20 
ACONITUM NAPELLUS. 
tremor and sensation of chilliness. The farina of the anthers if 
accidentally blown into the eyes, has been known to cause violent 
pain and swelling ; and the juice applied to a wound of the finger, 
not only produced pain in the hand and arm, but cardialgia, great 
anxiety, a sense of suffocation, syncope, &c. and the wounded part 
sphacelated before it came to suppuration.* 
Action of the Aconttum NAPELLUS.f on the Animal 
Economy. The deleterious effects of this plant are produced 
(like those of most vegetable poisons) by its immediate action upon 
the nervous system ; for of the different animals which have been 
destroyed by it, very few instances are recorded, wherein, upon dis- 
section, traces of organic disease were discovered. 
Orfila draws the following conclusions from his experiments on 
dogs:— 1st, that the juice of the leaves of the aconite introduced 
into the stomach, or rectum, or injected into the cellular texture, 
produces serious symptoms, followed by death ; — 2nd, that it acts on 
the human species as on dogs ; — 3rd, that being absorbed and car- 
ried into the circulation, it acts particularly on the nervous system, 
and more especially on the brain, producing a kind of mental de- 
rangement; — 4th, that it likewise causes local irritation capable of 
producing inflammation more or less violent. 
The usual symptoms produced by taking into the stomach a small 
quantity of the fresh leaves or roots of this vegetable, are dryness 
of the mouth and throat, with a sense of tightness in it ; remarkable 
debility, sickness, bilious vomiting and catharsis, convulsive motions 
of the face, vertigo, delirium, dilated pupils and death. I 
Medical Properties and Uses. Slorck appears to be the 
first who gave \he wolfsbane internally as a medicine ; and since his 
experiments were published in 1702, the names of many eminent phy- 
sicians on the continent, as Kaempf, Herz, Juncker, and others, may 
be added as evidences in favour of its efficacy, it is now very gene- 
* Rodder in Albeiti Jurisp. Med. t. vi. p. 724. 
t Several other species of aconite, as the Aconitiira Cammarum ; Anonitum Anthera, 
and Aconitum Ljcoctonum, are more or less poisonous, and produce sjmptoins nearly 
similar to those of the Aconitura Napellns. 
± The root was ■fi'iven by way of experiment to four condemned criminals, two at 
Rome, in the year 1524 ; and two at Prague, in 1561; of whom two soon perished, the 
other two, with great dithculty recovered. Matthioli in Vioscoridis, p. 768. 
The following remarkable fact is said to have happened at Sweden :— A person having 
eaten some of the fresh leaves of the Napellns, became maniacal, and the surgeon who 
was called to his assistance declared, that the plant was not the cause of the disorder; 
and to convince the company tliat it was perfectly innocent he ate freely of the leaves ; 
bathe suffered for his temerity, for soon after he died in great agony. 
Moraens, I. e. 1739, p. 41. 
