sometimes painful, to watch the satisfaction or chagrin
with which the weekly result was received. I must here tender my
acknowledgments to our zealous, attentive, and accurate house surgeon,
Mr. Denis P. Kenna, by whom this important, but tedious, duty was
discharged."

Dr. Quinlan then refers to several cases, in which the mullein plant has
been tried as a remedy for consumption, and remarks that these cases,
although too few to justify any general conclusion, appear to establish
some useful facts. The mullein plant boiled in milk is liked by the
patients; in watery infusion it is disagreeable, and the succus is still
more so. The hot milk decoction causes a comfortable (what our Gallic
neighbors call _pectorale_) sensation, and when once patients take it
they experience a physiological want, and when the supply was once or
twice interrupted, complained much in consequence. That it eases
phthisical cough there can be no doubt; in fact, some of the patients
scarcely took their cough mixtures at all--an unmixed boon to phthisical
sufferers with delicate stomachs. Its power of checking phthisical
looseness of the bowels was very marked, and experiment proved that this
was not merely due to the well known astringent properties of boiled
milk. It also gave great relief to the dyspnoea. For phthisical night
sweats it is utterly useless; but these can be completely checked by the
hypodermic use of from one-eighteenth to one-fiftieth of a grain of the
atropia sulphate; the smaller dose, if it will answer, being preferable,
as the larger causes dryness of the pharynx, and interferes with ocular
accommodation. In advanced cases, it does not prevent loss of weight,
nor am I aware of anything that will, except koumiss. Dr. Carrick, in
his interesting work on the koumiss treatment of Southern Russia (page
213), says: "I have seen a consumption invalid gain largely in weight,
while the disease was making rapid progress in her lungs, and the
evening temperature rarely fell below 101 deg. Fahr. Until then I considered
that an increase of weight in phthisis pulmonalis was a proof of the
arrest of the malady." If koumiss possesses this power, mullein does
not; but unfortunately, as real koumiss can be made from the milk of the
mare only, and as it does not bear traveling, the consumptive invalid
must go at least to Samara or Southern Russia. In pretubercular and
early cases of pulmonary consumption, mullein appears to have a distinct
w