little advantage in exhibiting it in combination with any particular acid, since it is to be supposed that such combinations are immediately dissolved and new relations established with the metallic base, in the stomach. Hence, I greatly prefer to administer the article in its metallic form; and, thanks to the ingenuity of Messrs. Quêvenne and Miquelard, Pharmaciens of La Pitié Hospital, at Paris, we are favored with an impalpable powder of iron, that is prompt to enter into chemical union with the acids of the digestive canal.

This beautiful agent, which is produced by passing a current of hydrogen over peroxide of iron heated to redness in a porcelain tube, is a microscopic powder of iron-the hydrogen, united with the oxygen of the peroxide to form water, having left the iron pure and uncombined. It is prepared at Paris by M. Debreiul, the successor of Messrs. Pellétier and Caventou, and sold by the importers and apothecaries in this country.

My own custom is to exhibit it in the form of pills weighing two grains, and I habitually direct the patient to take one of the pills very soon after each daily meal. If swallowed while the stomach is engaged in the act of digestion, it does not occasion any unpleasant sensation; and it is present and in readiness for any salifying acid that happens to appear during the chymification of the food.

It is both inodorous and tasteless, and may be used without danger during an indefinite series of days, or weeks, or months.

No doubt rests upon my mind that it is the most powerful, safest, and least disagreeable tonic drug that the therapeutist can prescribe for the amenorrhoeas depending upon a principle of anæmia-the most ordinary principle of those maladies. I ought to add that my attention was attracted to it by M. Raciborski's work sur la Ponte Périodique, and that it is to him I am first indebted for the practical advantages I have received from this medicine, and which induced me to take measures to introduce it into the practice in this country. The consumption of the article is already become very great, and will, without any doubt, become much greater-so as to supersede the other martial medicines.

In addition to the doses of iron used as above, it is necessary for the patient to observe certain rules as to the action of the bowels, which cannot be expected, under the imperfect and irregular extrica tion of biotic force of the anæmical girl, to be exact and orderly as in persons in health.

Medicines, of which the basis is aloes, are particularly adapted to such cases. The elixir proprietatis; the pill of aloes and rhubarb; the pill called Lady Webster's or English dinner-pill; the tinctura sacra, and a variety of such formulas, afford the opportunity for selecting preparations that may seem best suited to the existing indications.

Acescent food is the cause of much digestive distress. The acescent vegetables and fruits ought, therefore, to be eschewed, and, indeed, a considerable proportion of the food should be taken from the animal kingdom. Brown meats and game are preferable. A roast chicken, or roast beef or mutton, is preferable to other kinds of market provision, and it is, when practicable, useful to cause the patient to take a portion of meat at breakfast and tea, as well as at dinner.

Hot drinks, as coffee, tea, and chocolate, or cocoa, are debilitating to the already feeble powers of the stomach. When such articles ought not to be allowed, the patient can take claret and water, with meat and bread, and butter and eggs for the breakfast, often with signal advantage. But the wine should be pure and unadulterated

with brandy, which is so commonly added to every cask of claret sent to the United States for sale. Good Bordeaux wine, non frélaté, that is, not brandied, makes an admirable substitute for boiling tea, coffee, and chocolate, which, though they may not sensibly injure persons in strong health, are yet surely unsuitable to the feeble and attenuated female. The claret should be sufficiently diluted. I think that a wineglassful and a half of claret, in a common tumbler of water, is not too strong a mixture even for a delicate girl.

There is no health without exercise and light. The patient should be much in the open air, exposed to solar light, when not too intense. She should reinforce the powers of the circulation by means of exercise. The best exercise is active, not passive exercise. But I dare not devote these pages to an extended discussion of this subject. I have, in my seventh and twenty-seventh Letters to the Class, pretty clearly stated my views on the topic, and refer the Student to those Letters.

12

CHAPTER VIII.

PREGNANCY.

Pregnancy. The subject of pregnancy is one that is worthy of the most careful study by those who intend to devote themselves to the pursuits of Obstetricy, and, indeed, it merits the attention of all persons desirous to become acquainted with those miraculous powers and actions of the living body that result in forming and perfecting a human being, the crowning-work of the Deity in creation, who ordains. man thus to come forth from the darkness of nonentity, in order that he may live to shine upon the stage of the world, and there act his part in the great drama of the living world.

There have appeared a great many speculations and theories upon the subject of Generation; yet, however ingenious or inventive their authors, or however eloquent or argumentative in urging the adoption of their peculiar views, there still remains a terra incognita of Embryogeny, which human sagacity, perseverance, and toil have never been able to explore; and which seems purposely set beyond the reach of the utmost ken of human wisdom or learning.

It must ever, we should think, remain impossible for man to comprehend the secret mysteries of those proximate causes, by the force of which a non-existent, or formless being is drawn forth of the dark sources of time, and launched out on the boundless ocean of eternity; made partaker of a prospective immortality; charged with the burden. of responsibilities to God and his fellow-creatures; and bound by numerous relations to the physical world, of which he has also become a part by the very fact of his entrance into a moral state. Such a subject, nevertheless, cannot fail to prove interesting to the Medical Student, whether he approaches it in view of its physiological connections, or whether he wishes to investigate it as a psychological inquiry of the utmost importance in any system of moral philosophy. What subject, indeed, could be more replete with interest than one which pretends or seeks to explain all the changes that are experienced by the embryo, from its first discoverable estate as a drop of pellucid

lymph, or as maculæ germinativæ, up to the time when it comes forth into the world endowed with all the powers that are appropriate to a healthy, full-grown foetus at term! Such a study involves a comparison of its organs with those of all other living creatures as well as those of the adult animal, and a complete history of their development and growth; and it ought also to comprise an account of the accidents and diseases to which it is liable, with a full detail of all the peculiarities of the ovum and its several parts, and a comparison of them with the several parts in various animals. The subject comprises, therefore, a vast field of physiology, which might be profitably explored by the curious Student; but the limits of this work are too confined to admit of it being treated of at length on this occasion.

If, as it has been eloquently said, the springing up of a blade of grass from the bosom of the earth is calculated to fill the mind with wonder and amazement, what far more vivid impressions of the miraculous power of God are likely to be made upon those who contemplate the unfolding of those organs and faculties, by means of which man learns not only to know and acknowledge his Maker, but to render himself, as it were, a still more fitting image of Him, by the education of the faculties that have justly given him the title of the lord of creation! In addition to the interest as a merely philosophical study with which our subject is clothed, it appears to me indispensable that the Medical Student should make himself acquainted with it, as taught in past times, as well as at the present era, and that he should aim to obtain a thorough knowledge of the subject, knowledge which can alone fit him for the conduct of cases in midwifery. But, let him consider whether in aiming at this so-called practical knowledge, he is not also called upon to make himself master of all those scholarly acquirements which can shed a light of revelation upon the dark and doubtful questions that in his practice he must not only solve, but instantly solve. To know that a pregnant woman has a child in the womb, and to learn by rote something of the presentations, positions, and manœuvres relative to the midwifery operation, is but a vulgar knowledge, common to old women and to physicians who confine themselves to the study of text-books and the unrecorded and misunderstood experience of their own clinical operations. The Student ought to study the subject not merely as a midwifery qualification, but as an Obstetric Science, the possession of which places him in the fore front of his professional rank.

Pregnancy is the developing of an embryo or fœtus in the womb.

An account of pregnancy comprises a relation of all the changes.

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