Therapeutics and materia medica: a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medicinal agents, including their description and history (Volume 1).

  • Stillé, Alfred, 1813-1900.
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Therapeutics and materia medica: a systematic treatise on the action and uses of medicinal agents, including their description and history (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    produced in some persons by the emanations of ipecacuanha; the vomiting excited by the passage of a biliary or vesical calculus; the nervous exhaustion occasioned by intense pain, and by the shock of severe accidents in which a limb is crushed, or a large portion of the body burned or scalded; the fainting and even death which some- times result from sudden and agonizing mental emotion; these are some out of the many illustrations that might be adduced to show how powerful are the actions which may be aroused through the nervous system alone. Other impressions are occasioned by the local action of medicines upon the nervous trunks or extremities, withoulthe intervention of the circulation, as in the penetration noticed above. Anodyne and anaesthetic applications, such as opium, belladonna, veratria, and aconite, may relieve local pain without affecting the general sensibility. A frog's foot, kept moist with laudanum or prussic acid, loses its power of motion without the general sensibility having been impaired. Lembert states that in a case of paralysis from lead affecting the upper limbs, he applied a blister to both arms, and dressed one of the sores with strychnia. The paralysis on this side improved, but on the other it was unaffected until a similar treatment had been made use of. In all these cases, the limited operation of the medicine seems to be unquestionable.1 In 1822, Dr. Hubbard performed a variety of experiments with prussic acid and nux vomica, in which, it is stated, these agents were applied with much less effect to bloodvessels than to nerves, and that their action was proportioned to the importance and extent of the nerves involved.2 Dr. Pennock drew an identical conclusion from his own carefully conducted experiments;3 and Dupuy and Brachet, without going so far, at least concluded that the division of the par vagum on both sides greatly diminished, if it did not neutralize, the poisonous effects of nux vomica and of narcotics introduced into the stomach. But these results are in direct contradiction with those of the greater number of observers. Fontana applied the venom of vipers, ticunas poison, water and oil of cherry-laurel, and opium, to the exposed sciatic nerves of rabbits and frogs, without producing any characteristic symptoms. He also tore and cut the same nerves without any notable effect. Wedemeyer obtained the same negative results by the application of prussic acid to the median nerve of a cat, in the space of two inches, and also to the infra-orbitar nerve and the par vagum of a horse.4 On the other hand, when poisons are intro- duced into a limb whose nervous connections with the trunk have been entirely severed, the same effects ensue as if the nerves remained entire. This is proved by the experiments of Magendie and Delille, who destroyed animals by means of upas tieute, introduced into a limb whose only connection with the body was through an artery and a vein; and, lest it might be objected that the parietes of these vessels 1 Schcltz, Allgemein. Pharmakologie, p. 9*5. 2 Phila. Jour, of Med. and Phys. Sci., iv. 242. * Am. Jour, of Med. Sci., ii. 0. * Alijees, Allgem. Arzueiui., p. 228. 4