e
present instance it likewise appears, that violent sickness may be
excited, and continue for several days without being accompanied by a
flow of urine; and it is probable that the latter circumstance did not
take place, until the severity of the former abated. If Dr. Cawley had
not had a constitution very retentive of life, I think he must have
died from the enormous doses he took; and he probably would have died
previous to the augmentation of the urinary discharge. For if the root
from which his medicine was prepared, was gathered in its active
state, he did not take at each dose less than _twelve_ times the
quantity a strong man ought to have taken. Shall we wonder then that
patients refuse to repeat such a medicine, and that practitioners
tremble to prescribe it? Were any of the active and powerful medicines
in daily use to be given in doses _twelve_ times greater than they
are, and these doses to be repeated without attention to the effects,
would not the patients die, and the medicines be condemned as
dangerous and deleterious?--Yet such has been the fate of Foxglove!

A Letter to the Author, from Mr. BODEN, Surgeon, at Broseley,
in Shropshire.

Broseley, 25th May, 1785.
Dear SIR,

Have inclosed the prescriptions that contained the fol. Digital. which
I gave to Thomas Cooke and Thomas Roberts.

Thomas Cooke, AEt. 49, had been ill about two or three weeks. When I saw
him he had no appetite, and a constant thirst: a fullness and load in
the stomach: the thighs, legs and hands, much swell'd, and the face and
throat in a morning; was costive, and made but little water, which was
high coloured; the pulse very weak, and his breath exceeding bad. _June_
17th. R. Argent, viv [Symbol: dram]i. cons. cynosbat. [Symbol: scruple]ii.
fol. Digital. pulv. gr. xv. f. pil. xxiv. capt. ii. omni nocte hora
decubitus. He was likewise purged by a bolus of argent. viv. jallap,
Digit. elaterium and calomel, which was repeated on the fourth day, to
the third time. From _June_ 17th to the 29th, the symptoms were mostly
removed, making water freely, and having plenty of stools; in a week
after he was perfectly well, and remains so ever since. The cure was
finished by steel and bitters.

Thomas Roberts, AEt. 40, had a deformed chest, was obliged to be almost
in an erect posture when in bed; the other symptoms were nearly the
same as Cooke's. _August_ 3d. T