Materia medica and therapeutics : vegetable kingdom / by Charles D.F. Phillips.

  • Phillips, Charles D. F. (Charles Douglas Fergusson), 1830-1904.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Materia medica and therapeutics : vegetable kingdom / by Charles D.F. Phillips. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    17/600 (page 5)
    twitchings beneath the skin are a characteristic and necessary part of poisoning with a good specimen ot aconite itself; and re- gards the fact of the alkaloid, aconitia, not producing this eflect, to he strong evidence that that substance does not fully represent the plant in its powers. The experimental researches of Achscharumow (Virchow s Archiv, 1866, p. 255) are the most complete that have been made upon the physiological effects of aconite. He experi- mented on both cold and warm blooded animals ; and the general conclusions at which he arrived are the following. Fatal doses of the drug— 1. Produce death from asphyxia by cardiac paralysis. 2. They, in the first place, stimulate the medulla oblongata. 3. This stimulation affects the vagi, and is succeeded by paralysis of these nerves. 4. The cerebro-spinal motor nerves are paralysed, and volun- tary movements are abolished, the muscular substance remaining unaffected. 5. Finally, the reflex action of the spinal cord and the con- ductivity of the afferent nerves remain unaffected; while the conductivity of the sympathetic ones is stimulated. These observations, however, are far from explaining the whole action of aconite; and, as bearing on its therapeutical use, the only points that they distinctly suggest are its power to diminish excessive action of the heart, and to relieve pain by partially and temporarily paralysing the sensory nerves. The general effects produced by taking aconite are remarkable for the great rapidity with which the symptoms follow each other. This may possibly be referable in part to'a direct action of aconite through the medium of the nervous system, independent of the effects of actual absorption of the drug, which, however, itself takes place with great rapidity. 4. Therapeutic Action—The poison invested with these formidable characters has been reduced to so manageable a condition as to become a powerful and valuable therapeutic agent in some of the most troublesome and dangerous diseases to which the human frame is subject. Baron Storck was the first to draw public attention to its value