Of the funguses formerly employed in medicine few are now in vogue; the ergot of rye still keeps its ground, and in cases of protracted labour, when judiciously employed, is valuable in assisting nature when unequal to the necessary efforts of parturition. Another fungus, formerly much in fashion, though now put on the shelf, seems really to deserve further trial; I mean the Polyporus suaveolens (Linn.), which in that most intractable disease, tubercular consumption, surely claims to be tried when there are such respectable authorities to vouch for its surprising effects, in cases where everything else had been notoriously unsuccessful.[58] Sartorius was the first to prescribe it as a remedy in phthisis, and its employment with this view, since his day, has at various times been prÆconized on the Continent; the dose generally recommended being a scruple of the powder two or three times a day. Of the cases published by Professors Schmidel and Wendst (which have an air of good faith in their recital, well entitling them to consideration), I abridge one as an example, though the others are not less interesting; and while it is certainly to be regretted that the absence of stethoscopic indications should prevent our having any positive evidence as to the precise condition of the diseased lung, or of the nature of the secretion expectorated, still, even supposing them to be simple cases of chronic bronchitis, with marasmus the efficacy of the remedy is scarcely less striking or instructive. “A young man, Ætat. twenty-one, was seized at the beginning of autumn with inflammatory cough and hÆmoptysis, which were partially subdued by V. S. and the ordinary antiphlogistic treatment; but the cough, coming on again with renewed severity during the winter, was accompanied with the expuition of glairy mucus, which was sometimes specked with blood. Towards the spring the young man had become much thinner, and was continuing to waste away; the expectoration also had changed its colour, and had become fetid and green; his nights were feverish and disturbed; he had no desire for food, and ate but little; his ankles had begun to swell; he had copious night-sweats and diarrhoea. A teaspoonful of an electuary of the P. suaveolens in honey was given him three times a day, and nothing else; and, extraordinary as it may appear, under this treatment the sweats speedily began to diminish with the cough, and after a three months’ continuance of the medicine the patient entirely recovered.”[59]

The Polyporus laricis, the so-called Agaric of pharmacy, is a powerful but most uncertain medicine, and has been also recommended in consumption. I once administered a few grains of it in this disease, when violent pains and hypercatharsis supervened, which lasted for several hours. MM. B. Lagrange and Braconnot found it to contain a large quantity of an acrid resin, to which it no doubt owes its hypercathartic properties. To judge from this single case, which, however, tallies with the experience of others, I should say that this fungus was, in medicine, to be looked upon as a very suspicious ally.[60] The A. muscarius has also been used in medicine. Whistling, so long ago as 1778, wrote on its healing virtues, in Latin, recommending its powder as a valuable application with which to sprinkle sanious sores and excoriated nipples. Plenck gave drachm doses of it internally in epilepsy, and, together with Bernhard and Whistling, attests its success. It appears that the Phallus mucus in China, and the Lycoperdon carcinomale near the Cape of Good Hope, are used also by the inhabitants of those countries as external applications for cancerous sores. The Phallus, rubbed upon the skin, is said to deaden its sensibility, like the narke, or electric skate.