American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

digested, or for gastric pain occurring without regard to the taking of
food—continuous pain and distress—since these pains are either
neuralgic or organic in character. The agent is specifically one for
functional disorder. It is a most valuable agent in catarrh of the stomach
and in the digestive failure accompanying continued fevers. It
stimulates the stomach in the beginning of convalescence, and in some
cases increases the appetite and promotes absorption of the digested
pabulum.
It is serviceable in the digestive disorders of pregnancy, stimulating
appropriation and assimilation. In those cases where the digestion is
seriously interfered with during the last three months of pregnancy, it
being almost impossible, because of the great pain induced, for the
patient to take any food into the stomach, the condition will be entirely
relieved by this agent within a few days, the patient being enabled to eat
large meals of meat without discomfort and with satisfaction.
The agent is a solvent of fibrin, and has been used to dissolve false
membranes, old hardened tissue, warts, and tumors, and has been
satisfactorily applied to epithelioma.
Mortimer Granville reports several cases of cancer of the stomach treated
very satisfactorily with this agent. In diphtheria the powder serves a most
useful purpose in dissolving and permitting the removal of the densest
exudate, which in some cases covers the pharynx and naso-pharynx, and
occludes the nares. Good results have been reported by Jacobi, Hubert
and others, and have come under our own observation. Kota and Asche
are reported in the Prescription as having observed more than a hundred
cases treated with success by this method.
Empirically it has been used in a few cases of nephritic colic with the
most marked results. It will diminish the formation of the oxalates, al.
though in cases where tried there has been an increase in uric acid.
PETROSELINUM. Carum petroselinum.
Synonym—Parsley.
CONSTITUENTS—
Apiin, apiol, volatile oil, crystallizable and fatty matter.
Apiol—This is a yellowish, oily liquid, not volatile, heavier than
water, odor peculiar and distinct from that of the plant, taste acrid,
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 99