Ir is called crude to distinguish it from the volatile or prepared ammonia, which follows. It is one of the best discutients, and when in mixture with acetic acid or vinegar, it forms the saline embrocation of which much mention has been made elsewhere from it is prepared

AMMONIA VOLATILE.

The gaseous ammonia, fixed into a solid form by combination with carbonic acid, forms the volatile ammoniacal salt of the druggists. It has been said to be a good stimulant in the latter stages of fever: united with vinegar, it forms the spirit of mindererus, a most excellent human febrifuge.

AMMONIA ACETATIS

Is made by pouring a quart of vinegar on an ounce of volatile salt of ammonia; it may be also made by taking any quantity of the carbonated water of ammonia or spirit of hartshorn, and adding vinegar till it tastes neither salt or sour. It is considered as a very important medicine in horse practice; it gently invigorates, is diaphoretic, and sometimes proves a mild diuretic.

It principally shows its salutary effects on the commencement of the debile stage, or at the close of lingering febrile diseases, particularly of the epidemic catarrh; in which case it may be combined with cam

phor, but more particularly with powdered camomile. In the more early stages of the epidemic catarrh, it may be united with nitre and oxymel. The dose is from four to six ounces.

In strains and ligamentary lameness, it forms a very useful external application also.

AMMONIA, CARBONATE OF.

This is called salt of hartshorn; carbonated water of ammonia is the spirit of hartshorn of the shops. It is convenient in veterinary practice, from its peculiar properties of uniting oil and water. Internally, it is an anti-spasmodic, in doses of eight to ten drachms.

DIGESTIVE OINTMENT.

Or these there are several: they are principally used as stimulants to wounds just healing, and produce a healthy state and action in them, especially after the application of caustics.

and beat it up with the yolk of two or three eggs, and

add

These are to be melted over a slow fire, and they gradually assume the appearance of an ointment. To make Black Basilicon

These must be put on a fire till melted, and then strained through a piece of rag.

In cases where proud flesh is attached to the wound, a small quantity of red precipitate must be mixed with No. 4.

The ointment No. 1, is especially useful, and ought always to be kept at hand.

ON THE NATURE AND USE OF ANTI
MONIALS.

ANTIMONY, when prepared in a certain manner, is so useful a medicine in veterinary practice, that every practitioner should understand its nature and properties.

If powdered antimony be exposed to a gentle fire, the sulphur exhales; the metallic part remaining in the form of a white calx, reducible, by proper fluxes, into a whitish brittle metal, called regulus. This is readily distinguished from the other bodies of that class by its not being soluble in aquafortis; its proper menstruum is aqua regis.

If aquafortis be poured on crude antimony, the metallic part will be dissolved, and the sulphur thrown out, partly on the sides of the vessel, and partly to the surface of the liquor, in the form of a greyish yellow substance. This separated and purified by sublimation, appears in all trials the same with pure common brimstone.

The metal, freed from the sulphur naturally blended with it, and afterwards fused with common brimstone, resumes the appearance and qualities of crude antimony. There is a striking difference between the effects of the preparation of antimony on the human and brute stomach. To the former, the antimonial medicine is of the greatest power of any known substance. The quantity even of a single grain is capable of producing the most active effects if taken dissolved or in soluble state. If given in such a form as to be immediately miscible with animal fluids, it proves violently emetic; if so managed as to be more

slowly acted upon, it proves cathartic; and if the dose be extremely small, diaphoretic.

Thus, though vegetable acids extract so little from this metal, that the remainder seems to lose nothing of its weight, the tinctures prove, in large doses, strongly emetic; and in smaller ones, powerfully diaphoretic. The regulus has been cast into the form of pills, which acted as violent cathartics, though without undergoing any diminution in their weight in their passage through the body, and this repeatedly for a great number of times. These preparations, however, exhibited to the horse, have a less sensible effect. Notwithstanding this, they are of great importance in the treatment of several diseases with which he may be afflicted. This metal, divested of the inflammable principle, which it has in common with other metallic bodies that are reducible to a calx, becomes indissoluble and inactive. The calx, nevertheless, when urged with a strong fire, melts into a glass, which is as easy of solution, and as violent in operation in the human subject, as the regulus itself; the glass, thoroughly mixed with such substances as prevents its solubility, as wax, resin, and the like, is again rendered mild.

Vegetable acids, as have already been observed, dissolve but an extremely minute portion of the metal; the solution, nevertheless, is powerful. The nitrous and vitriolic acids only corrode it into a powder, to which they adhere so slightly as to be separable in a considerable degree by water, and totally by fire, leaving the regulus in the form of a calx similar to that prepared by fire alone. The marine acid has a very different effect; this reduces the regulus into a violent corrosive; and though it unites with difficulty, yet it adheres so very closely, as not to be separable by any ablution, nor by fire, the regulus rising along with it.