Researches into the antagonism of medicines : being the report of the Edinburgh Committee of the British Medical Association / by John Hughes Bennett, chairman and reporter.

  • British Medical Association. Edinburgh Committee.
Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches into the antagonism of medicines : being the report of the Edinburgh Committee of the British Medical Association / by John Hughes Bennett, chairman and reporter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    show that belladonna has no influence whatever in accelerating the recovery from the poisonous effects of opium. 3. That somnolency, stupor, narcotism, and coma—the essential effects of the action of opium —are both intensified and prolonged by the concurrent action of belladonna. 4. That belladonna is powerless to obviate the chief danger in opium-poisoning; viz., the depression of the respiratory func- tion. 5. That the results of the combined action of opium and bella- donna are the same, whether given in medicinal or toxical doses. Wliile, therefore, belladonna cannot in any sense be regarded as an antidote against opium, but in large doses the exact reverse, it may, under certain conditions mentioned below, and always in very small doses, be used in conjunction with other remedies as a means of aiding the recovery. [The conditions to which Dr. Harley alludes are, to give i-96th of a grain of sulphate of atropia at intervals of two hours, to stimulate the failing power of the heart.] The views of Dr. Harley are not quite in accordance with those of Mitchell, Keen, and Morehouse,* who write as follows. The foregoing experiments and observations authorise us, we think, to draw the following conclusions as to the use of hypodermic injections, and as to the antagonism of atropia and morphia. I. Conia, atropia, and daturia, have no power to lessen pain when used subdermaUy. 2. Morphia thus used is of the utmost value to relieve pain, and is most potent, in certain forms of neuralgia, the nearer it is applied to the seat of the suffering. 3. Morphia lowers the pulse slightly, or not at all. Atropia usu- ally lowers the pulse a few beats within ten minutes, and then raises it twenty to fifty beats within an hour. The pulse finally falls about the tenth hour below the normal number, and regains its healthy rate within twenty-foTir hours. 4. Morphia has no power to prevent atropia from thus influencing the pulse; so that, as regards the circulation, they do not counteract one another. 5. During the change of the pulse under atropia, the number of respirations is hardly altered at all. • Mitchell, Keen, and Morehouse, On the Antagonism of Atropia and Morphia, founded upon Observations and Experiments made at the U.S.A. Hospital for In- juries and Diseases of the Nervous System. (Jhe American Journal 0/the Medi- cal Sciences, new scries, vol. L. Philadelphia, 1865, p. 67, et seg.)