AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF SALINE CATHARTICS, BY MATTHEW HAY, M.D., EDIN., PROFESSOR OF MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE AND MEDICAL LOGIC IN THE FORMERLY ASSISTANT TO THE PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA WITH WOODCUTS AND LITHOGRAPH. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO. MDCCCLXXXIV. 1693.0 с NOTE. THIS Memoir was originally presented to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh as a graduation thesis for the doctorate, and gained for its author a gold medal, as also the Goodsir Memorial Prize. It was subsequently published, with a few alterations and additions, in Vols. XVI. and XVII. of the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, and the present publication is a verbatim reprint from that Journal. THE ACTION OF SALINE CATHARTICS. BY MATTHEW HAY, M.D., EDINBURGH. Of the various classes of cathartics in common use the saline have been the most recently introduced. Common salt, it is true, was occasionally employed as a purgative by the ancients, and probably the tartrates of potash were similarly used by Paracelsus and his followers; but it was not until the discovery of sulphate of soda by Glauber in 1658, named by him sal mirabile, that the attention of physicians was drawn to this class of cathartics. Five years later, the Duke of Holstein paid 500 thalers for the secret of the preparation of the long famous sal polychrestus or tartarum vitriolatum, a mixture probably of the neutral and the acid sulphates of potash. Seignette, an apothecary of Rochelle, prepared, in 1672, the double tartrate of potash and soda. Grew, in 1675, was the first to observe the presence of a purgative salt in the springs at Epsom, a salt which was afterwards shown by Dr. Black to be the sulphate of magnesia. Phosphate of soda was, in 1737, found in the urine by Hellot, and, some fifty years later, it was introduced into medicine as a purgative by Dr. Pearson. So that, by the commencement of the present century all the principal cathartic salts now in use had been discovered. In a few of the works on the materia medica published towards the close of the last century, as those of Cullen and of Lewis, some attempt was made to indicate the manner in which the salts produced purgation; but, in the absence of experiment, and with a very imperfect knowledge of alimentary physiology, the opinions expressed are of little or no value. The first scientific explanation of their action was based upon the discoveries of Fischer and of Dutrochet,1 who had demonstrated the remarkable physical property of salts known as osmosis. Poisseuille, in a very ingenious monograph, believed to have found 2 1 Dutrochet, Recherches sur l'endosmose et l'exosmose, Paris, 1828. 2 Poisseuille, Recherch. expériment sur les mouvements des liquides dans les tubes de petites diamètres, Paris, 1828. Comptes rendus, t. xix. 1844, p. 94. |