Individual Drugs. ABIES (Tsuga canadensis). - Southwest School of ...

effects of aconite seldom last over three hours, though the therapeutic
result may be permanent. When aconite kills it does so usually by
paralyzing the heart, arresting that organ in diastole.
Locally, aconite and its alkaloid, aconitine, act as irritants, producing
a tingling, pricking sensation and numbness, followed by peripheral
sensory impairment, resulting in anaesthesia of the part. The latter is
due to paralysis of the sensory nerve terminals. Usually no redness nor
inflammation follows, but in rarely susceptible cases vesicular or
pustular eruptions take place, or intense cutaneous itching. Both are
extremely irritating to the nasal and ocular membranes, and when
inhaled may give rise to a peculiar local sense of icy-coldness.
Administered internally in small doses aconite occasions a tingling or
prickling sensation, felt first in the mouth, tongue, and fauces, and
quickly extending to the stomach. This is rapidly followed by more or
less numbness. Gastric warmth and a general glow of the surface follow
non-lethal doses. Slight perspiration may be induced, but sweating to
any great degree does not take place except from large doses. Then it is
an almost constant symptom. Temperature is reduced, but the more
readily during pyrexia, when the pulse is frequent and small, if the
dose administered be fractional.
In maximum doses (by some called full therapeutic doses) aconite
causes gastric heat. A sense of warmth throughout the system follows,
and occasionally the thrilling or tingling sensation will be more
generally experienced, with perhaps some numbness. There may be
dizziness most marked upon assuming the upright posture, pain in the
head, acute body pain, excessive depression, with feeble circulation
and diminished respiration. The pulse may fall to 30 or 40 beats per
minute and muscular weakness become extreme. Eclectic teaching
has long protested against giving aconite in doses sufficient to produce
these effects, which some, with extreme boldness, declare to be
therapeutic results.
Toxicology.—In poisonous amounts the symptoms given are
exaggerated and the effects extremely rapid. Tingling and numbness
increase and are felt all over the body, the thrilling and creeping
coldness approaching from the extremities to the body. Excessive
sweating comes on, rapidly lowering the body temperature, dimness of
vision, loss of hearing and touch, and general peripheral paralysis
Felter’s Materia Medica - (A) - Page 6