Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/539

 CACHEXIA CACTUS 533 use in emergencies, and occasionally also to court favorites, who used them as instruments of personal revenge. Abuses of this kind were very frequent during the reign of Louis XV. The punishments directed by these warrants continued during the king's pleasure, and often for long periods. They were abolished by the constituent assembly early in the revolution of 1789. CACHEXIA (Gr. KOK^, bad, and ifa condition), a term used in medicine to signify an unnatu- ral and unwholesome condition of the body, not immediately and directly dependent on local disease, but rather on the long-continued action upon the system either of slow pathologi- cal changes going on in some vital organ, or of morbid climatic influences. A condition of cachexia is marked by a sallow or dusky com- plexion, loss of flesh, a diminution of muscular strength and of the general nervous activity, and a liability to succumb easily under various incidental disorders, which vary in different cases. Thus we have the cancerous, tubercu- lous, and syphilitic cachexia, the cachexia of Bright's disease, malarial cachexia, &c. In many cases, the cause of the morbid condition being itself irremovable, the cachexia, when once established, is necessarily fatal, as in cancer and Bright's disease. In other instan- ces, as in malarial cachexia, the indications for cure are : first, to remove the patient from the locality in which the affection originated to a purer and more bracing atmosphere ; and sec- ondly, to recruit the bodily powers by judicious exercise, nutritious food, and the administration of tonic and sustaining remedies. CACTUS, a genus of plants, the type of the natural order cactacece, comprising numerous species, all of which are natives of America. The name was originally given by Theophras- tus to a spiny plant of Sicily. The cactuses Cactus melocactus. have fleshy and succulent, globular or colum- nar, often deeply channelled and many-jointed stems, usually leafless, but armed with spines and bristles. The structure of many of the species is singular and grotesque, and their ap- pearance is interesting by reason of the rough- ness of the stalks and the beauty of the flowers. Found chiefly in the hot stony places of tropi- cal America, their stems are filled with an abundant juice, which, being enclosed within a tough and impermeable skin, enables them to support a sluggish vital action without incon- venience in a parched soil. They vary in stature from creeping stems to angular ascend- ing trunks, sometimes 30 feet in height. The flowers, varying from pure white to rich scar- let and purple, are much increased in size and brilliancy by cultivation in gardens and green- houses. They thrive, however, only in the Cactus grandlflorus. poorest soil. More than 60 species of cactuses have been described. The C. melocactus, the great melon thistle, or Turk's cap, grows from the apertures of rocks in the dryest and hot- Cactus flagelliformls.