Note 5 — GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

The use of white mustard is at present very popular, and, like all popular remedies, is employed too indiscriminately. Its medicinal power is not a new discovery. Cullen, in his Materia Medica, vol. ii, p 171, observes, “As much of the unbruised seeds as an ordinary table-spoon will contain does not prove heating to the stomach, but stimulates the intestinal canal, and commonly proves laxative.” Entirely with a view to determine the nature of this article as a medicine, I made an examination of the seeds in their whole state. In a few days after being digested in cold water, they became much enlarged, and the water had powerfully the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen. Submitted to distillation in a common alembic with water, the portions of the liquid which first came over possessed the taste of a weak infusion of malt, quite free from pungency. Digested in alcohol, they did not communicate strongly either smell or taste. Some seeds which had passed the alimentary canal, were found to be much swollen, and had lost some of their pungency. It is evident from these results, that the seeds, by treatment with these agents, were acted upon with difficulty in their entire state.

In the Journal de Chemie Médicale, de Pharmacie, &c. No. X. Année 1^re. M. M. Henry fils et Gorot, have given an elaborate report of their chemical examination of the mustard seed, of which the following is the substance: the seeds yield by expression a fixed and a volatile oil, and the latter may be separated from the former by digestion in alcohol. The alcoholic solution when evaporated affords a solid and crystallisable substance, possessing acid properties, to which the discoverers have given the name of sulpho-sinapic acid. Sulphur, it is stated, forms a constituent element of this peculiar acid.

M. Julia Fontenelle, in the same Journal (No. 3), informs us, that from his researches he is led to conclude, that the mustard seed owes all its medicinal powers to the volatile oil, for the extraction of which he recommends that the seeds should be reduced to powder, and distilled with eight or ten parts of water.

It may be considered therefore that the properties of the seeds become sufficiently extracted in the stomach and intestinal canal, to excite the mucous membrane to increased secretion, and also to influence the action of the nerves. They are found principally useful to those invalids who suffer from general deficiency of secretion in the intestinal canal, and from nervous langour. I do not conceive that they are so proper for persons of the inflammatory diathesis, and who become easily heated; and I should rather approve of them as an occasional than a constant remedy, for they are not a certain aperient, and I do not think it desirable to subject the canal constantly to this kind of stimulus. If the seeds accumulate very much, some inconvenience may be occasioned by their augmentation of bulk, and if they be retained in the intestines, some further inconvenience may result from the disengagement of sulphuretted hydrogen.