FEVERSTONE—Lapis Anti-febrilis—Fieber Stein. Lead oxide, 54 parts; arsenic acid, 46 parts; melted together. (Winckler.)
FI′BRIN. Syn. Fibrine. An azotised substance, forming the coagulable portion of fresh-drawn blood, and the principal constituent of the muscular or fleshy parts of animals. It is eminently nutritious, and capable of yielding in the animal body albumen, caseine, and the tissues derived from them. (Liebig.)
Prep. Fibrin is easily obtained in a nearly pure state, by agitating or beating newly drawn blood with a small bundle of twigs, when it attaches itself to the latter under the form of long reddish filaments, which become white when worked with the hands in a stream of cold water. It may also be procured by washing the coagulum of blood, tied up in a cloth, in cold water, until all the soluble portions are removed. A small quantity of fat, which it still contains, may be removed by digesting it in ether.
Prop., &c. Pure fibrin occurs as long, white, elastic filaments, which are tasteless, inodorous, and insoluble in both hot and cold water. Wetted with acetic acid, it forms, after a time, a transparent jelly, which is slowly soluble in pure water. Very dilute solutions of the caustic alkalies dissolve it completely, and the new solution greatly resembles liquid albumen. Dried by a gentle heat it loses about 80% of water.
FICHTENNADEL-BRUSTZUCKER (Pine-needle Pectoral Sugar). (L. Morgenthau, Mannheim.) For irritable cough, hoarseness, tightness of the chest, asthma, stubborn lung affections, chronic catarrh, &c. Little sticks of bonbon, containing a very little opium, and wrapped in tinfoil. (Hager.)
FICHTENNADEL-TABAK (Pine-Needle Tobacco. (L. Morgenthau.) Is said to be patented in England. Ordinary tobacco moistened or sprinkled with a weak spirituous solution of wood wool extract and wood wool oil and dried; made up in cigars for smoking. (Hager.)
FIG. Syn. Ficus (B. P., Ph. L. E. & D.), Carica, Caricæ fructus, L. The figs of commerce are the dried fruit of Ficus Carica, the common fig-tree. They are demulcent, emollient, laxative, and pectoral. Roasted and boiled figs are occasionally employed as poultices to gumboils and other affections of the mouth.
FILARIA DRACUNCULUS. The Guinea worm. The female of this parasite is to be met with in tropical climates only, infesting the subcutaneous cellular tissue of man and some animals. In appearance it resembles a piece of white whip-cord of uniform thickness. According to Mr Ewart it varies in length from twelve and three quarters to forty inches, and is on an average twenty-five and a half inches long. It usually contains only one young worm, although rare instances have occurred in which as many as fifty of its progeny have been discovered in the same parent. In almost every case when this creature leaves the body, it does so by the lower extremities; occasionally, however, it does so by the mouth, the cheeks, or below the tongue. When the young of the guinea worm are placed in pure water they survive only four or five days; in foul water they will exist for three weeks. It appears that immersion in water, of the body of the person afflicted with the parasite, sometimes has the effect of inducing the creature to leave his human quarters, since Dr Lorimer states “that many people belonging to the bazaars in the vicinity of the lines, affected with the parasite, come, for the express purpose of extracting the worm, to the same tank where the men of the regiment bathe. The people so infested swim about in the water, with the worm hanging loose, drawing the limb quickly backwards and forwards, and from side to side, until the expulsion is affected.” Outside the body the guinea worm is generally found beneath organic débris in wells, tanks, and other reservoirs for water, from whence it appears to be now pretty universally admitted it effects an entrance through the skin during bathing or wading.
FILARIA SANGUINIS HOMINIS. In 1872, Dr T. R. Lewis, in examining microscopically the blood and urine of some of his patients in India, discovered a worm enveloped in an extremely delicate tube, closed at both ends, within which it could either elongate or shorten itself. This parasite (called from its principal habitat the Filaria Sanguinis Hominis)
is about 1⁄75th of an inch in length, and about 1⁄35000th of an inch in diameter. When removed from the body with a small quantity of blood, it is described as being in a state of incessant motion, unceasingly coiling and uncoiling itself, lashing the blood-corpuscles in all directions, and insinuating itself between them.