ELEPHANTIASIS (see MEDICINE, no 352. Encyclopaedia) is one of the most dreadful maladies with which the human race is anywhere afflicted. It is not indeed common, if it be found at all, in the temperate climates of Europe; but it is frequent in the East and West Indies, where it too often baffles the skill of the ablest physicians. In the second volume of the Asiatic Researches we have the following prescription for its cure:
"Take of fine fresh white arsenic one tl or 105 grains; of picked black pepper six times as much: let both be well beaten at intervals for four days successively in an iron mortar, and then reduced to an impalpable powder in one of stone with a stone pestle, and thus completely levigated, a little water being mixed with them. Make pills of them as large as tares or small pulse, and keep them dry in a shady place. One of those pills must be swallowed morning and evening with some betel leaf, or in countries where betel is not at hand, with cold water: if the body be cleansed from foulness and obstructions by gentle cathartics and bleeding before the medicine is administered, the remedy will be speedier."
This prescription, we are told, is an old secret of the Hindoo physicians, which they consider as a powerful remedy against all corruptions of the blood, whether occasioned by the elephantiasis or the venereal disease, which they call the Perfian fire, and which they apply likewise to the cure of cold and moist distempers, or palsy, distortions of the face, relaxation of the nerves, and similar diseases. As the Hindoos are an ingenious and scientific people, it might be worth some European physician's while to make trial of this ancient medicine in the West Indies, where the elephantiasis or kindred diseases prove so frequently fatal.