Should the tumour however not yield to this treatment, but, on the contrary, become larger and harder, it will be proper to extirpate it, either by the knife or caustic. Indeed, whenever this can be done with safety, the sooner it is done the better. It can answer no purpose to extirpate a cancer after the constitution is ruined, or the whole mass of humours corrupted by it. This however is the common way, which makes the operation so seldom succeed. Few people will submit to the extirpation till death stares them in the face; whereas, if it were done early, the patient’s life would not be endangered by the operation, and it would generally prove a radical cure. When the cancer is so situated that it cannot be cut off, or if the patient will not submit to the operation, such medicines as will mitigate or relieve the most urgent symptoms may be used. Dr. Home says, that half a grain of the corrosive sublimate of mercury, dissolved in a proper quantity of brandy, and taken night and morning, will often be of service in cancers of the face and nose. He likewise recommends an infusion of the _solanum_, or night-shade, in cancers of the breasts. But the medicine most in repute at present for this disease is hemlock. Dr. Stork, physician at Vienna, has of late recommended the extract of this plant as very efficacious in cancers of every kind. The Doctor says, he has given some hundred weights of it without ever hurting any body, and often with manifest advantage. He advises the patient however to begin with very small doses, as two or three grains, and to increase the dose gradually till some good effect be perceived, and there to rest without further increase. From two or three grains at first, the Doctor says he has increased the dose to two, three, or four drachms a-day, and finds that such doses may be continued for several weeks without any bad consequences. The regimen which the Doctor recommends during the use of the medicine, is to avoid farinaceous substances not fermented, and too acrid aromatics. He says, good wine will not be hurtful to those who are accustomed to it, nor a moderate use of acids; and adds, that the patient should live in a pure free air, and keep his mind as quiet and cheerful as possible. The Doctor does not pretend to fix the time in which a cancer may be resolved by the use of hemlock, but says he has given it for above two years in large doses without any apparent benefit; nevertheless the patient has been cured by persisting in the use of it for half a year longer. This is at least encouragement to give it a fair trial. Though we are far from thinking the hemlock merits those extravagant encomiums which the Doctor has bestowed upon it, yet, in a disease which has so long baffled the boasted powers of medicine, we think it ought always to be tried.