38 ON DIGITALIS, WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE URINE. 



products obtained from the plant by various solvents. The first 

 substance was the residue, after exhausting the leaves with 

 weak alcohol ; the second, the substance taken up from the 

 alcoholic solution by ether, consisting chiefly of a nauseous, 

 foetid, and acid principle, resembling the digitalic acid of 

 Kossman ; the third was the alcoholic solution after treatment 

 with ether ; the fourth is obtained by treating the result of 

 evaporation of No. 3 with chloroform. 



No. 1 he found to be comparatively inert, the result of taking 

 3 grams, or 46 grains, being only equal to 1 milligram of dig!- 

 taline, which is, therefore, 3,000 times stronger. After taking 

 45 centigrams, or about 7h grains of No. 2, he had no symp- 

 toms for eight hours, but was then seized with great nausea, 

 faintness, and vomiting, which continued at intervals of 15 

 minutes for 30 hours. Next day his pulse had fallen, and, on 

 the fourth day, was as low as 48. Vision was impaired, and he 

 could not look steadily at a bright object. Urine was abundant, 

 but the bladder's contractility was impaired, and external pres- 

 sure was required to expel the urine. He had pulsation of the 

 abdominal aorta, anxiety, epigastric constriction, and cough, 

 with pneumonic expectoration, lasting for a week : but these, 

 he thought, were caused by the continuous vomiting. About a 

 year after this he took 2 centigrams, or about one-third of a 

 grain of No. 3. He repeated the dose in 40 hours, and again 

 after eight hours more. The symptoms were exactly those of 

 digitaline. No. 4 had exactly the same action, but was much 

 more powerful. M. Homolle concludes that digitaline is the 

 only principle in digitalis which has any therapeutical value, 

 that the greater toleration of the stomach of preparations made 

 by water, is from the absence in them of the nauseating acrid 

 principle (digitalic acid) contained in No. 2, that digitalis owes 

 its sedative and diuretic effects entirely to digitaline, but that 

 its nauseating effect, and probably the impairment of vision it 

 produces, are due to digitalic acid. M. Homolle seems to prove 

 that digitaline is by far the most important and active of the 

 principles contained in digitalis, as the fall of the pulse, noticed 

 after taking No. 2, may have been produced by digitaline con- 

 tained in it; but as I experienced impairment of vision and nausea 



