The physiological and therapeutical action of the bromide of potassium and bromide of ammonium / by Edward H. Clarke and Robert Amory.

  • Clarke, Edward H. (Edward Hammond), 1820-1877.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physiological and therapeutical action of the bromide of potassium and bromide of ammonium / by Edward H. Clarke and Robert Amory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    founded on experiments performed on this animal only, and therefore must be accepted with due caution in regard to the action of this drug on the warm-blooded animals, and especially on man, in whom the nervous system is arranged with so much more perfection, and so much more widely distrib- uted, and the functions more subdivided. In all the experiments which I have observed on warm-blooded animals, the cardiac pulsations ceased within a few minutes after the signs of respiration. Electrical stimulation produced muscular contractions, whether applied to voluntary or involuntary muscles, to nerves either peripheral or central.. Prop. E. — The action of bromide of potassiurr on the nervous system may be explained by its action on the capillary, arterial, or central circulation; it modifies reflex action, by over-stimulation and sub- sequent paralysis of the vasomotor system, thus producing oligagmia of the tissues and nerve sub- stances, depriving the latter of the vitalizing properties of the blood. There is -probably no alteration of the nerve substance or cells. In what other way can be the explanation of the efficacy of this drug in certain forms of epilepsy, accompanied by a capillary injection of brain or spinal axis, or in hysterical epilepsy caused by exaggerated reflex sensibility? Bromide of potas-