The futility of experiments with drugs on animals / by Edward Berdoe.

  • Berdoe, Edward, 1836-1916.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The futility of experiments with drugs on animals / by Edward Berdoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    of tlie human eye may instructively be comx:)arecl with its jpowerlessness to cause any such effect on the j)upils of the eyes of pigeons, or, as Stille says, of those of other birds. Birds and herbivorous animals eat Belladonna with im- punity. This is one of the many examples, say those great authorities, Drs. Stille and Maisch, which show the danger of concluding from the lower animals to man in regard to the uses of medicines, unless the mode of action in the two cases is first proved to be identical. In no animal is there any degree of that delirious escitenient which Bella- donna produces in man.—{Therapeutics, ]p. 276.) Dr. Einger {Materia. Medica, p. 454, 5th Ed.) says :— Cer- tain animals, like pigeons and rabbits, a^spear to be almost insusceptible to the influence of Belladonna, and Belladonna, it is asserted, has very little effect on horses and donkeys. So powerful is the action of atropine on the human organism,, that it is usually medicinally administered in the very minute dose of from -^ to ^ of a grain. Yet Calmus found that na less than fifteen gTains are required to kill a rabbit, and Ringer says that two grains administered hypodermically are necessary to kill a pigeon.—{Materia Medica, p. 454.) Meuriot administered atropine Bezold and Bloebanm did ex- to various animals, and then actly the same, and they affirm opened their abdomens whilst that they found the poison alive. He declared that the caused marked sedation (calm- poison caused the intestines to ing) in the same organs, undergo violent contraction. Meuriot and Harley contradict each other \x\)0\i the results of their experiments on the action of atropia on the secretions of the alimentary canal. Wood {Therapeutics, p. 252) says that none of the experi- ments seem decisive, and that their results are not in accord with clinical experience.