Kaolinum

[POKCELAIN-EARTH. Al3Si3+6H.]

Dr. J. Landermann first called the attention of the profession to this substance, as a remedial agent. He mentions it as a most valu- able medicine in croup, acting with great promptness in desperate cases, after bromine and other tried remedies have failed. .

We have no proving of kaolin, but Landermann says that it is especially indicated, and acts best and quickest, where the croupous inflammation is seated in the lower part of the larynx and in the upper part of the trachea. There is husky voice, metallic rasping cough and paroxysms of suffocation.

E. B., sixteen months old, of strong and healthy parentage, was never sick a day in his life, and even passed through dentition without any suffering. Tuesday, Feb- ruary 8th, he was usually bright, only his voice seemed a little husky. During the night he became very feverish, and on the morning of the ninth he wanted to be carried about, his skin felt rather dry, and he did not take his food with the usual appetite.

There was little cough during the day, but there was that huskiness, and, by auscultation, that metallic, rasping sound could be heard, increasing as the evening wore on. He had already taken the usual remedies without benefit, and he was put, therefore, on kali bichrom. i-io, in order to produce vomiting, which he did freely during the ioth, but without any marked relief. The coughing and suffocative spells rather increased, and the three days' suffering began to tell on the child.

Called in consultation, I proposed kaolin, which was given in the sixth dilution, one dose every hour. It did not produce any vomiting; it rather seemed to dissolve the fibrinous, false membrane, for after a few doses the child breathed easier, slept off and on during the night, and on the nth, in the forenoon, he could be declared convalescent, although the remedy was continued at lengthened intervals. (Dr. S.

Lilienthal, Med. Investigator, March, 1870.)

Last August a boy, five years old, was taken with croup and attended for five days by a physician, who, after every remedy had failed, proposed tracheotomy. The father then consulted me and although having little hopes in a case so far advanced, I gave him bromine* and kaolin6, with the order to try bromine first, and if after six hours no improvement should occur, to give him a dose of kaolin every half hour, lengthening out the intervals after amendment had set in. Bromine gave no relief, but after the second dose of kaolin breathing became easier and the cough less rough, and by next morning convalescence was fully established.

(Dr. Landermann in Am. Jour. Hotn.

Mat. Med., vol. iii.)

CATARRH. — Lilienthal recommends kaolin in chronic naso- pharyngeal catarrh when the " nostrils feel sore ; scabs form in the nose; scanty and blood-streaked secretion."

KREA.SOTFJM. 267