the skin and muscles of the back. Five drachms of the root in one of Orfila's experiments with the dog, occasioned death in twenty-one minutes, when swallowed.
The alkaloid, aconitina, seems to produce in animals precisely the same effects as the plant or its extract. Orfila and Dr. Pereira agree in this; and my own observation, limited to a single experiment, is to the same effect. It is probably the most subtile of all known poisons. Dr. Pereira mentions that the fiftieth part of a grain has endangered life when used medicinally.[1] In my experiment the tenth of a grain, introduced in the form of hydrochlorate into the cellular tissue of a rabbit, killed it in twelve minutes.
Symptoms in Man.—A perplexing discrepance exists in the accounts that have been published of the effects of monkshood on man; which seems to have arisen, less from any actual contrariety in the phenomena, than from loose observation, or a misunderstanding of the facts; for most of the recent statements of competent observers are consistent with one another.
Dr. Fleming says that in medicinal doses it occasions warmth in the stomach, nausea, numbness and tingling in the lips and cheeks, extending more or less over the rest of the body, diminution in the force and frequency of the pulse, which sometimes sinks to 40 in the minute, great muscular weakness, confusion of sight or absolute blindness; and if the dose be unduly large, there is a sense of impending death, sometimes slight delirium, and a want of power to execute what the will directs, but without any loss of consciousness. The warmth which is excited is unattended with any elevation of temperature, vascularity of the skin, or acceleration of the pulse. No true hypnotic effect is produced; but by inducing serenity, or deadening pain, it may predispose to sleep. The highest degree of these effects is not unattended with danger.
When it is administered in doses adequate to occasion death, it seems in general to operate by inducing extreme depression of the circulation. Dr. Fleming recognizes two other modes of death in animals,—first, by an overwhelming depression of the nervous system, proving fatal in a few seconds, without arresting the action of the heart,—and secondly, by asphyxia, or arrestment of the respiration, the result of paralysis gradually pervading the whole muscular system, respiratory, as well as voluntary. But these effects, he thinks, cannot be recognized in the cases which have been published of poisoning in man, because the dose required to produce either of them is very large. The least variable symptoms in the human subject are, first, numbness, burning, and tingling in the mouth, throat, and stomach,—then sickness, vomiting, and pain in the epigastrium,—next, general numbness, prickling, and impaired sensibility of the skin, impaired or annihilated vision, deafness, and vertigo,—also frothing at the mouth, constriction at the throat, false sensations of weight or enlargement in various parts of the body,—great muscular feebleness and tremor, loss of voice, and laborious breathing,
- ↑ Elements of Materia Medica, 1842, ii. 1811.
