American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

walls of the intestines is sometimes affected by tetanic spasm, followed by
complete relaxa. tion and paralysis.
The mind may continue clear. The influence, at first stimulant, is finally
motor depressant, abolition of reflexes appears, with ultimate paralysis of
the motor nerves, more slowly occurring.
It is quickly absorbed and readily eliminated through all the
emunctories.
Upon the eye, when locally applied, this agent acts first by contracting
the pupil. It afterward decreases intraocular tension, and produces spasm
of accommodation and myopia. There is often pain of a severe contractile
character produced in the eyeball.
Specific Symptomatology—The remedy is indicated when there is a
feeble pulse, tremulous, perhaps slightly irregular, cool extremities and
cool surface, breathing more or less difficult, with a sense of constriction.
These symptoms are found present in some cases of cerebro-spinal
meningitis. Administered in minute doses in this disease, it will be
found to occupy a place between belladonna and gelsemium. It may be
given in conjunction with echinacea with very good results. It overcomes
the tendency to mental dullness and stupor and wards off impending
coma. The agent is useful where there is torpor, inactivity, atonicity of the
intestinal canal, and of the organs of digestion and appropriation, or
where from lack of nerve force there is deficient secretion, dryness of the
mucous membranes, deficient glandular secretions with dry and
hardened feces.
It increases the contractility of the muscles of the bladder walls, and of
the uterus.
Although a motor depressant in large doses, in small medicinal doses it
has a contrary influence.
Therapy—The agent may be given internally to allay the tension in.
duced by extreme nervous irritation. Convulsive disorders from irritation
are allayed by it, but it is not in general use for this purpose.
It has been used in tetanus, in epilepsy and in convulsions from all
Fauses, also in locomotor ataxia, in chorea and in progressive paralysis
of the insane. Its influence has not been such as to justify dependence
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 331