In a case of long standing paralysis of one of the lower extremities, I have had great cause to be gratified with the useful agency of the alcoholic extract, in relieving the symptoms of neuralgia. The patient, a gentleman between thirty and forty years of age, had been afflicted with occasional pains of great severity coming on suddenly, causing complete disability, lasting about twelve hours, and during such period, producing exquisite tenderness of the limb. With the abatement of pain, sleep followed; and, on awaking, this tenderness had so completely passed away, that he could bear a free handling of the parts; but the muscular power of the limb was weakened during the day, it was frequently affected with convulsive action, and its usual debility became much increased. The case is in progress; but up to the present time the medicine has evidently produced good effects, and without causing any tetanic action of the muscles, which I have mentioned as being considered desirable in some cases; although an unusual sense of tightness was produced. Not the least pain has returned, and the limb is stronger. When I had increased the dose to a grain and a quarter during two days, the sense of tightness, joined with much feeling of weight, became troublesome, and I suspended the use of the extract. In forty-eight hours these symptoms disappeared, and the medicine has been resumed without any kind of disagreement. I may add, with satisfaction, that the retentive power of the bladder, which had been for a long time affected, became materially improved. It has been discovered by M. M. Pelletier and Caventou, that the nux vomica, the bean of St. Ignatius, and the upas poison, owe their active power over man and animals, to two particular vegetable alkalies, the strychnine and brucine. _Strychnine_ is procured in the state of crystals, by a complicated chemical process, from the nux vomica. Its action on the animal economy, as proved by experiments on dogs, is so extremely powerful, that one would conceive it to be inadmissible as a medicine; but M. Magendie relates that he has administered it in paralytic cases with good effects. From an eighth to a quarter of a grain is the usual dose. Brucine has been found combined with strychnine in the nux vomica. In St. Ignatius’s bean, and in the upas, brucine bears a similar relation to that which cinchonine has to quinine in the cinchona barks, the strongest of which (cinchona cordifolia) contains the largest relative proportion of quinine. In the same manner the bean and upas, which are much more active substances than the nux vomica, contain little of the brucine, and much of strychnine. In the upas, strychnine is almost pure[10].