Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on diseases of the heart / by Edwin M. Hale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![ment, but such a hyper-stimulation of the heart that the results are similar. When death occurs from acute poisoning by digitalis, the muscular substance is hard and firm; the heart is rigidly contracted, and no blood is found in its cavities. ~Eow, if death should suddenly occur from concentric hypertrophy or enlargement, the heart would be found in the same con- dition as in digitalis--po\somng. It is obvious that if we accept this as the true action of digitalis, namely, that it is, in large doses, a cardiac tonic, you can readily understand how injurious, and even danger- ous, it would be to give large doses in hypertrophy with enlargement, i. e., when the heart has alreadj an excess of muscular power. It is in such cases that, when given by the old school, dangerous and alarming symptoms occurred, which led to the fears of its use which we find so prevalent. It is as if an allopath were to give a massive dose of bella- donna in a case of cerebritis, or nux vomica in spina] congestion, or arsenic in gastritis. In such cases, the remedy being intensely homoeopathic, a severe or fatal aggravation would occur. The deduction I would have you draw from this is, that as digitalis is primarily and intensely homoeopathic to a condition similar to hypertrophy with enlargement, in which the con- tractile power and impulsive force of the heart is increased, it should be prescribed in the smallest dose consistent with reason. I will explain what I mean: the 3rd of digitalis may not be stronger in reality than the 30th of lycopodium-, for while the former appears to lose its medicinal power after the 3rd, the latter seems to gain in power at every remove upwards from the 3rd trituration. This difference is due to the fact that certain medicines have different qualities of inherent power; and, in the future, it should be the aim of our school to ascertain the inherent medicinal power of each drug, instead of quarreling about the close. The dose of digitalis, then, in this disease, should lie in the first three dilutions of the tincture, or the triturations of digitaline from the 3rd to the 6th. With these doses, repeated every few hours, or as often as every hour, no aggravation, but much benefit, will be derived.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2105633x_0138.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
