the hearing or the sight but respiration becomes extremely difficult; the muscles drawn tight over the tho. rax keep it immoveable, and death succeeds by asphyxia.

The tetanus depends on the irritation of the spinal marrow, which the upas, dissolved and absorbed in the wound, produces. If the spinal marrow be divided transversely near the occiput, the tetanus occasioned by the upas, continues; but ceases immediately when the spinal marrow in the vertebral canal, is destroyed.

If the upas is applied to the spinal marrow in a place cut cross-ways, the tetanus succeeds instantaneously. If it is applied to a nerve only, it produces no effect. Injected into the veins or arteries, it acts very rapidly.

The upas diffused in water and injected into the serous cavities, such for example, as those of the heart or the lower regions of the belly, is quickly absorbed, and the animals die of tetanus and asphyxia.

All the mucous surfaces are capable of absorbing the poison. If given with the common aliments, or injected into the rectum, vagina, or bladder, it infallibly brings on tetanus, unless the dose be extremely small. Applied to the conjunctive nerve, it produces the same effect.

When taken into the stomach, a greater quantity is required to kill an animal, than when applied to a wound. On the eyes this poison has no effect, unless used in large quantities.

The upas acts by absorption, and through the medium

of the blood which is impregnated with it. It has been applied to parts almost entirely separated from the body of an animal, and which had no means of communication left, but by an artery and a vein. In the first experiment made on a dog, a few drops of upas were enclosed between ligatures in a cavity of the intestines divided from the mesentery, and having no other connexion with it, than by a vein and artery.

In a second experiment the thigh of a dog was amputated with the exception of the trunks of the crural vein and artery, the thigh was then pierced with a pointed piece of wood dipped in the upas. In both cases the poison was carried from the isolated parts into the general .circulation by the vessels which remained, and the animals died of tetanus.

A ligature immediately placed on a limb, over a wound made with the upas, prevents the effect of the poison from shewing itself, whilst it remains on; but it appears as soon as the ligature is taken off.

A general numbness produced by opium, or evacuations by means of salts, have no effect in resisting the action of the upas. Injecting air into the lungs by any convenient mode to cause an artificial respiration on the appearance of asphyxia succeeding tetanus, will prolong the life of a dog and sometimes save it, if the dose of upas introduced into a wound or the organs of digestion has not been too considerable. Even when the dose has been excessive, the animal may live an hour or more, if an artificial respiration be excited.

The nux vomica and St. Ignace's bean, are seeds of two trees of the same genus or order as upas tieuté, and produce the same effects.

In a great number of experiments, the phenomena observed in varying the appplication of extracts of the nux vomica and St. Ignace's bean, were invariably the same as those produced by the different applications of the upas.

The nux vomica and St. Ignace's bean, like the upas, act as powerful stimulants on the spinal marrow. The extracts of both, particularly if made with alcohol, are extremely active and bitter like those of the upas. There are however in the genus, strychnos, certain species, such as the strychnos potatorum and the vontac apple that are not bitter, and have no dangerous effects on the animal economy.

The extracts of the bitter species of the strychnos, such as the nux vomica, St. Ignace's bean, and the upas, in the organs of digestion, have a limited effect. It is known that the nux vomica, and St. Ignace's bean, have been often employed as medicaments in moderate doses. Litle advantage, however, has been derived from them, because their effects have not been sufficiently known, and because they have been prescribed in maladies which they could not affect.

The bitter species of the strychnos, act particularly on the spinal marrow; and M. Delile concludes that in those which depend on the atony of this organ, they might be prescribed with good effect.

(Signed)

Paris, Oct. 31, 1809.

DELILE, D. MS

Account of the SPOTTED FEVER, which lately prevailed in ORANGE County, (N. Y.) read at the last Anniversary Meeting of the Medical Society of said County. By DR. D. R. ARNELL, and communicatod to DR. HOSACK, M. D.

THE appearance and prevalence of the spotted fever or typhus petechialis in this district of country has been so considerable, and its progress, in many instances, so fatal, that it has arrested the attention of the most of our society, and induced me to write on that disease. Perhaps I shall not be able to throw any new light upon the subject after so much has been written by the eastern physicians, who have been more acquainted with its progress, duration, extent, and termination. From what I have read of their writing they have uniformly considered it a new disease; for my own part, I think it only a species of the typhus petechialis of Cullen, and in reading the Medicus Novissimus which was published one hundred years ago, I find a fever there described as prevailing about London at that time, partaking of all its most prominent symptoms. A short extract from that work, page 272, may be of service in establishing the analogy of the disease there described as the prevailing malignant fever with the one which we are now considering.

"It is attended with very severe symptoms, as violent pains of the head and stomach, frequent shivering, and a sudden but very great weakness, without manifest cause,

anxiety and pains in the back and loins, the breath smells strong; there is great thirst, continual waking, spots sometimes appear on the body, the pulse is unequal and very low; urine not so high coloured as in simple fevers. There are sometimes convulsions, deliriums, &c. &c. It may be caused by an infectious air; by eating corrupt food, or drinking unwholesome liquors, as stinking water and the like. This is a very dangerous disease and oftens kills in a very little time. An unequal, quick, and weak pulse is a bad sign. If the hands tremble much when the pulse is felt, the disease doth most commonly end in death, especially if there be a foul tongue, a ghastly countenance, and the eyes sunk in the head. The cure must be undertaken as soon as possible, for this disease admits of no delay." The medicines recommended for the cure consist of spirituous and heating remedies and alexipharmics, and when the spots appear on the surface of the body they are to be promoted by sweating medicines; blistering plasters are to be applied to the legs and thighs, especially if the cuticular eruptions advance but slowly or seem to retract before the state of the disease.

I have omitted Dr. Woodman's theory of the coagulation and dissolution of the blood, as the proximate cause of this disease, and only taken the leading symptoms to shew that the spotted fever is one hundred years old. Nay, I believe the fever described by the celebrated Dr. Sydenham under the title of " the new fever," and which prevailed in several parts of England, and began in February 1684, to be the very same disease,* and I am inclined to believe that it has been frequently and perhaps at

* See Dr. Pechey's translation of Sydenham, page 410.