NEW ZEALAND FLAX AS A CURATIVE AGENT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1306, 21 February 1885, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND FLAX AS A CURATIVE AGENT.

Dr M'mckton, M.R.0.5.E., of the Kumara Hospital, writes as follows to ihe Australasian Medical Gazette Amongst the botanical products of New Z aland there is one item for “The Materia Medica" that will prove a valuable auxiliary to the surgeon as soon as its therapeutical effects are generally known. Somewhere about the year 1869 or 1870 a letter appeared in the Melbourne Argus signed by myself, ae Provincial surgeon of Southland, bearing witness to the extraordinary healing properties of the phormium tenax, commonly known as New Zealand flax. From that time to the present I have used it in hundreds of cases, including lacerations and smputatations of every description, and I have no hesitation in saying there ia nothing known in the Old Country that can equal it in producing healthy granulations. I use a strong decoction —the stronger the better—made from the roots and the butts of the leaf, boiled for 12 hours. At one time I had to make it fresh every second day, as it readily ferments and deteriorates, but since carbolic acid came into vogue I keep it for any length of time by adding an ounce of equal parts carbolic acid and glycerine to every quart. I require no other antiseptic precautions, but simply syringe the lesions occasionally with it, and maintain cotton wool or lint, soaked in if, constantly to the parts affected. If there are no foreign matters to be discharged there will be no discharge, in support of which I will instance the case of an Austrian, named Louis Lourich, whose forearm I lately amputated, after it had been shattered through dynamite. The ligatures were 32 days in coming away, aod the amount of pus from the operation up to that time would not altogether amount to a tablespoonful. The same patient had the soft parts of the other forearm torn and blown into such a mass of shreds that the numbers of the staff thought it was hoplssaly beyond repair, I need only to say that with the same treatment it became as sound and useful as before, and exhibits only scare, showing whore new skin hid been formed.

Some time ago a navvy on the Winton railway works had a loaded truck go over his foot, doubling it on the sole, bursting the integuments and leaving the os calcis nearly bare, and the flexor tendons dipping loosely with bits of skin and fascia under the sole cf the foot. The man lived in a tent near the works. I instructed one of his mates how to boil down a billy of flax every day, and suspend it with a drip-rag over the injury, and the case recovered perfectly, with no appearance of pus, except on one occasion for 24 hours, through his mates leaving him for some sports or races with an insufficient supply of decoction, which compelled him to use water instead. In this case no carbolic aoid or anything was used but the decoction of flax by itself. 1 might adduce proofs by scores of its efficacy, but if, owing to these facts being made prominently known through the Australasian Medical Gazette, medical men can be induced to test the remedy for themselves, it will require no assertions from me to cause the phormium tenux to take the premier place as a granulating agent. I presume that plenty of Now Zealand flax can be obtained now in Sydney, but if not, I shall be happy to forward a bag of tbe dried root for trial in your Hospital, or to any other Hospital, rf their authorities like to pay the freight. I will add that the New Zealand veronica (a medicine for diarrhoea) that is advertised at Home under the name of koroniko, is misspelt, as the Maori name is Koromiko, and also that there is a far superior medicine for the same purpose to be obtained from the New Zealand woodbine or clematis, known among the South Island Natives under the name of Ti-aka-popohua, which is a remedy that the old Maoris formerly would always use in preference to veronica, when it con’d be obtained readily, and especially in the flowering time.