F. LEVISON, Copenhagen.
OX-GALL.-0x-gall, fel bovis (U. S. P.), or fel tauri is the fresh bile of the ox (Bos taunts). It is green, or brown ish-green, viscid liquid of disagreeable odor and bitter, nauseous taste. Crude ox-gall is not employed in medicine. Inspissated ox-gall occurs as a yellowish green, thick extract of unpleasant odor and disagreeable bitter taste. Purified ox-gall (sodium choleate) occurs as a yellowish-white powder, which attracts moisture readily.
Doses and Preparations. — Fel bovis (crude ox-gall).
Fel bovis purificatum (purified ox gall), 3 to 10 grains.
Therapeutics.—Ox-gall is used in habitual constipation, combined with other appropriate remedies, in intestinal dyspepsia, and in malnutrition from an inability to digest fats. It has been given in typhoid fever, when there is a deficient secretion of bile. In enema it has been found useful as a solvent of hardened fmcal masses in cases of faecal impaction.
Harley recommends ox-gall in 5-grain doses, in capsules, in jaundice.
Ox-gall has been used to expel lum bricoid worms.
OXYGEN.—Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by Scheele, in Sweden, and Priest ley, in England, independently of each other, and described under the names of "empyreal air" and "dephlogisticated air." The name oxygen was given to it by Lavoisier some time afterward. In the atmosphere oxygen exists in a free and uncombined state (20 to 23 per cent.) mixed with nitrogen. Oxygen-gas is tasteless, colorless, and odorless. It is heavier than air and eight times heavier than hydrogen. When liquefied under pressure, it has a bright, sky-blue color. Water is a combination of oxygen (8 parts) and hydrogen (1 part). Under certain conditions it appears under the allotropic forms of ozone and autozone.
Preparations.—For experimental pur poses oxygen may be obtained by mix ing finely-powdered black manganese oxide (1 part) and potassium chlorate (4 or 5 parts), heating the mixture in a flask or retort, and receiving the gas in an inverted jar over water. All the oxygen comes from the chlorate, the manganese remaining quite unaltered.
Although the process is very simple, cer tain precautions should be observed if the gas be intended for inhalation. The manganese oxide should not contain any combustible matter, or an explosion will result; a small portion should be first heated in a metal cup, should there be any doubt of the purity of the man ganese. The first portions of gas should be allowed to escape, as they are con taminated by the atmospheric air of the apparatus and a little chlorine. The gas as evolved should be passed through three or four wash-bottles containing water, and to the first of these should be added about per cent. of caustic potash (to absorb any free acid), to the second about per cent. of silver ni trate (to absorb any free chlorine). The last washings should be with pure water. The gas may then be collected in a suit able gasometer and kept for a short time, or in rubber bags if wanted for instant use. Oxygen is now made on a larger scale, commercially, directly from at mospheric air, and is sold at a very low rate, delivered in steel cylinders, gener ally compressed so that a cylinder con taining one hundred to two hundred gallons is of a convenient size for hand ling. From these cylinders the gas is drawn off into a gasometer or rubber bag, for office use or for single adminis tration.
A local oxygen emphysema of the areolar tissue is set up, but without evil result, and gas is gradually absorbed, though slowly. The possibility of wounding a vein seems to be its only danger. This may be readily prevented by applying a ligature to the upper part of the limb. W. Ewart (Brit. Died. Jour., Oct. 13, 1900).
Therapeutics.—Oxygen—whose physi ological action is too well known to war rant repetition—may be administered in medicine or surgical practice in various ways: by inhalation, either pure, mixed with atmospheric air, nitrous oxide, ether, chloroform, or other substance; by drinking oxygen-water; by local applica tion of a stream of gas or in solution as oxygen-water, hydrogen dioxide, etc.