Manual of materia medica & therapeutics : being an abridgment of the late Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica arranged in conformity with the British pharmacopœia, and adapted to the use of medical practitioners, chemists and druggists, medical and pharmaceutical students, etc. / by Frederic John Farre ; assisted by Robert Bentley and by Robert Warington.

Jonathan Pereira

Date:: 1865

Credit: Manual of materia medica & therapeutics : being an abridgment of the late Dr. Pereira's Elements of materia medica arranged in conformity with the British pharmacopœia, and adapted to the use of medical practitioners, chemists and druggists, medical and pharmaceutical students, etc. / by Frederic John Farre ; assisted by Robert Bentley and by Robert Warington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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619/668 page 587

Vegetable. Indian hemp. Oil of turpentine. Niix vomica. Assafoetida. Spices. Opium. Wine. Animal. Cantharides. Musk. Castor. Musk, castor, and other powerfully odorous substances have been employed as sexual stimulants. Several intoxicat- ing agents, especially wine, Indian hemp, and opium, have been used as aphrodi- siacs ; but it is doubtful whether any of them increase the sexual powers, though they may excite desire ; wine is well known to diminish them. Spices, the fetid gum-resins, the turpentines, phos- phorus, and cantharides, are also reputed aphrodisiacs, and may occasionally act as such. Perhaps nux vomica is more entitled to this name than most of the articles mentioned. It has been already observed (p. 317) that the excitement of the sexual feelings which Trousseau has seen produced by nux vomica led him to employ this remedy against impo- tence, and that he found it successful both in males and females. In some cases, however, its good effects were observed only while the patients were taking the medicine. [To increase the sexual desire, how- ever, while the power is wanting, will seldom if ever be desirable, and the most rational means of restoring the powers when lost or impaired by excess of any kind, whether by excessive sexual in- dulgence, by intemperance, or by over- exercise of the mind, will be to avoid the useless excitement of the desire, to live temperately and much in the open air, avoiding heated rooms and late hours, and soft beds, to exercise the body and spare the brain, and to use all the other tonic means of improving the animal vigour, especially, if not un- suitable to the case, chalybeates, and the shower or cold plunge bath.—Ed.] Order 49. Anaphrodisiacs. (From ava(i)poSi(Tla, absence of sexual desire.) Medicinal agents which are supposed to take away or repress the sexual feelings. Mineral. Bromide of potassium. Carbonate of soda. Tartarated antimony. Vegetable. Camphor. Hemlock. Drastic cathartics. Nauseants, as tartarated antimony, and drastic catliartics, act as anaphro- disiacs. Carbonate of soda and soda water are also said to possess similar powers, as well as hemlock. Camphor has long enjoyed a similar reputation, and by the school of Salernum it was said, ' Camphora per nares castrat odore mares.'' The anaphrodisiac properties of bromide of potassium have only very recently become known, but they are well established, and have obtained for this drug readmission into a British pharmacopoeia. Order 50. Emmekagogtjes. (From 'mfj.nvia, the menstrual discharge, and dywyoc, eliciting.) Medicines which excite or promote the catamenia. Mineral. Sulphur. Ammonia. Borax. Chalybeates. Mercurials. Vegetable. Ergot. Aloes. Savin. Assafoetida. Galbanum. Colocynth. Oil of rue. Gamboge. Ani7nal. Castor. As the suppression or retention of the catamenia may be occasioned by very different circumstances, no one agent can be expected to prove emmenagogue in all, or even in many cases. Deficient menstruation is rarely, perhaps, an idio- pathic disease, but in general merely a morbid symptom; and therefore those agents which remove it must be relative, that is, must have reference to the dis- ease which produces it. When amenor-

Licence and re-use

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