precisely the same effect
as those of Europe may be discovered, and has recently drawn up a list
of ninety substances, which are perfect substitutes for an equal
number of European medicines. The class of tonics, in particular, is
most amply supplied, and the Englishman is not the only animal who
suffers from disorders of the digestive organs.

My friend Dr. Hamilton, of Plymouth, recently brought under the notice
of the profession the medical properties of the prickly poppy or
Mexican thistle (_Argemone Mexicana_). It is indigenous to and grows
wild in the greatest profusion throughout the whole of the Caribbean
islands, and may be found at every season of the year covered with its
bright golden blossoms, and bearing its prickly capsules in all their
several stages of maturity. It is an annual plant, attaining a height
of about two feet, growing abundantly in low and hot uncultivated
spots. Its stem is round and prickly, furnished with alternate
branches and thorny leaves. The seeds possess an emetic quality. The
whole plant abounds in a yellow milky juice, resembling gamboge in
color, and not improbably possessing properties similar to the seeds.
In Nevis the oil is obtained from the bruised seeds by boiling, and
sold by the negroes in small phials, containing about an ounce each,
under the name of "thistle oil," at the price of a quarter of a dollar
each. The usual dose for dry bellyache is thirty drops upon a lump of
sugar, and its effect is perfectly magical, relieving the pain
instantaneously, throwing the patient into a profound and refreshing
sleep, and in a few hours relieving the bowels gently of the contents.
This oil seems fitted to compete in utility with the far more costly
and less agreeable oil of the croton.

The seeds of the sandbox (_Hura crepitans_) when bruised, operate
powerfully as emetico-cathartic. It is probable that an oil might be
obtained from them similar in its operation to the thistle oil.

A cucurbitaceous fruit, one of the Luffas (called by Von Martius
_Luffa purgans_), a tribe closely allied to the colocynth and
mornordicas, growing in South America, is a powerful purgative, and is
used in the province of Pernambuco, where it is called Cabacinha. The
fruit is about the size of a small pear and resembles the wild
cucumber. An infusion of a fourth part of one of these fruits is
administered chiefly in the form of an injection.

Another species (_Luffa drastica_, of Martius) is also e