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prompted him to the muscular movements. Yet he was fully conscious that he was in a state of preternatural excitement. The woman's sensations were similar to those of her husband. The condition of the child could only be gathered from the obviously excited irritability. A dose of Sulphate of Zinc caused vomiting in the woman and child, but had no effect on the man, and in less than an hour his symptoms were worse. The brain was evidently congested; he was stupid and almost comatose; pupils nearly insensible; pulse slow and labouring; respirations deep. He recovered.

21. London Medical Gazette, 1840 (vol. i'of New Series), p. 110. Translated from Bulletin Méd. du Midi.

October 1st.-Several persons ate at dinner at 6 p.m. some mushrooms. They were identified as being the Agaricus bulbosus of Bulliard (Amanita viridis of Persoon, or Agaricus phalloides of Chevallier's Paris Flora). Their poisonous action is also referred to by Vaillant.

CASE 1.-M. O—, the father, felt uncomfortable at 8 a.m. the next day. Anxiety and nausea came on, and then vomiting of mucus and greenish substances with bits of undigested food; copious half-liquid stools containing fragments of a spongy appearance. The vomitings were succeeded by retchings, with general weakness, coldness of the extremities, pale face, burning thirst, and dryness of throat and mouth. During the night cramps came on in the calves and soles, face was contracted, limbs cold and livid, urine suppressed, pulse vanishing. From time to time there were intervals of sinking, but without drowsiness or delirium, and the patient was perfectly himself.

October 3rd.-The cramps and vomiting had ceased; the liquid stools continued but were less frequent; less colic; no pain in head, and but slight tendency to drowsiness. Towards evening, during the night, and particularly on the morning of 4th, the symptoms, which had seemed to diminish, became frightfully intense; the stools, though less frequent, were tinged with deep-black blood. Toward 6 p.m. the debility made rapid progress, yet the patient still preserved his recollection. He died after a death struggle, which lasted thirty or forty minutes.

CASE 2.-M. O—, the son, was attacked on the morning of October 2nd with vomiting, and had copious stools with but little

THE

BRITISH JOURNAL

OF

HOMEOPATHY.

THE ACTION OF DRUGS UPON THE EYE.

By Dr. HUGHES.

LECTURE IV.

THE first of our still remaining list of eye medicines is

Rhus,

under which name I include the "venenata " as well as the "toxicodendron " kind of sumach,

The specific irritation which these plants exert upon the skin is naturally displayed also on the conjunctiva, and Hahnemann's pathogenesis includes many symptoms, objective and subjective, of inflammation of this membrane. They have no very distinctive characters; and, possessing as we do so many excellent remedies for catarrhal ophthalmia, Rhus has hardly been required or employed in its treatment. It is otherwise, however, with ophthalmia scrofulosa. The phlyctenule which characterise this affection are very like, if they are not identical with, the vesicular eruption it developes upon the skin; it is indeed no uncommon thing to find their presence associated with some amount of general eczema of the face. When this is so, Rhus takes precedence of all other remedies in strumous ophthalmia; VOL. XLI, NO, CLXV.―JULY, 1883.

and even without such indication may often do good service in it, when there is great photophobia, tendency to oedema and chemosis, and when (Drs. Allen and Norton say) there is a profuse gush of tears on opening the spasmodically contracted lids. You will find testimonies to its value, put forth from homoeopathic and from old-school sources, collected by Dr. Dudgeon in his article on the drug. Its lachrymation is very acrid, and this quality is noted by Dr. Dunham as belonging to all the fluids and secretions of the body under the influence of Rhus. I was led by the presence of such a symptom to give it in a case of recurring gouty ophthalmia, to the very great relief and general improvement of the patient.

