4. The retention of urine dependent on these various affections often disappears as improvement progresses, but the use of the sound must sometimes be continued, in order to empty the bladder completely.
5. The stigmata maize have very often produced a cure after all the usual internal remedies had been tried in vain, or with only partial success. In other cases, the ordinary methods of treatment, which had at first proved more or less entirely useless, became efficacious after stigmata had been administered for a time, and had, as it were, broken the ground for them. Most frequently the stigmata alone sufficed for the cure, but still in some cases the effect was incomplete, and it was found that the treatment could be varied with benefit. Injections and irrigations of the bladder also proved useful adjuncts to the maize.
6. As the stigmata of maize are a very powerful, though at the same time entirely inoffensive diuretic, they have also been employed with the best results in cases of heart disease, albuminuria, and other affections requiring diuretics. Cases have been reported in which the urinary secretion was tripled and even quintupled in the first twenty-four hours, and others where the exhibition of the drug was continued for two or three months without the slightest untoward effect.
(Though Dr. Dufan condemns the use of the remedy in gonorrhœa, other practitioners have commended it for that very purpose. Dr. Leo Bennett, Therapeutic Gazette, 1893, having had "unusual success" in the treatment of that disease with the Stigmata maidis.)
SUCCINIC ACID.
Preparation.—The pure chemical is triturated in the usual way.
(The following is by Dr. Morris Weiner, of Baltimore, 1892:)
About twelve years ago I decided to prove Succinic acid (Acidum succinicum). Agricola mentions this acid, 1546, as Salt of amber. Boyle, towards the close of the 17th century, was the first who pronounced it to be acid, and Stecker de Neuform confirmed this statement, after repeated investigations, calling it a true acid. Berzelius published its elemental composition, C4H2O3.
This acid was long ago laid aside as obsolete, and not without good reason, because since the Puritans in chemistry commenced to rule over every laboratory of pharmacy, by trying to redistill this crude acid and changing its yellowish color to snowy whiteness, they drove out every trace of the oily matter which alone constitutes its medical action. The whiter this acid becomes the larger doses can be taken without any action on the human system. Knowing that this oil of amber is driven out totally by redistillation I was compelled to prepare the crude acid myself.