§ 34 °*] NICOTINE. 283 
of a whole squadron of hussars who attempted to smuggle tobacco 
by concealing the leaf next to their skin, is well known, and is supported 
by several similar cases. The common practice of the peasantry, 
in many parts of England, of applying tobacco to stop the bleeding 
of wounds, and also as a sort of poultice to local swellings, has cer¬ 
tainly its dangers. The symptoms’—whether nicotine has been taken 
by absorption through the broken or unbroken skin, by the bowel, 
by absorption through smoking, or by the expressed juice, or the 
consumption of the leaf itself—show no very great difference, save 
in the question of time. Pure nicotine acts with as great a rapidity 
as prussic acid ; while if, so to speak, it is entangled in tobacco, it takes 
more time to be separated and absorbed ; besides which, nicotine, taken 
in the concentrated condition, is a strong enough base to have slight 
caustic effects, and thus leaves some local evidences of its presence. In 
order to investigate the effects of pure nicotine, Dworzak and Heinrich 
made auto-experiments, beginning with 1 mgrm. This small dose pro¬ 
duced unpleasant sensations in the mouth and throat, salivation, and a 
peculiar feeling spreading from the region of the stomach to the fingers 
and toes. With 2 mgrms. there was headache, giddiness, numbness, 
disturbances of vision, torpor, dulness of hearing, and quickened respira¬ 
tions. With 3 to 4 mgrms., in about forty minutes there was a great- 
feeling of faintness, intense depression, weakness, with pallid face and 
cold extremities, sickness, and purging. One experimenter had shivering 
of the extremities and cramps of the muscles of the back, with difficult 
breathing. The second suffered from muscular weakness, fainting, fits of 
shivering, and creeping sensations about the arms. In two or three 
hours the severer effects passed away, but recovery was not complete 
for two or three days. It is therefore evident, from these experiments 
and from other cases, that excessive muscular prostration, difficult 
breathing, tetanic cramps, diarrhoea, and vomiting, with irregular pulse, 
represent both tobacco and nicotine poisoning. The rapidly fatal result 
of pure nicotine has been already mentioned; but with tobacco¬ 
poisoning the case may terminate lethally in eighteen minutes. This 
rapid termination is unusual; with children it is commonly about an 
hour and a half, although in the case previously mentioned death did 
not take place for two days. 
§ 340. Physiological Action. —Nicotine is absorbed into the blood 
and excreted unchanged, in part by the kidneys and in part by the 
saliva (Dragendorff). According to the researches of Rosenthal and 
Krocker, 1 nicotine acts energetically on the brain, at first exciting it, 
and then lessening its activity ; the spinal marrow is similarly affected. 
The convulsions appear to have a cerebral origin ; paralysis of the peri¬ 
pheral nerves follows later than that of the nerve centres, whilst 
1 Ueber die Wirhung des Nicotines auf den thierischen Organismus, Berlin, 1868, 