The erysipelatous inflammation set up in Rhus poisoning does not fail to show itself in the eyelids, and the plant naturally finds successful employment in phlegmonous inflammations of this part. I cannot, however, agree with Drs. Allen and Norton in considering such a condition analogous to the palpebral symptoms which accompany inflammations of the deeper structures of the eye, as orbital cellulitis, and suppurations of the uveal tract. Its value in such conditions must stand on its own merits, and their testimony to it is very strong. It is the remedy, with them, for orbital cellulitis. "Some alarming cases of this disease," they say, "occurring in our own experience, have been promptly arrested by this drug. In one case one eye was entirely lost, and had been operated upon with a view of providing free exit for the suppurative process, and the disease was making rapid and alarming progress in the other eye. Rhus 1 speedily arrested its progress. Again they write: "Its grandest sphere of action is to be found in suppurative iritis, or in the still more severe cases in which the inflammatory process has involved the remainder of the uveal tract (ciliary body and choroid), especially if of traumatic origin, as after cataract extraction. As a remedy in this dangerous form of inflammation of the eye it stands unrivalled, no other drug having as yet been found equal to it in importance in this serious malady."

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In favour of this power of Rhus over acute suppurative

processes is a case of poisoning with the radicans variety observed by Dr. Helmuth,* in which "the symptoms were all those belonging to septicemia. Suppuration had taken place in the ankle, which was affected with severe synovitis. Besides the symptoms above mentioned, the patient had vesicles in the mouth and throat, large and purple bullæ over the leg, which was immensely tumefied and red, together with a toxæmic expression, which was remarkable in every respect."

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The virtues of Rhus in the so-called "rheumatic paralysis," resulting from exposure of the affected parts to damp cold, are well known. It thus finds employment when loss of power of one or more of the muscles of the eyeball arises from this cause, vieing here with Causticum.

I have next to speak of rue,

Ruta.

Hahnemann mentions that rue was commended by Rosenstein, Swedjaur and Chomel for dimness of vision caused by over-exertion of the eyes, and points to S. 38 and 39 in his "observations of others " as showing that the plant causes what it cures. These are- "It is before his eyes, as when the sight is fatigued by reading too long," and "slight, pressure-like pain in the right eye, with obscuration of vision, as if one had looked too long and intently at an object, which distressed the eye." A Hungarian physician, of the name of Elgâjaki, has lately drawn attention to the same double series of facts. Asthenopia is the morbid ocular condition here indicated as the sphere of Ruta; and Drs. Allen and Norton commend it much in the treatment of this affection, especially when of the accommodative variety.

You will remember that it was "with euphrasy and rue" that Milton's angel purged Adam's visual nerve that he might see.

I come now to the acid obtained from our Cina (itself * System of Surgery, 4th ed., p. 67.

the product of more than one species of artemisia), santoninic acid, or

Santonine.

The reputation of Cina as a vermifuge naturally led to the administration of Santonine for the same end, and the frequent over-dosage practised showed a peculiar power on its part of causing a yellow or greenish appearance of objects in the patients who took it. This xanthopsia has since been studied by personal experiment, and by none more thoroughly than by Dr. Edmund Rose, of Berlin. He finds* the derangement of vision produced by it to have three degrees. The first he calls " colour blindness; " the patient sees all things yellow or green because he is insensible to the violet rays of light, the spectrum itself seeming as it were truncated at the end having that colour. The second is "colour confusion," in which the distinction of hues becomes lost, though all are seen; this he considers to be the condition known (from the celebrated chemist who laboured under it) as Daltonism. The third is the degree of full intoxication; in which the patient is the subject not only of illusions of vision but of hallucinations, i.e., the sight of imaginary objects when the eyes are closed, under which circumstances the chromopsies of the two previous stages disappear.

Dr. Rose's inquiry into the causation of these phenomena leads him entirely to reject the theory-of which indeed there is no proof-that the xanthopsia is due to a staining of the media of the eye. He sets it down rather, connecting it with the other phenomena, to congestion of the retina, which the ophthalmoscope demonstrates to be present. The colour-confusions and hallucinations he traces to a corresponding influence on the optic nerves and the visual centres respectively. The latter he connects with the hallucinations of other senses, the vomiting (which is evidently of cerebral origin), and the spasms of the muscles supplied by the cranial nerves.

Such investigations seemed at first sight to have a Archiv f. Path. Anat., xxviii; and Brit. Journ. of Hom., xxvii, 214.

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