Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

1859.] Action of Mercury on the Secretion of Bile. 767when the disease was taken in time; for, if the malady is toofar advanced, and has assumed the characteristics of gastromalacia,(softening of the stomach,) a cure is rarely obtained.Sometimes, even in these circumstances, we may succeed incalming some symptoms so fatiguing to the little patient, such,as the inextinguishable thirst, and tbe vomiting.In a large number of patients cured by raw meat, verminousaffections have been observed, and particularly taenia, otherwisevery rare at St. Petersburg. Dr. Braun stated this as his opinion,and two years after, a high authority, Prof Yon Siebold, ofMunich, expressed the same idea, in the last paper of his interestingwork, " Weber die Band und Blasenivurmer" Leipsic, 1854:" We should no longer be surprised at the fact, and must creditthose physicians who have declared that they have found inmany patients submitted to a diet of raw meat, the taenia. AndHerr Yon Siebold has remarked that in every case the taeniasolium was found, and he believes that in all probability, thisworm, which is not indigenous to St. Petersburg, has beenbrought there by the cattle driven from Tocherkask and Podolia.Some weeks before my departure from St. Petersburg, inthe month of June of the present year, a taenia, more than tenfeet in length, was sent to me by a confrere, to whom I hadwarmly recommended meat in the case of an infant aged 18months. The taenia was expelled after the administration ofthe etherial oil of male fern. This remedy was employed becausethe child, having been cured of its diarrhoea by the rawmeat, had several times passed parts of taenia.I ought not to forget to say that in the hospital for children,which is in my charge, I have often tried, but unsuccessfully,the raw meat in the diarrhoea of children more aged, who weresick from no cause connected with dentition. More frequently—this diarrhoea was caused by ulcerations of the intestinal canal.—[Excerpta tran stated from U Union Medicate, by S. E. C.\N.Orleans Med. and Surg. Journal.Action of Mercury on the Secretion of Bile.Among the effects of medicine which are usually considered tobe well established, the action of mercurial preparations in increasingthe flow of bile has been admitted without question.Physicians speak about stimulating a sluggish liver by blue pill,or calomel, as if it were not only the easiest thing in the world,but as if we had ocular demonstration of the process ; and thefrequency with which the liver is thus stimulated to an increasedsecretion of bile, is in proportion to the ease with which it issupposed this may be effected. No matter what the disease, it