We must be guarded in the administration of certain medicinal substances, which often occasion as great danger as poisons themselves. Such are the following, namely, white hellebore, thapsia, elaterium, and the black agaric, for these bring on either suffocation or hypercatharsis, in which cases we may cure the suffocation in the way described for mushrooms, and such like substances, and stop the hypercatharsis by such things are as calculated to suppress immoderate discharges. Likewise certain substances which might seem not injurious to any considerable degree, will sometimes occasion dangerous symptoms, and should not be neglected. Such are the wild rue, gith, and the fresh poppy, which are the flowers of the thorn called cactos. In such cases the administration of a vomit alone relieves those who have taken them. * * * * * COMMENTARY. This section is taken from Dioscorides. Of the pappus Actuarius says, like our author, that it is the flower of the thorn called cactos, and that vomiting relieves those who have taken it. (Meth. Med. v, 12.) See Avicenna (iv, 6, 1); and Rhases (ad Mansor. viii, 49.) Alsaharavius directs us in the case of hellebore to clear the stomach by emetics, and to apply cooling plasters of citrons, apples, and roses. For the wild rue he recommends emetics of oil, emollient clysters, and the ashes of vine tops taken with water and vinegar. In the Seventh Book we shall have occasion to state the opinions which have been entertained respecting the helleborus albus of the ancients. Schulze is very undecided. (Toxic. vet. iv.) The thapsia he makes to be the same as the T. fœtida of Linnæus. Theophrastus has described it (H. P. ix, 23). Pliny says it occasions swelling of the body, with erysipelas. (N. H. xiii, 43.) We shall treat of the elaterium also in the Seventh Book. Hippocrates uses the word as a general term for all drastic purgatives, but by Dioscorides, and the subsequent writers on the materia medica, it is applied to the fæcula of the _momordica elaterium_. The agaricus muscarius is a well-known poisonous mushroom. Schulze properly remarks that its effects are narcotic; and Dr. Christison places it in the class of narcotico-acrid poisons. See sec. liv.