590 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 

 THYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF ACONITE. 



Messrs. Grehaut and Duquesnel have been lately prosecu- 

 ting some inquiries into the physiological action of aconitine. 

 Among other experiments, they injected one twentieth of a 

 milligram under the skin of the back of a frog. Thirty min- 

 utes afterward the sciatic nerve had completely lost its rnoto- 

 ricity, though the muscles of the thigh contracted when stim- 

 ulated by an induced current, and the heart beat regularly. 

 In another experiment one leg of the frog was tied so as to 

 arrest circulation, and the frog then poisoned with aconitine. 

 All the motor nerves which received the poisoned blood lost 

 their physiological properties, while those of the preserved 

 limb remained excitable. 



From these results it appears that small doses of aconitine 

 are analogous in physiological results to curarine in destroy- 

 ing the motor power of the nerves. A dose of one milligram 

 of aconitine, however, injected into a frog (twenty times as 

 much as that used in the first experiment) completely arrest- 

 ed the action of the ventricles of the heart, the auricles alone 

 contracting feebly; the excitability of the motor nerves con- 

 tinued for a long time in this case, and the animal continual- 

 ly moved, spontaneously or convulsively. By microscopic 

 examination of another frog similarly treated, it was found 

 that in one minute and a half the arterial circulation was 

 much slackened, and in three minutes had completely ceased ; 

 the nerves did not lose their motoricity, because, through the 

 cessation of circulation, they did not come in contact with 

 the poison. 



In mammalia the effects of the poison show themselves 

 more rapidly, and are more difficult to analyze ; a milligram 

 of aconitine injected into a rabbit in which artificial respira- 

 tion was kept up was found, after half an hour, to prevent the 

 sciatic nerve from producing contraction of the muscles, al- 

 though these had preserved their contractility. 21 A, Octo- 

 for, 1871,948. 



CURE OF FLATULENCY. 



A writer in the English Mechanic, in treating of the not 

 unimportant subject of flatulency, says that of this there are 

 two kinds. In health the stomach and intestines always con- 



