284 ANNUAL RECOKD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



checking the organic excitations, and diminishing the loss by 

 secretion. 



3. The abuse of these substances is attended by two evils; 

 first, in the excitation which they cause of the nervous sys- 

 tem they may produce fatigue, weakening, and even inertia 

 of the system ; and, second, by the obstacles which they op- 

 pose to disassimilation, and their impediment of other impor- 

 tant functions, they may arrest and even suppress the act of 

 nutrition, and produce torpor and a fatty degeneracy, etc. 

 The therapeutical qualities of these substances result from 

 their physiological action, and they will be available in pro- 

 portion as they can be used as excitants of the nervous sys- 

 tem, as decreasing the heat of the body, and as preventing 

 the waste of tissue. Actes Acad, de Bordeaux. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF QUININE. 



The physiological action of quinine has lately been the sub- 

 ject of detailed experiment by Binz, who found it to have 

 extraordinary power in arresting the process of fermentation 

 and putrefaction, and to be a powerful poison for low organ- 

 isms, or, in other words, for all moving bodies consisting of 

 protoplasms. It appears to kill fungi and bacteria, which ac- 

 company fermentation and putrefaction, and puts a stop to 

 these processes. It arrests the motion of the white blood 

 corpuscles, and thus prevents them from making their exit 

 from the blood-vessels. It therefore diminishes or arrests the 

 formation of pus in inflammation, pus consisting in great 

 measure of an accumulation of white corpuscles which have 

 issued from the vessels. It also destroys the power of cer- 

 tain substances to produce ozone. The red blood corpuscles 

 have this power, and, by depriving them of it, quinine, when 

 present in the blood, must diminish the change of tissue in 

 the body, and thereby lessen the production of heat. 



It is also found that quinine lessens oxidation in the blood ; 

 other substances, such as snake-poison, increasing it. When 

 putrid fluids are injected into the circulation of an animal, 

 its temperature rises ; but if these are previously mixed with 

 quinine, this rise is arrested or very much diminished. Ac- 

 cording to Zuntz, the use of quinine has a marked influence 

 upon the excretion of urea, the amount diminishing very 

 greatly. 21 A, December, 181 2, 1203, 



