My friend Dr. Hamilton, of Plymouth, recently brought under the notice of the profession the medical properties of the prickly poppy or Mexican thistle (Argemone Mexicana).  It is indigenous to and grows wild in the greatest profusion throughout the whole of the Caribbean islands, and may be found at every season of the year covered with its bright golden blossoms, and bearing its prickly capsules in all their several stages of maturity.  It is an annual plant, attaining a height of about two feet, growing abundantly in low and hot uncultivated spots.  Its stem is round and prickly, furnished with alternate branches and thorny leaves.  The seeds possess an emetic quality.  The whole plant abounds in a yellow milky juice, resembling gamboge in color, and not improbably possessing properties similar to the seeds.  In Nevis the oil is obtained from the bruised seeds by boiling, and sold by the negroes in small phials, containing about an ounce each, under the name of “thistle oil,” at the price of a quarter of a dollar each.  The usual dose for dry bellyache is thirty drops upon a lump of sugar, and its effect is perfectly magical, relieving the pain instantaneously, throwing the patient into a profound and refreshing sleep, and in a few hours relieving the bowels gently of the contents.  This oil seems fitted to compete in utility with the far more costly and less agreeable oil of the croton.

The seeds of the sandbox (Hura crepitans) when bruised, operate powerfully as emetico-cathartic.  It is probable that an oil might be obtained from them similar in its operation to the thistle oil.

A cucurbitaceous fruit, one of the Luffas (called by Von Martius Luffa purgans), a tribe closely allied to the colocynth and mornordicas, growing in South America, is a powerful purgative, and is used in the province of Pernambuco, where it is called Cabacinha.  The fruit is about the size of a small pear and resembles the wild cucumber.  An infusion of a fourth part of one of these fruits is administered chiefly in the form of an injection.

Another species (Luffa drastica, of Martius) is also employed for the same purpose.

The Luffa purgans grows spontaneously in the suburbs of Recieffe, the capital of the province of Pernambuco, and flowers in November and December.  The fruit is a drastic purgative, and an infusion of it is used either internally or in the form of clyster.  The tincture is prepared by macerating, for twenty-eight hours or more, four of the fruit deprived of the seeds in a bottle of spirit 21 degrees.  The dose is three or four ounces daily, which occasions much sickness.

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