[1] For very fine specimens of churrus, I have to express my thanks to Dr. Campbell, late political resident at Nipal.
[2] By this term is probably meant the first of the Sassanian dynasty, to whom the epithet of “Khusrow” or Cosroes, equivalent to Kȧiser, Cæsar, or Czar, has been applied in many generations. This dynasty endured from A.D. 202 to A.D. 636.—Vide note 50 to Lane’s Translation of the Arabian Nights, vol. ii. p. 226.
[3] Handbuch der Medicin und Pharmac. Botanik, von F. Ness von Esenbeck und Dr. Carl Ebermaier, vol. i, p. 338.
[4] Although I observed no effect from two drachms of hemp resin given to a horse, Messrs. Hughes and Templar, of Calcutta, have since cured four horses of traumatic tetanus by giving half-pint doses of the tincture.—W. B. O’S.
[5] The nurse, I should have mentioned, was changed early in the illness, and change of air resorted to on the river, but in vain.
INDIAN HEMP.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE PROVINCIAL MEDICAL JOURNAL.
Gentlemen,—With reference to my paper on the Indian Hemp, lately inserted in your Journal, I trust I may be permitted to disclaim any wish to advance these preparations as specifics in the treatment of tetanus, or in spasmodic diseases generally. That hemp possesses great, indeed extraordinary, anti-convulsive power, I feel assured from numerous facts which I have myself observed, and which others have also witnessed. The cases of the six horses affected by traumatic tetanus, recorded in my paper, of which four recovered, are almost enough by themselves to convince any unprejudiced person of the energy and promise of this drug.
Many failures must be expected at first, from the salutary caution all good practitioners must observe in the doses of a remedy with which they are not practically familiar. On this point I have further to remark that in a case of traumatic tetanus, now under treatment, fifteen grain doses of the resin have been given every second or third hour, and of these doses five taken before narcotism was induced.
In cases of tetanus, I consider no trial of the drug at all conclusive, unless it has been pushed to the extent of inducing stupor and insensibility.