A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, Jr.

Horatio Curtis Wood Jr.

Date:: 1876

Credit: A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$motor functions, as shown by paralysis and convulsions, and of the respiration cndmg finally in death by asphyxia. This is in accord with the observations of other investigators. MM. Rabuteau and Mourier have found that the almost instantaneous death which Charcot and Ball first noted as following the injection of a large dose of the nitrate of silver into the veins is due to 1 direct paralyzing influence of the drag upon the muscle of the heart. M. Rouget has never seen this form of death follow the hypodermic or internal administration of the poison, the heart always continuing to beat for a gi-eater or less length of time after the cessation of respiration, and also retaining i*-? irritability. As already stated, both convulsions and paralysis are present in argyria, or silver-poisoning. The convulsions are severe, generally tetanic, and seem to resemble very closely those caused by strychnia, since Eouget states that in the frog they are evidently reflex, excited by the least peripheral irritation. A peculiarity which that observer notes is their persistence after the complete abolition of voluntary movements. The death is due, in argyria, to cessation of the respiration; Eouget {he. cit., p. 351) even states that he has witnessed the suspension of the.latter function in the frog whilst the activity of the reflex movements was much beyond normal. In the dog and in the full-grown cat this asphyxia is accom- panied by an outpouring of mucus in the lungs, pulmonary congestion and oedema being found on post-mortem examination. Two theories have been propounded as to the cause of the asphyxia: one, that it is simply due to the choking up of the lungs by the congestion and the excessive secretion whose origin is an altered state of the blood ; a second, that both the asphyxia and the lesions in the lungs have their origin in a direct action of the poison upon the uerve-centres. The first view has been especially supported by Krahmer and by M]\I. Ea buteau and Mourier. Unfortunately, I have not seen the original papers of these physicians; but, according to Eouget, the basis of argument of Krahmer is simply the ecchymoses which he found in horses dead of the poison, whilst that of Rabuteau and Mourier is the fluidity of the blood after death, and the existence in it of globules which, on account of their solubility in ammonia, were believed to be the chloride of silver. The French observers were, how- ever, almost certainly mistaken in their belief that these granules were chloride of silver, since ammonia dissolves hromatin as freely as it does the chloride. In 1864 Charcot and Ball {Oazette Medicale, 1864) made a series of ex- periments in which a silver salt that did not coagulate albumen was injected directly into the blood. They noted not only the respiratory embarrassment, but also that the hinder extremities were suddenly paralyzed, and concluded that both the asphyxia and the lung-troublo were due to an affection of the central nervous system. In 1869 Dr. Bogolowsky, of Moscow, studied ( Virchmo's Archiv, ISGO, Bd. xlvi.) the action of a peptone of the nitrate when used hypodcrmically. He found, on examination of the blood of a$