Quinine a physiological antidote to the malarial poison / by Francis W. Moinet.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quinine a physiological antidote to the malarial poison / by Francis W. Moinet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    11/12 page 11
    clearly and quickly evident from its delfcate functions being so readily disturbed. And althongli this beneficial action of quinine is not usually apparent until some time after the symptoms of cinchonism have disappeared, that is, until it has prevented or diminished the next paroxysm of the disease, it does not by any means follow that therefore the curative power of quinine cannot be due to a stimu- lating or sedative action, because those sensible effects have ceased; unless it were held, which it is not, that the malarial poison acted principally on the brain, or that, with the disappearance of these most prominent effects, all the other actions of the drug ceased. It simply shows that certain of its cerebral effects have dimin- ished, just as with alcohol, which first excites, and then acts as a sedative, when the excitant effects pass off, or are merged into other symptoms, we cannot say that alcohol has ceased to act; and even when all cerebral symptoms disappear, its stimulant action lingers in other parts until it is entirely eliminated from the system. It is also possible to rmderstand that the beneficial result of this stimulant action may be shown after elimination of the stimulant. For instance, if by a dose of quinine the next attack of fever which would naturally occur twenty-four or forty-eight hours afterwards is prevented, it does not follow that quinine waits on the paroxysms and then attacks it. The beneficial action com- mences as soon as it is absorbed, and by its action on the nervous sj'^stem the paroxysm is prevented not by an action twenty-four hours after administration, but by its immediate action preventing that disturbance, which in time develops into a fever paroxysm. So that we must not always take for granted that the most obvious effects of nervous action are the only ones produced by remedies, as an action that in health may not be manifest, may in case of functional derangement be actively remedial, which is the reason why certain curative actions of remedies are only witnessed in disease. ISTor is this action peculiar to quinine. Compare, for instance, the effects of arsenic in chorea with what are ordinarily known as its physiological actions; and in regard to it the same may be said as is said by some of quinine and its action on malarial disease, viz., that its effect in chorea cannot be explained by its known or evident physio- logical action; yet no one can doubt that arsenic acts in chorea purely as a nervine tonic. Another link in this chain of reasoning is, that other nervine stimulants, as arsenic, caffeine, alcohol, beberia, piperine, gentian, capsicum, stryclmia, etc., althougli differing considerably both in kind and degree of active power, have some power over intermittent fever and other diseases of a nervous pathology. In fact, as adjuvants, and occasionally as substitutes, they arc invaluable, as clinical experience has amply testified.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3