About a year ago Dr. Quinlan had seen the chewed leaves of the Plantago lanceolata successfully used to stop a dangerous hemorrhage from leech bites in a situation where pressure could not be employed. He had searched out the literature of the subject, and found that, although this herb is highly spoken of by Culpepper and other old writers as a styptic, and alluded to as such in the plays of Shakespeare, its employment seems to have died out. Professor Quinlan described the suitable varieties of plantain, and exhibited preparations which had been made for him by Dr. J. Evans, of Dublin, State apothecary. They dried leaves and powdered leaves, conserved with glycerine, for external use; the juice preserved by alcohol, as also by glycerine, for internal use; and a green extract. He gave an account of the chemistry of the juice, from which it appeared that it was not a member of the tannin series; and also described its physiological effect in causing a tendency to stasia in the capillaries of the tail of a goldfish, examined with a microscopic power of 400 X. He regarded its styptic power as partly mechanical and partly physiological.

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