Nauseating doses of antimonials operate powerfully and safely as diaphoretics. Dr. Fordyce supposes this effect to be owing to the medicine, and not to the action on the stomach. For this reason, perhaps, antimonial-are continued in the early stages of fever, with little anxiety respecting the nausea they produce; and if not persisted in too far, they are undoubtedly useful. They sometimes appear inconvenient from their purgative effects; for we think we have found that the purging produced by antimonials is not equally beneficial with the discharge produced by other medicines. The union of the nauseating doses with calomel, lately fashionable, has not in our hands succeeded so fully as, from the warmth with which they were recommended, we had reason to expect. The more active and heating sudorifics are inadmissible in the greater number of fevers; and wine, which sometimes acts in this way. will be more fully considered under another head. We chiefly want these last medicines when it is our object to prevent the accession of the paroxysms of an intermittent, or to relieve the pains of rheumatism. The semicupium pediluvium or warm fomentations to the lower extremities are often safe, and highly useful, diaphoretics. See Bathing.

Blisters very powerfully restore the balance of the circulation, and diminish morbid congestions in the head and the liver; but, except the latter organ is inflamed, they are applied only to the head and neck. We have under this title fully explained their operation, so far as it is understood. In all cases of fever there is, as has been observed, fulness of the vessels; and we find the vessels of the eyes red, the face flushed, and the eye ball itself apparently enlarged; but this congestion produces also irritation, and often a less degree of phrenitis. The usual wanderings of the mind are more rapid, the voice quick, the temper irritable, unreasonable, and occasionally violent. In each state blisters are indicated, and often produce the happiest effects: sleep frequently coming on, as soon as the plaster begins to stimulate. The milder symptoms of congestion, first described, yield frequently to purgatives; and when these have been freely used, blisters are often necessary.

Sedatives.- Congestions in the brain, as we have just remarked, produce considerable irritation; and the state of irritability thus occasioned requires often the most active sedatives and antispasmodics. In other views, remedies of this kind are highly useful. They check often the too impetuous current of the blood to the head; they produce a calmness and serenity, which greatly assist the action of medicines that determine to the surface; and they remove a very troublesome symptom, flatulence in the stomach and intestines. The chief of these are camphor and opium. Camphor is a medicine of considerable utility in fevers, as already shown. The calmness which it often seems to inspire; 4 O 2 the serenity, even the temporary case, which are among its first effects, render it peculiarly valuable. As it sometimes appears to increase the heat of the body in the earlier stages, a little nitre may be added, with an antimonial; in the latter,'the sal c. c. the aro-matics, or the bark. There is, however, apparently no period of the disease to which it is not adapted, and no species of fever in which it is not beneficial.

Opium is a medicine of more doubtful efficacy: it often irritates instead of calming, and produces agitation instead of a serene freedom of spirits. With those in whom it produces its mild sedative effects, it is a very valuable remedy, and, united with camphor, it seldom disagrees. In the later periods of fever, when subsultus and convulsions come on, opium and camphor are the best remedies. Some practitioners have been violently averse to the use of this medicine. They observe that it debilitates; but the true reason of their dislike, we suspect, is the probability of its suppressing critical discharges. They have contended that the most restless night is less injurious than the stupor produced by opiates; and that even the chance of their hurrying the spirits, is more to be dreaded than any advantage to be derived from them can compensate. While we own our predilection for this remedy, the accusations are not wholly groundless. Opiates check all the evacuations, except those by the skin; and we certainly neither gain so much by the tranquillity they procure, nor lose so much by a sleepless restlessness, as maybe at first supposed. Yet we think if the patient's strength is preserved by their use; the hours pass away more comfortably; time insensibly wastes; and if we can annihilate one fourth of the patient's suffering by procuring six hours in the twenty-four, if it be no more, of torpor and insensibility, we amply compensate for the risk. The necessary evacuations we must be careful to restore.

Other sedatives have been employed to procure sleep; and Hoffman is profuse in his commendations of his anodyne mineral spirit, which we now know to be ether only, with a somewhat larger proportion of the oil of wine. We are surprised that this last medicine has not been tried alone, or in union with opium. The anodyne spirit generally fails in other hands; and though it is still given in fevers, no one seems to have found it strikingly advantageous. Among the soporifics we must not forget the the pillow of hops; nor breathing hydrocar-bonategas. Some hectic patients who have been confined to a stable, or whose room has been covered, for a similar purpose] with dung, have informed us, that they think they have slept more quietly in such situations. These effusions of quackery have not been, we believe, often employed by any scicntific physician; and the interested reports of unprincipled pretenders we need not enlarge on. The chief of the other antispasmodics are ether, musk, castor, and asafoetida. Ether is very active in this view, and at the later periods, when subsultus comes on, and convulsions threaten, is often of considerable service. Musk, if in perfection, is an active Antispasmodic, but it is seldom genuine; and, as a medicine peculiarly dear, is reserved for the last desperate stages: it here sometimes obtains the credit due to the operations of nature. Castor is less powerful; but seems occasionally to correct the injurious effects of opium; and asafaetida still less so. The effects of the latter are chiefly confined to the stomach; though it sometimes appeals useful as a general sedative, and occasionally as an expectorant.