On the Mode of Action of Some of the Essential Oils in the Cure of Gripes

to administer antispasmodics and anodynes. Many or most of the essential oils are valuable antispasmodics, and if, in the first instance, a sufficient quantity of one of these is combined with drastic purgatives, these latter induce their peculiar action on the bowels without inducing gripes. To this end clove oil is-usually combined with the compound colocynth pill and oil of peppermint ?with the compound rhubarb pill. The experiment of causing gripes by means of drastic purgatives, and that of preventing gripes by means of essential oils, has been so frequently tried and proved, not by one man but by thousands, that the results have now been securely removed from the domain of theory and placed in that of verified science.* 2. The drastic, in the first instance, appears to excite the terminal portions of the nerves, which supply the gut or that part of a gut irritated. This excitement or motion of the nerves f proceeds inwards along the nerves, till it reaches the sympathetic ganglia and spinal marrow, and through these the braia. In these