Dept.] 
NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 
21 
Drs. Addinell Hewson and Charles A. McCall were duly elected members 
of the Department. 
The Recorder having stated the necessity of his absence for several months, 
the Department appointed Dr. Atlee recorder pro tempore. 
Nov. 15th, Dr. Mitchell read the following paper : 
On the Inhalation of Cinchonia, and its salts. 
BY S. W. MITCHELL, M. D. 
There can be very little donbt that at some future time we shall possess 
the means of giving to patients many potent remedies in the form of inhala- 
tion, rather than in the usual way. This is at least among the hopes of the 
therapeutist of the present day. Absorption of medicinal substances by the 
intestinal mucous surface is but too often uncertain, while the passage to the 
blood through the lungs seems to be always an open track when the agent in- 
haled is in a state of vapor. How desirable it would be to possess the means 
of inhaling quinine in the congestive fevers of our malarious districts, we can 
very well conceive. Gruided by these ideas, I have sought industriously for 
some means of attaining this result, and although I have failed, as I shall 
here show, in evolving any very marked practical benefit from these researches, 
I have met with certain facts of such interest that I desire to put them on 
record as indicating a novel direction for medical thought and action. 
At one time, the analogy in chemical composition, between certain of the 
newly formed ethers and quinia itself, seemed to point out these as fit sub- 
jects for therapeutic use and trial. The difficulty of procuring them, obliged me, 
however, to relinquish effort in this direction, and I turned from them to exam- 
ine anew the alkaloids derived from cinchona bark. While thus engaged, one of 
my friends, now Dr. Bill, of the army, pointed out to me in Fresenius's Che- 
mistry, his account of cinchonia, which he describes as volatile at high tem- 
peratures. 
Struck with this, I searched carefully for any accounts of its inhalation, but 
as yet have been unable to find in the books on Cinchona any description of 
inhalation, as a mode of using the alkaloid in question. The last complete 
work on quinia, by M. Briquet, enumerates many methods of employing the 
alkaloids and bark, but neither among the means in use, or out of use, is this 
one alluded to. Occasionally, in disease of the lungs or throat, inhalation of 
pulverized cinchona bark has been resorted to, and M. Briquet relates, — 
"Traite Therapeutique du Quinquina et de ses preparations," p. 118, — that 
those who work in the storehouses of cinchona bark are sometimes thus cured 
of malarious fevers. This could only occur through accidental ingestion, and 
inhalation of th« floating particles of bark. 
Cinchonia and its salts are the only alkaloids which appear to be volatile 
by heat. After many experiments, I have finally resorted to the following 
very simple method of inhaling them : — About forty grains of pure cinchonia, 
being mixed up with sand, are placed in a capsule, and heated by a spirit- - 
lamp. The sand is useful in diffusing the heat, and preventing too rapid a 
destruction of the alkaloid. A heat of about 300° melts the particles of cin>- 
chonia into a brown fluid, and from this, if the evaporation be carefully ma- 
naged, the volatilized alkaloid escapes in the form of a gray vapor* 
When a microscope glass is held over the capsule, and the heat is too ele- 
vated, the cinchonia decomposes, and a dark red gummy-matter, with the 
odor of burned benzoin, adheres to the glass. A rather lower temperature 
drives off the cinchonia in a gray vapor, which may be made to redeposit the ■ 
pure alkaloid upon the interior of a funnel held over it, or upon a microscope 
slide. The alkaloid thus obtained is in branching needles. 
On a number of occasions, I inhaled the vapors of cinchonia, often breath- 
ing them for ten or twenty minutes, without much inconvenience, when caro 
1858.] 4a 
