American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy

entire.
Its effects are not alone upon the motor nervous system and voluntary
muscles, but upon the sympathetic nervous system as well. For this
influence it is best administered hypodermically in doses of from the one
one-hundredth to the one-twentieth of a grain.
In paralysis of the aged, without active inflammation, it is of value,
especially if injected deeply into the paralyzed muscles. Wherever
paralysis occurs, without inflammatory action, it may be used if there be
no structural changes in the nerve centers.
In the early stage of paralysis where rigidity or muscular spasm is present
the agent is contraindicated. In fact, it is not to be administered in
paralysis, except where absence of central irritation is evidenced by
complete relaxation, flaccidity and perhaps tumidity. The more perfect
the relaxation the more satisfactory the action of the agent. In these cases
the agent should be injected directly into the paralyzed muscles.
In lead poisoning, with wrist drop and other evidence of suspension of
nerve influence, with or without lead colic and constipation, this agent
exercises a direct influence.
The influence of strychnine to relieve, modify or cure alcoholism is now
almost universally acknowledged. It has been but a short time that
dipsomania has been considered, as it now is, to be an actual nervous
disease of the central nervous system with concomitant phenomena—a
long train of disagreeable or dangerous symptoms. But since this fact has
been recognized, there has been a universal effort made to discover the
most satisfactory method of cure.
In 1891 Yarochewski reported a series of experiments on dogs,
conducted to determine the antagonistic power of strychnia over alcohol.
He gave them alcohol of a strength of 42 to 65 per cent and produced a
staggering gait by the injection of 60 grams and complete intoxication
with 90 grams. The alcohol was given for a week and produced
considerable emaciation, followed by death. If, however, a hypodermic
injection of two milligrams of strychnine was administered with each
dose of 30 grams of alcohol, the latter could be run up to 180 grams
without the development of intoxication or symptoms of strychnine
poisoning.
Ellingwood’s American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy - Page 425