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:: 1874

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.

65/592 page 59

$ing, as he found it in only four out of twenty-three dogs so sacrificed ; and he believes that it is merely an accident dependent upon the method of death. In a series of analyses, apparently carefully made, he found that the continued use of quinine augments the proportion of fibrin, but lowers that of the red corpuscles. In 1867* Prof. Binz announced the fact that quinia added to human blood in the proportion of one part to four thousand immediately checks and in a short time arrests the amoeboid movements of the white blood-cells. Confirma- tion of this has been furnished by Scharrenbroich (Bus Chinin als Antiplilo- ffisiicum, Inaug. Dissert., Bonn, 1867), by Kerner (quoted in London Practi- tioner, vol. vii. p. 321), aad by Geltowsky (London Practitioner, vol. vii.). The minimum eflPective strength of the solution has been found to vary in difierent species of animals, and even in difierent individuals of the same species. It is a matter of great interest to determine whether quinia acts in the living organism as on the stage of the microscope; and, to settle this point, Prof. Binz {Virchoto's Archiv, Bd. xlvi., 1869, p. 138) has experimented according to the method of Cohnheim. He found that when the mesentery of curarized frogs to whom quinia had been given was exposed upon the stage of the microscope, no accumulation of white blood-cells in the small vessels, no passage of them out into the tissues, occurred upon irritation; or, if after a time these phenomena commenced, they were at once checked by a small hypodermic injection of the alkaloid. When the inflammatory process had already commenced in a Cohnheim frog, an injection of quinia would cause the wandering out of the corpuscles to cease, and would bring about a gradual clearing of the white cells from the choked-up vessels. Prof Binz further took two young cats, and, after poisoning one of them with quinia, examined their blood. In the blood of the unpoisoned animal the white cells were fiir more abundant than in that of the poisoned cat. From these facts Prof Binz deduces the conclusion that quinia acts destructively in the' system upon the white blood-corpuscles, in the same way as when they are out of the body. A. Martin (Das Chinin als Antiphlogisticum, Inaug. Dissert., GiQssen, 1868)1 has experimentally confirmed the efiect of quinia upon the extrusion of white cells of the frog's mesentery, and has found that it also occurs in the centre of parenchymatous organs, such as the liver. On the other hand, Schwalbe| could detect no difi'erence in the Wood of a cat before and after poisoning by quinia; and the experiments of Geltowsky {loc. cit.) upon frogs and guinea-pigs have yielded similar results: in all * Archiv fur Mikroscop. Anatomic, iii., 1867. Consult, also. Experimcntcllc Uutcr- mckungcn ilber dcm Wcscn dcr Chininwirkiwg.-Q^vWn, ]808; Virchmo's ylroAiV, Bd. xlvi., 18G9, p. 1.37. Berlin. Kiinische Wochcnschri/t, Nov. 1871. t Quoted by Binz, Vircliow's Archi,;, Bd. xlvi. p. 137. t Quoted by Kcrncr, PJlilgcr's Archiv, Bd. i. p. 203.$