Strophanthus hispidus, continued : pharmacological action. (Abstract) / by Thomas R. Fraser.

Date:
[1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strophanthus hispidus, continued : pharmacological action. (Abstract) / by Thomas R. Fraser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    I have not obtained evidence of any primary action on the brain, medulla oblongata, spinal cord, nor motor nerves. Sensibility, however, is slightly affected ; one of the most conspicuous evidences of which is the insensibility of the cornea following the application of dilute solutions to the eye-ball. In the preliminary communications I have stated that the chief action is that exerted upon the heart, produced when large toxic doses are given by a powerful action upon tbe heart-muscle. This action upon the heart-muscle is one which Strophanthus exerts upon all the other striped muscular fibres of the body. These muscles are affected by twitching movements, their tonicity is increased, and, finally, their contractility is destroyed. They are not then, however, flaccid, soft, and alkaline, but hard and acid in reaction. In fact, the condition of the muscles is one of rigor mortis, in which the alkaline reaction of the living muscle has given place to the acid reaction of rigor; and, just as the acid reaction of ordinary rigor mortis continues until the muscle becomes flaccid in the process of putrefaction, so the acid and hard condition produced by the pharmacological action of Strophanthus remains until putridity causes the muscle again to become alkaline, soft, and flaccid. This prevention of the initial muscular flaccidity of death and precipitation, as it were, of rigor viortis, to which I drew attention so long ago as 1870,* has since been recognised by other observers as events in the pharmacological action of digitalis, and of several members of the digitalis group. The twitches produced in the muscles of the body have been further examined in detached muscles, immersed in normal saline solution to which Strophanthus had been added, and connected with a lever recording the movements on a revolving cylinder. The movements in the detached muscle are thus seen to be very re- markable. At first a faint twitch occurs in an individual muscular fibre, then simultaneous and independent contractions of different fibres rapidly succeed each other, until by and by a perfect tumult of contractions occurs in rapid succession in different muscular fibres, and the lever attached to the muscle is kept in almost constant motion, its excursions being altogether irregular both in time and in extent. [Tracings were shown.] While the muscle is so affected, * Proo. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. vii., 1869-70, p. 102.