MEDICINAL USES 563 



the white blood-corpuscles. It diminishes all secretions 

 except the urinary, which is increased. Repeated full doses 

 contract the spleen and also the uterus, sometimes exciting 

 abortion, but whether this is due to idiosyncrasy in a certain 

 number of animals is not definitely known. That the drug 

 has no specific ecbolic action appears to be proved by 

 Wood's experiments on healthy pregnant cats. The head- 

 ache, impaired sight and hearing, and other symptoms of 

 cinchonism produced in man by large or repeated doses, 

 have not been distinctly recognised in the lower animals. 



Cinchona bark as a bitter tonic, resembles gentian root, 

 cascarilla bark, calumba root, and hydrastis. The anti- 

 septic and febrifuge properties of quinine ally it to various 

 substances of the aromatic carbon series, while the anti- 

 malarial actions resemble those of arsenic. 



MEDICINAL USES. The bark and its alkaloids are prescribed 

 for all classes of patients as bitter stomachics and tonics. 

 They improve appetite, check abnormal gastro-intestinal 

 fermentation, and counteract relaxed conditions of the 

 intestine and accumulations of mucus, which prove favour- 

 able to the development of worms. In troublesome cases 

 of atonic indigestion in horses, where alkaline treatment had 

 failed, Robertson frequently gave 20 to 30 grains of quinine 

 sulphate, with half a drachm to a drachm of nitric or 

 hydrochloric acid. Weakly foals and calves affected by 

 relaxed bowels, after a dose of oil, are often much benefited 

 by a few doses of cinchona bark, hydrochloric acid, and 

 spirit. Few tonics are so effectual as bark or quinine in 

 improving appetite and muscular strength, and hastening 

 convalescence from debilitating disease. In anaemia they 

 are advantageously joined with iron salts. They are often 

 used in the earlier stages of tuberculosis, in septicaemia, and 

 pyaemia in all animals ; in influenza, protracted cases of 

 strangles, purpura, and other similar diseases in horses, in 

 septic metritis in cows and ewes, and in lingering cases of 

 distemper in dogs their beneficial effects in these and other 

 diseases probably depending on the action of quinine on 

 micro-organisms or their products. Drachm doses, con- 

 joined with iron salts, repeated night and morning, are 

 certainly very useful in the treatment of purpura. The 



