104 MATERIA MEDIC A AND THERAPEUTICS. 



In smaller continued doses the local action of tartarated 

 antimony on the stomach and bowels is apt to produce loss of 

 appetite, nausea, pain, and diarrhoea. 



2. ACTION IN THE BLOOD. 



Antimony enters the blood either from within or from 

 without, but does not appear to combine with the albumen of 

 the plasma. No special action or use has to be mentioned under 

 this head. 



3. SPECIFIC ACTION AND USES. 



Having reached the tissues and organs, antimony clings to 

 them with some tenacity, and may be found in them months 

 after its administration. Here it sets up a series of important 

 changes, attended by phenomena referable to the general nutri- 

 tion of the body, the circulation, respiration, and nervous and 

 muscular systems ; besides the effects to be afterwards described 

 as referable to its excretion. 



The effect of antimony on metabolism closely resembles that 

 of phosphorus and arsenic, to the account of which the student 

 is referred. Briefly the principal results are fatty degeneration 

 of the organs and increase of the nitrogenous products, 

 oxygenation being comparatively deficient. Upon this altera- 

 tive effect depends in part the value of antimony in gout, 

 chronic skin disease, etc., to be afterwards described. The 

 heart is depressed from the first by tartarated antimony. Even 

 in small doses it reduces the strength, and very soon the fre- 

 quency of the pulse, which tends to become irregular, and 

 fainting may occur ; the whole being referable to a direct action 

 upon the nervo-muscular substance of the heart. Antimony is 

 thus a powerful circulatory depressant. The respiratory move- 

 ments are also weakened and disturbed by this drug, which 

 causes shortness of inspiration and lengthening of expiration, 

 manifestly a degree of the same disturbance which culminates 

 in vomiting, and allied to the process of expectoration. The 

 nervous system is markedly depressed by antimony, in part 

 directly, in part indirectly through the circulation, the effect 

 of a moderate dose being to produce a sense of languor, inapti- 

 tude for mental exertion, lowness, and sleepiness. Tartarated 

 antimony has accordingly been used as a sedative in the 

 delirium and insomnia of fevers, such as typhus, and acute 

 alcoholism (delirium tremens), combined with opium in various 

 proportions. 



The muscular system is so powerfully depressed by antimony 

 that, before the introduction of chloroform, it was employed to 

 produce muscular relaxation in the reduction of hernias and 



