MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 994 
of one neutralize those of the other. Physicians profess- 
ing the treatment of the eye are beginning to take advan- 
tage of these properties. 
We find that every alkaloid, apart from a general action 
on the system, has also a more special one upon a certain 
part of the system, or a certain organ. Now, digitalis is 
a poison, or a remedy in heart-disease. Since Cullen’s 
time, although he had so clearly indicated the true uses 
of that medicine, it was but little employed, except as a 
diuretic. Only of late years Traube, professor at Berlin, 
and Hirtz, professor at Strasbourg, have again taken up 
the study of this vegetable product, and again brought 
into view, by clinical experiments and results, the impor- 
tance of the effect it produces upon the circulation and 
heat of the system. Thanks to the power it possesses of 
making the heart’s pulsations. slower, and consequently 
checking the movements of the blood, this agent is of ser- 
vice in all diseases, particularly those of a febrile kind, in 
which the activity of internal heat needs to be lessened. 
Digitalis owes these properties to a substance which till 
very lately there had been no means of isolating entirely. 
We were able only to obtain from it a formless substance, 
yellowish and complex, and varying in force of action. 
Within a few months a skillful chemist, Nativelle, has 
succeeded in extracting from it a principle quite definite 
In composition, in fine needles of crystals, white and ex- 
tremely bitter, and which is true digitalis. The Academy 
of Medicine awarded an extraordinary prize to the author 
of this discovery.  Digitaline, prepared by the new method, 
is so powerful that, in a dose of a quarter of a thousandth 
of a gramme only, with the human subject, it affects the 
movements of the heart, and in one of five thousandths of 
a gramme would produce death! On the other hand, its 
effect is so certain and so characteristic that, when digitaline 
exists in a mixture in quantity so minute that it can be dis- 
