RENAL AND URINARY MALADIES.— It is also frequently recommended in Bright's disease where the urine is tinged with blood, and upheld as an almost specific for urethral spasm, for chordee, and the acute stage of gonor rlicea; also in gonorrhoea and vesical irritation, and in spermatorrhcea.
CANTHARIDES.—The blister-beetle, or "Spanish fly," a coleopterous insect, also called lytta, is collected in Russia, Sicily, and Hungary, but is also found in Spain, France, Germany, and other parts of Europe. Representatives are found in various parts of the world, notably in the Levant and eastward, in Senegal, South ern and Central America, and in Chile. The insect is about an inch long, per haps one-fourth inch broad, flattish, cylindrical, with filiform antenna; it is black in upper part, with long wing-cases, and has large membranous, transparent, brownish wings; elsewhere of a shining, coppery-green hue. The powder is grayish- or blackish- brown, containing green, shining particles, with strong, dis agreeable odor and acrid taste; is soluble in alcohol. Cantharides is often adulter ated, especially when powdered with other beetles, exhausted flies, and ground gum-resin euphorbium; but these can be detected, or at least surmised, by testing for the yield of cantharidine, which should not be less than 4 per cent.; it
rarely exceeds 5.5 per cent.
Preparations and Doses.—Cantharides, powdered, 1/4 to grain—not fit to be employed in crude form.
Cantharides cerate, for blisters only. Cantharides cerate (made with alco holic extract), external only.
Cantharides tincture (5 per cent.), 1 to 30 minims.
Cantharides vinegar, external only. Cantharidine, not employed. Cantharidate of cocaine, to grain.
Cantharidate of potassium, 7400 to grain; hypodermically only. Cantharidal collodion.
Cantharidal liniment.
Cantharidal oil, external only. Cantharidal ointment.
Cantharidal paper (blister-paper). Canthariclal plaster with pitch. Cantharidal warming plaster.
The powder of cantharides is too acrid and irritating to be employed except in very minute doses or well covered by other substance, and, even then, pref erably in capsules. Its chief employ ment is as the component part of cerates, liniments, ointments, and other epi spastic galenicals.