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The mode of adapting, combining, and administering Cathartics, will present subjects for our future consideration.

Medicines which are capable of producing the Menstrual discharge.

As Amenorrhœa, or retention of the menses, is generally the effect of a morbid state of the body, it follows that remedies capable of acting as Emmenagogues can only be relative agents, unless indeed we are disposed to accede to the opinion so generally maintained in the writings of the older physicians, but now generally discarded, that certain substances exert a specific^[156] action upon the uterus. It may certainly be asserted without fear of contradiction, that there are many substances which, when received into the stomach, have their stimulant operation more particularly determined to one part than to another; alkalics, for example, to the kidneys; cantharides to the bladder; mercury to the salivary glands, &c. Reasoning therefore by analogy, it was not unphilosophical to conclude, that similar medicines might exist with respect to the uterus; but experience has negatived the supposition, there being no proof of any of the substances styled Emmenagogues producing their effects by any specific influence upon the uterine system. If the term Emmenagogue be assumed conventionally, according to this view of the subject, it may be retained without any fear of error, otherwise it would be wiser to remove the name from our classification.