American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

Dose, one to twenty grains.
Quinine Sulphate.
Physiological Action—In doses of five grains three or four times a day for
a few days, it produces fullness of the capillary circulation of the brain,
throbbing in the head, suffusion of the face, ringing in the ears, with
dullness of hearing, headache, mental confusion and nervous
excitement. If the above doses be given every three hours continuously
there is muscular feebleness, with general impairment of motility,
increasing debility, great restlessness, with wakefulness, dilated pupils
and partial loss of sight.
A single dose of sixty grains of quinine sulphate, given to an adult male
caused extreme depression, with feeble circulation, coldness of the
surface and extremities, respiration slow and sighing; pulse slow and
almost imperceptible, pupils widely dilated, sight and hearing almost
extinct, voice very feeble; thirst great, tongue pale and moist, breath cold.
While in some cases blindness from quinine has continued for some time
in no case has it been permanent. Quinine has produced deafness also,
which in many cases has been permanent. In some cases death has
followed the administration of the remedy in disease, a result fairly
attributed to the drug. In small doses it is tonic, in large doses stimulant,
and in still larger doses sedative, acting on the cerebro-spinal nervous
system and through the ganglionic nervous system on the heart. Besides
the above named effects, large and repeated doses may cause gastric
irritation, eructations, chill and fever paroxysms headache, perspiration,
vertigo, staggering and delirium— the condition known as cinchonism.
Specific Symptomatology—Quinine will act favorably upon the system if
the skin be soft, if the mucous membranes of the mouth are moist, and if
the tongue is moist and inclined to clean, if the pulse is full and soft and
the temperature declining or at normal. In other words, when the
secretory functions of the body are in a working condition, quinine will
produce no unpleasant results.
Quinine is specifically an antiperiodic. It will overcome malarial
periodicity, especially if the above named conditions are present when
the agent is administered.
It is profoundly tonic; under limited conditions it is antipyretic and also
antiseptic. It has specific oxytocic powers over the parturient uterus.
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 127