By P. P. Wells, M. D., Brooklyn, N. Y.

This drug has been found effectual repeatedly in removing a peculiar heavy, dull, pressing pain in the forehead, of no great severity, but which indisposes to, or even incapacitates for all exertion, especially for intellectual labor. This state of the head has appeared in the person of the writer, every year for the last ten or twelve, on the blossoming of the Ailanthus He found no remedy for it, till he received the proving of Aloes, in Hering's Americanische Arzneipruefungen. A single dose of this drug, in the 200th potency, has always been sufficient for its speedy removal. The symptoms which correspond to this troublesome visitor are, in the proving of Hering, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 93, 99.

There is also a condition of the abdomen which is quite peculiar, of which most persons have been conscious who have passed through an epidemic of Asiatic cholera. A very similar group of sensations have annually afflicted most of us who are so unfortunate as to dwell in cities cursed by the presence of that most abominable of trees - the Ailanthus. It is oftener then otherwise described, by those who suffer it, as a feeling of “uncertainty” - meaning that they are not sure they shall not be attacked by diarrhea any minute — and that they feel just as though they would be. It is one of the constant elements of the precursory stage of cholera. The Ailanthus sensations are strikingly like this. When produced by this cause, the symptoms are promptly and completely removed by a single dose of Aloes²⁰⁰. This has been several times repeated, in the experiment of the writer during the blossoming seasons of the Ailanthus. Whether it will be equally effectual in relieving the analogous group of symptoms produced by the cholera poison, he has had no opportunity to observe, there having been no epidemic of this disease, in this city, since the publication of the proving of Aloes. But the similarity of the groups of symptoms is so great as is also their resemblance to known symptoms of Aloes, that he has no doubt the drug will be found equally efficacious in both. There is in this condition of the abdomen not only this sense of insecurity, but a dull heaviness, and sense of moderate distinction, general debility, and especially a weakness of the abdominal organs. The symptoms of Aloes which are representative of this condition are, in the proving referred to 485, 486, 488, 494, 511, 576.

Symptoms 500, 501 and 502 may possibly mislead some in the clinical use of this drug, unless the symptoms are studied in their quality as well as in their verbal expression, a duty which we have endeavored elsewhere to urge on practitioners, as of high importance. The symptoms before us are a good illustration of the necessity, even, of this kind of study. Without this, Aloes may be supposed, by the above symptoms to be an appropriate remedy for peritoneal inflammation with plastic deposit, which it is not. Instead of this, the symptoms are rather allied to rheumatic or neuralgic tenderness of the abdomen or to that sensitiveness to pressure which is sometimes acute, which is found in some cases of flatulent pains, i. e., this sensitiveness is like to that which accompanies rheumatism and spasmodic conditions, and not to that inflammatory state which produces plastic deposits.

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