Koroniko.—Dr. J. Jardine, writing from Kiukiang, in the "Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Medical Reports," says that dysentery, acute and chronic, was very prevalent in that community during the autumn of 1880. Acute dysentery had generally become sub-acute or chronic before the patients applied at the hospitals, so that the chronic form had generally to be dealt with. "As everyone knows, these are the difficult cases to influence speedily by drugs, and with the Chinese a change of air or sea voyage is beside the question. In these cases I was induced to try koroniko, from the Veronica parviflora, which is largely used in New Zealand as a remedy in dysentery and diarrhoea, and some of the results exceeded my most sanguine expectations. Many who received the drug did not return to report themselves; but I have notes of three cases of chronic dysentery, varying in duration from six weeks to four years, and voiding from twenty to thirty motions containing blood and mucus daily. Fifteen doses of tincture of koroniko reduced them to one-half, other fifteen doses reduced them to three or four daily, and a third like quantity effected a complete cure. Judging from the few cases I have been able to follow, I augur a brillant future for this remedy in the chronic forms of the disease."—Practitioner, Quarterly Therap. Rev. July, 1883.
Chamomile in Infantile Diarrhea.—Dr. Christopher Elliott, Physician to the British Hospital for Sick Children ("Practitioner," December, 1882,) endorses Ringer's claim for the great value of infusion of chamomile in infantile diarrhoea connected with dentition, and in which the stools are many in number, green in color, or are slimy and streaked with blood, and accompanied by pain and cramp. He gives 1/2 to 1 drachm. of the infusion to a child under one year, and double the quantity to a child over that age, giving it three times a day or oftener, according to the severity of the attack. He explains the rationale of this treatment by the power which chamomile flowers possess of subduing reflex excitability, a power residing in the volatile oil contained in them. Grisan was unable to tetanize, by means of strychnia, a decapitated frog which had been fortified with a dose of chamomile oil, and vice versa, when reflex excitability had been artificially produced by means of strychnia, it could be calmed again by chamomile oil.—The Medical Age. Obstetr. Gaz. June, 1883.
The American Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 55, 1883, was edited by John M. Maisch.