Specification of Pierre Armand le Comte de Fontaine Moreau : medicines, and apparatus for the preparation of clyster casings.

  • Fontainemoreau, Pierre Armand, comte de.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of Pierre Armand le Comte de Fontaine Moreau : medicines, and apparatus for the preparation of clyster casings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Fontainemoreaus Medicines, and Instrument to Cure certain Diseases. Armand le Comte de Fontainemoreau, shall cause a particular description of the nature of the Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, to be inrolled in Her said Majesty’s High Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said in part recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, reference being 5 thereunto had, will more fully and at large appear. HOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the proviso, I, the said Pierre Armand Le Comte de Fontainemoreau, do hereby declare the nature of my Invention, and the manner in which the same is to be performed, is particularly described and ascertained in and by the following Instru- 10 ment in writing, reference being made to the letters and figures therein contained, and to the Drawing hereunto annexed, that is to say :— My Invention consists, firstly, in the manufacturing of a certain purga¬ tive medicine, and secondly, in the application of a new apparatus for the manufacturing of any fit gelatinous casing, which I call suppositor and which 15 I use to envelope any solid or liquid pharmaceutical preparation which is afterwards properly introduced into the organic system through the rectum. Purgative medicine is, without doubt, invaluable, and the best practitioners have acknowledged in all ages, and do still acknowledge, the necessity of acting upon the intestinal canal either to restore simply the regularity of the bowels 20 by freeing them from substances operating like real foreign bodies which the intestine above have not the power to discharge, or to promote salutary secre¬ tions, or lastly to remove several disorders to which custom rather than reason has assigned this mode of treatment. If purgatives of a dangerous nature, blindly administered, should often produce salutary results, we ought to give 25 much attention to reasonable and inoffensive purgatives prudently prescribed and skilfully prepared; but, whilst we acknowledge the benefit which may be derived from purging, let us not forget that the great inconveniences arising from its abuses, especially when the means employed are violent’or too active. The choice of an efficient and inodorous purgative is, then, of the highest 80 importance. Although nature has multiplied the proper means to excite purgation, I am convinced that no preparation has yet been obtained com¬ bining at the same time certainty, conveniency, and safety. The purgative most frequently used hitherto produce upon the organs of the taste and smell a nauseous antipathy, which renders it a difficult and disagreeable administra- 35 tion. Those which are inodorous or without smell, such as weak mercury, calomel, antimony, gamboge, jalap, &c., &c., are not always unattended with dangerous consequences; magnesia, so well known as a relaxative, is the only purgative agent which surmounts and conquers the most obstinate consti- < tel ;