VERMIFUGE, a medicine which expels worms from the intestines. Of these medicines numbers are daily advertised in the newspapers as infallible, though the ingredients of which they are composed are carefully kept secret. We think it our duty therefore to assure our readers, that the medicines vend by quacks are generally the very same that would be prescribed by a regular physician for the disease in which they are pretended to be specifics, with this only difference, that the unseen and unprincipled quack generally prescribes them in more powerful doses than the regular physician deems safe for his patient. Thus Ching's famous worm medicine, which has been so strenuously recommended, is nothing more than mercury given in the very same form in which it is given by every physician; but Ching gives it in doses, which, though they have not injured the children of a bishop and a judge, we have known to salivate other children to the great hazard of their lives. It is indeed wonderful that parents should trust the health and the lives of their children to men whom they never saw, and whom they know to be not oppressed with an over delicate sense of honour, in preference to a man of science who has a character to support, and who is probably their friend, and almost always their acquaintance.
Of the different vermifuges, however, it must be confessed that the greater number are liable occasionally to fail. One of the most powerful which we have mentioned in the article MEDICINE, Easel, is composed of the spicules of the cowbees or cow-itch, and since that article was published, it has come more into use, chiefly through the recommendation of Mr Chamberlain surgeon. He says that a tea-spoonful of the electuary (See MEDICINE, Easel, p. 342.) may be safely given to a young child, and one or even two table spoonfuls to adults. The medicine is to be taken in the morning fasting; and the dose to be repeated for two or three mornings, after which a gentle purge completes the cure. This medicine, however, Mr Chamberlain prohibits in every case where there is a tendency to inflammation in any part of the intestinal canal, or where the mucus has been carried off or greatly diminished by dysentery or any other cause.
Dr Hackmerlin of Ulm has lately recommended as a very powerful and safe vermifuge the coraline of Corsica, and says that it has been so used in that island with complete success from time immemorial. It is a focus adhering to the rocks washed by the sea, and sometimes to the stones and shells thrown upon the shore. It is found in little tufts. It is generally of a yellow colour, with a reddish tincture. When dried, as it appears when offered for sale, it contains a strong smell of the sea. It consists of little cartilaginous stalks, with full threads, gradually cylindrical and tubulated. Its taste is salt and unpleasant. In the system of plants of Linnaeus it belongs to the class cryptogamia. Its most com-
mon names are, sea rock moss; the Grecian herb; lemnithochorton; and the coraline of Corsica. It is the conserua beinshertor of Schwendimann, and the furus beinshertor of Latourette. There is reason to think that all those species of fucus whole texture is soft and spongy, might be applied to the same medicinal uses. There is a sort of red coraline found in Sweden which, according to some writers, is a greater destroyer of worms than any other known substance; being not too strong for the stomach, either of infants or of adults. Schwendimann asserts that the conserua dichotoma of Linnaeus, which is found in the ditches in England, bears a strong analogy to the coraline of Corsica. Might not this conserua be tried as a vermifuge? The Corsican coraline is in great estimation in the pharmacopoeia of the Continent, especially in that of Geneva, in which is given a recipe for preparing a syrup of it.