Volume 1

Cooley's Cyclopædia of practical receipts and collateral information in the arts, manufactures, professions, and trades, including medicine, pharmacy, and domestic economy : designed as a comprehensive supplement to the pharmacopœia and general book of reference for the manufacturer, tradesman, amateur, and heads of families.

Cooley, Arnold J. (Arnold James)

Date:: 1892

Credit: Cooley's Cyclopædia of practical receipts and collateral information in the arts, manufactures, professions, and trades, including medicine, pharmacy, and domestic economy : designed as a comprehensive supplement to the pharmacopœia and general book of reference for the manufacturer, tradesman, amateur, and heads of families. Source: Wellcome Collection.

46/916 page 30

$AGARICIN. Syn. Agaricinum. The active principle of Agaricus albus or Polyporus offici- nalis. It is a white crystalline powder, given in the night sweats of phthisis, also diarrhoea, to diminish bronchial secretion, and dry up milk after weaning.—Dose, T\ to grain. See Mus- carine AG'ATE (-ate). [Eng., Fr.] Syn. ACHA'- tes (-ka'-tez), L. From a river in Sicily, on the banks of which it is said to have been found. Agate consists chiefly of calcedony with mixtures of common quartz and occasional patches of jasper and opal. Its composition is not uniform, but it usually contains 70 to 96 per cent, of silica, with varying proportions of alumina coloured by oxides of iron and man- ganese. The principal varieties are : Calcedony. A porous stone with colours ar- ranged in parallel bands. This variety is con- verted into artificial onyx at Oberstein in Germany, by immersion in a solution of honey in water, kept hot in an oven for two or three weeks, subsequent washing, drying, and treat- ment with sulphuric acid. Carnelian, or red calcedony. Mocha Stones. Clear grey calcedony. Moss Agates. Stones containing tree-like markings of oxide of iron. Blood Stones. Dark green with red spots. Plasma. A grass green stone, used in some ancient intaglios. Chrysoprase. Found in Silesia, is an agate coloured by oxide of nickel. AGEING LIQUOR. Dissolve 3 lbs. of chlorate of potash in 4 galls, of boiling water. Add 20 lbs. of powdered white arsenic to 20 lbs. of solu- tion of caustic soda at 60° Tw., and boil until the arsenic is completely dissolved. Add the latter solution to the former, with stirring, until the mixture stands at 28° Tw. AG'NAIL. See Whitlow. AGNINE. A substance similar to lanoline, which see. A'GUE (-gu). Syn. Malarial Fever, Ma- laria, Marsh Fever, Paludal Fever, Inter- mittent Fever. Fievre intermittente, Fr.; Wechseleieber, Kaltefieber, Ger. Definition. The disease, or rather group of dis- eases comprised under the above names, is difficult to define in such a way as to include all its various forms.—A simple ague has the following charac- teristics : A cold or shivering stage, with more or less pronounced rigors ; a hot and febrile stage, and a sweating stage. This succession of pheno- mena may, and often does, manifest itself in cases of severe cold. The remarkable character- istic of agues is their repetition at exceedingly regular intervals of time, and according to the duration of the period of intermission agues are classified as quotidian when the attacks occur daily; tertian when they occur every other day ; quartan when there is an interval of two days between the attacks. Combinations of these in- tervals may occur, resulting in double quotidian, double tertian, &c, and these insensibly pass, on the one hand, into continuous or almost continu- ous fever (pernicious) and very irregular types in which the intervals between the attacks are pro- longed and uncertain. By intermittent fever is understood a fever with intermissions, during which the temperature of the body returns to the normal. In remittent fever there is a marked lowering of the temperature at regular intervals, but there is always a constant residue of fever, and the temperature does not reach the normal limit in the intervals. For many reasons which cannot be entered upon here, we are justified in regarding intermittent and remittent fevers as degrees of intensity of manifestation of one and the same disturbance of the animal economy. Distribution. Relation to Water and Tempera- ture. Malarial fevers are the most widely dis- tributed and, perhaps, the most disastrous in their effects of any disease to which mankind is liable; they have been and still are 'par excellence the enemies of explorers and colonists in tropical and subtropical climates; and it is of the utmost im- portance that such persons should possess some knowledge of their distribution, the characters of localities in which they prevail, and such means of guarding against them, or treating them when they occur, as experience has taught us to be practically useful. Malarial fevers are essentially a disease of tropical and subtropical climates. They are most intense in the tropics, and disappear as we ap- proach the poles; hence we may argue a relation of the disease to temperature. A careful exami- nation of the areas most affected shows that the estuaries and deltas of rivers, low-lying land liable to flood, and wet, undrained, boggy districts are the most frequent haunts of the disease; and this well-recognised connection with water has given rise to the terms marsh fever and paludal fever. Wider experience and more careful investigation have shown that the supposed universal connec- tion between malaria and marshy land does not exist, and that, on the one hand, there are large areas of marsh where fever is unknown, and on the other, vast tracts of country to which the term marshy would in no sense apply, which are all but uninhabitable in consequence of the severity of the fever prevailing in them. The re- lation to water, however, is not thus done away with, for in all these cases of apparent absence of the conditions of a marsh, the subsoil drainage is, as a rule, either non-existent or extremely de- fective, and for various reasons, such as the nature and constitution of the soil, position aiul direction of strata, the subsoil water is retained and the soil really, though not apparently, waterlogged. The Roman Campagna affords an excellent example of this state of affairs. So far the relation of ma- laria to temperature and water would seem to be established; unfortunately there are localities in South America, India, China, and other tropical countries where these fevers prevail in their very worst forms and which are characterised by an all but complete absence of water. The subsoil does not exist and is replaced by hard imperme- able rock so scantily covered with soil that culti- vation is well-nigh impossible. Thus the direct relation of water to the disease becomes doubtful, and the one universal factor left is temperature. Relation to Altitude. Malarial fevers diminish in intensity from the equator to the poles, and also w ith altitude, it is practically true that the$

Licence and re-use

Contents

Volumes