PHYSOSTIGMINE. 
421 
§ 504-] 
influence of the alkaloid, lie paralysed, without the power of spontaneous 
movement, and the sensibility is diminished ; later, the breathing ceases, 
and the reflex irritability becomes extinguished. The activity of the 
heart is through -5 mgrm. slowed, but at the same time strengthened. 
The warm-blooded animals experimented upon show rapid paralysis 
of the respiratory centre, but the animals can be saved by artificial 
respiration. Fibrillar muscular twitching of all the muscles of the body 
is observed. Death follows in all cases from paralysis of the respiration. 
Experiments (first by Bexold, then by Fraser and Bartholow, and lastly 
by Schroff) have amply shown that atropine is, to a certain extent, an 
antidote for physostigmine poisoning. Fraser also maintains an anta¬ 
gonism between strychnine and physostigmine, and Bennet that chloral 
hydrate is antagonistic to physostigmine. 
Effects on Man. —The bean has long been used by the superstitious 
tribes of the West Coast of Africa as an ordeal, and is so implicitly 
believed in that the innocent, when accused of theft, will swallow it, 
in the full conviction that their innocency will protect them, and that 
they will vomit up the bean and live. In this way, no doubt, life has 
often been sacrificed. Christison experimented upon himself with the 
bean, and nearly lost his life. He took 12 grains, and was then seized 
with giddiness and a general feeling of torpor. Being alarmed at the 
symptoms, he took an emetic, which acted. He was giddy, faint, and 
seemed to have lost all muscular power ; the heart and pulse were 
extremely feeble, and beat irregularly. He afterwards fell into a sleep, 
and the next day he was quite well. 
In August 1864 forty-six children were poisoned at Liverpool by 
eating some of the beans, which had been thrown on a rubbish-heap, 
being part of the cargo of a ship from the West Coast of Africa. A boy, 
aged 6, ate six beans, and died. In April of the same year, two children, 
aged 6 and 3 years, chewed and ate the broken fragments of one bean ; 
the usual symptoms of gastric irritation and muscular weakness followed, 
but both recovered. Physostigmine contracts the iris to a point; the 
action is quite local, and is confined to the eye to which it is applied. 
When administered internally, according to some, it has no effect on the 
eyes, but according to others, it has a weak effect in contracting the pupil. 
In any case, the difference of opinion shows that the effect, when inter¬ 
nally administered, is not one of a marked character. 
§ 504. Physiological Action. —The physiological action of physostig¬ 
mine is strikingly like that of nicotine, which it resembles in being a 
respiratory poison, first exciting, afterwards paralysing, the vagus. Like 
nicotine, also, it produces a great loss of muscular power ; it first excites, 
and then paralyses, the intra-muscular terminations of the nerves ; and 
again, like nicotine, it induces a tetanus of the intestine. A difference 
between physostigmine and nicotine exists in the constant convulsive 
