System of Materia Medica and Pharmacy (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1832 Excerpt: ... The berries commonly known by the name of Cocculus Indicus are referred by the Dublin College to the Cocculus Suberosus, a shrub which grows on the Malabar coast. They have an intensely bitter taste, and exert a narcotic power, from the presence of an alkaline principle which has been named picrotoxia. It may be obtained crystallized in prisms, white, bitter, and highly narcotic. Cocculus Indicus is used in India to poison fish, and in this country it is said to be employed in brewing, to communicate bitterness, and a degree of intoxicating power to ale and porter. In medicine it is used in the form of an ointment made with lard in tinea capitis, and to destroy vermin. An ointment of lard and picrotoxia has also been employed with advantage in tinea capitis. CHAP. III. ANTISPASMODICA ANTISPASMODICS. It is not easy to assign precisely the differences in kind of action between Narcotics and what are named Antispasmodics. The effects they produce are similar; they are capable of exciting the actions of the system, and they are often equally powerful in allaying pain and inordinate muscular action. But antispasmodics act less powerfully, and they do not in general produce that state of insensibility and diminished power which follows the application of narcotics. This might be supposed owing to a mere difference in strength; yet there seems also to be something farther than this, since antispasmodics produce no such effect in any dose, and since, although they are so much inferior to narcotics in this respect, they are sometimes equal in repressing inordinate and irregular muscular action. The difference has been explained on the supposition, that, as stimulants, they have less diffusibility and greater durability of action; or else, that, with their stimulant ...