224 PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF VERATRINE ON ANIMALS. 
frequent attacks ; the animal frequently sinks in half an hour 
or an hour ; but, if life is strongest, the attacks progressively 
diminish. An augmentation of the sensibility always accom- 
panies the tetanic phenomena. If the animal is touched, 
however slightly, new muscular contractions are produced. 
In the autopsy of the animals which have sunk from tetanus 
manifest traces of asphyxia have always been seen. 
Veratrine does not always act in the order which we have 
described. The periods do not always succeed each other 
exactly as our description indicates. Thus the action upon 
the digestive tube may be more or less marked, and may con- 
tinue either throughout the period of depression or of excita- 
tion, in the same way the slackening of the circulation and 
the tetanic phenomena may have variable duration and 
intensity. If the doses of the medicament are poisonous, 
tetanus w T ili be at once produced without any manifestation 
of the action on the intestinal tube and the circulation. In 
this case death is rapid, and the asphyxia which causes it 
appears immediately. 
The action of veratrine being know n, the next question 
will be — What place is to be assigned to this agent in thera- 
peutic classification ? 
We think that it should be included among the excitants 
of the muscular system, nux vomica, strychnine, &c., although 
it clearly differs from them in many points. Like these 
medicaments, it produces tetanus ; like them, it augments 
the sensibility ; like them, finally, it produces asphyxia and 
death. But the exciting agents seldom have an action on the 
nervous system of animal life ; they do not slacken the circu- 
lation nor irritate the intestine. Veratrine, on the contrary, 
which makes it very valuable in therapeutics, acts at once on 
the circulation, which it slackens, and on the intestinal tube, 
which it causes to contract. 
The knowledge of the physiological action of veratrine 
leads us to the indication of the diseases in w 7 hich this medi- 
cament may rationally be used. It is indicated as a powerful 
purgative in the case of obstruction of the large intestine by 
fecal matters ; its powerful action on the nasal mucous mem- 
brane makes it an excitant and a sternutatory. Its mode of 
action on the nervous system of animal life justifies its em- 
ployment in neuralgia, in some kinds of paralysis, and in 
chorea, hysteria, and tetanus. Doubtless its specific action 
on acute articular rheumatism is explained both by its revul- 
sive action on the intestine, and by the excitation w hich it 
produces. 
Veratrine might likewise be very usefully included in 
