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WARNING: All medicines, drugs, plants, chemicals or medicial precedures below are for historical reference only. Many of these treatments are now known to be harmful and possibly fatal. Do not consume any plant, chemical, drug or otherwise without first consulting a licensed physician that practices medine in the appropriate field.

Felter's Materia Medica on Strophanthus

ADONIS VERNALIS
   The whole plant of Adonis vernalis, Linné. (Nat. Ord. Ranunculaceae). Southern Europe, Siberia, and Labrador. Dose, 1/2 to 3 grains. Common Name: Pheasant's Eye. Principal Constituent.—Adonidin, probably a mixture of acids and glucosides. Preparation.—Specific Medicine Adonis. Dose, 1/2 to 3 drops. Specific Indications.—Weak cardiac action, with low blood pressure, and shortened diastole, with consequent venous stasis, with increased back-pressure, and feeble intermittent or irregular pulse; cardiac dropsy, with weak heart. Action.—Fresh adonis is irritant and vesicant. Upon the circulation it acts much like digitalis, but is prompter in action and not cumulative. It is an energetic agent and capable of poisoning. Adonis slows, regulates, and strengthens the heart's contractions, raises blood pressure, and thereby acts as a diuretic. It also causes deeper and slower breathing, and in proper cases overcomes dyspnea. Large doses paralyze the heart and blood vessels. Therapy.—On account of its quicker action Adonis has been preferred by some to digitalis and strophanthus in the same class of heart affections to which these are applicable, or in which for some reason it is undesirable to employ them. It is especially commended where arryrthmia with feeble cardiac force and dyspnoea and dropsy are present. It has long been a popular remedy in Russia for dropsies of both heart and kidney origin. It is probably less valuable than digitalis where the cardiac valves are greatly affected. Scudder valued adonis in heart-strain from overexertion; Hale recommended it in endocarditis and in weak and irregular heart action resulting from chronic nephritis. Wilcox used it in chronic albuminuria, with pale urine and delirium with good results and in uremic convulsions, which had been frequent, without a return of the eclampsia for two years, when the patient died. It is undoubtedly emmenagogue and has been advised in epilepsy, administering it with bromide of potassium. It should not be given when there is gastro-intestinal irritation or inflammation. 1

STROPHANTHUSSTROP4
   The dried ripe seeds of Strophanthus Kombé, Oliver, or of Strophanthus hispidus, DeCandolle, deprived of their long awns (Nat. Ord. Apocynaceae). West and east coast of tropical Africa. Dose, 1 to 2 grains. Principal Constituents.—Strophanthin (C31H48O12—8 to 10 per cent), a bitter glucoside yielding glucose and strophanthidin (see below), kombic acid, inert alkaloid ineine and tanginin. Preparation.—Tinctura Strophanthi, Tincture of Strophanthus. Dose, 1 to 10 drops. Derivative.—Strophanthinum, Strophanthin. Commercial strophanthin is a glucoside or mixture of glucosides occurring as a permanent white or yellowish powder, readily soluble in water and diluted alcohol; less soluble in absolute alcohol; and almost insoluble in ether and chloroform. It should not be tasted except in very dilute solution. Average Dose, 1/60 grain (by mouth); 1/80 grain (intravenously). Specific Indications.—Weak heart, due to muscular debility; muscular insufficiency; rapid pulse, with low blood pressure; cardiac pain, with dyspnea. Action.—Externally applied, strophanthus preparations appear to exert no special effects unless mixed with hydrous wool fat, when the action of the drug is said to be apparent. The seeds, however, applied to the cornea produce prolonged anesthesia (Steinbach). Three or four drops of a solution of strophanthin (1 to 1000) applied to the cornea also produce total anesthesia, including insensibility to heat and cold (difference from cocaine), these sensations being the last to yield and the first to revive after its application. De Schweinitz and Hare found that ocular anesthesia occurs only in dogs, not in man. A disagreeable irritation of the conjunctiva has been produced by this use of strophanthin; it has no effect on intraocular pressure or upon vision - accommodation. Strophanthus is a muscle poison. When taken internally it acts primarily upon the voluntary muscles, increasing their contractility, and if the dose be poisonous it causes tetanic paralysis, the muscles being unable to regain their former normal flexibility. Under its toxic influence the muscles first become enfeebled, then somewhat rigid, fibrillary twitchings, which are spontaneous, non-rhythmical and increasing contractions, somewhat similar to those of chorea, are observed, and finally the muscles become pallid, non-contractile and hard. It is these effects that render strophanthus an efficient arrowpoison, the muscular paralysis produced rendering the animal an easy prey to its pursuer. When the muscles are in extreme paralysis, lactic acid has been observed to replace the normal alkaline condition. Strophanthus muscular paralysis consists chiefly in diminishing the ability of the muscles to relax, and then in destroying this capability, producing a condition difficult to distinguish from rigor mortis. Strophanthus does not appear to affect either the spinal cord or to act upon its nerve trunks. Its specific action upon the heart is due to direct contact (through the blood) with the muscular fibres of that organ, and not to any effect upon the cardiac nerves. A large dose so increases contractility that a more perfect, energetic, and prolonged systole is the result, and the capability of the muscle to relax is lost, or so diminished that diastole can not take place; after death the ventricle is so completely contracted as to almost efface the cavity, the heart passing from life directly into rigor mortis. According to some it may cease either in systole or diastole. The caliber of the blood vessels is but little influenced by strophanthus, it having no effect upon the vasomotor control. It is strongly diuretic in so far as lack of secretion depends upon low blood pressure, i. e., it increases diuresis in so far as increased blood pressure produces an increased urinary product. It is also thought by some to act especially upon the renal secreting structures. When one is in good physiological condition it is said to have little or no diuretic action; but in diseased conditions, with low blood pressure, it is asserted to excel digitalis in diuretic power. If strophanthus be given in large doses it produces gastro-intestinal irritation with vomiting and diarrhoea. Small doses, however, act as a bitter tonic, improve the appetite, augment gastric action, and promote digestion. In proper doses it strengthens the heart-muscle, slows cardiac action, increases the interval between beats, reduces the pulse-rate, and powerfully increases arterial tension (but less so than digitalis), not by any effect (to any extent at least) upon the vessels, but by strengthening the heart-muscle, giving increased power. Whether or not the drug is cumulative is still an unsettled question, though it probably is not unless given too freely in overlapping doses. The action of a good strophanthus upon the heart is probably greater than that of any other drug, and its active principle, when pure, is of far greater potency than the digitalis derivatives. Therapy.—Strophanthus is a remedy for weak heart from debility of the cardiac muscle, with lack of proper contractile power, as shown by a rapid, weak pulse, and very low blood pressure. The disordered action of the heart is due to lack of tonicity and not from weak walls due to deposition of fat, in which case the drug must be used with extreme circumspection, though in small doses it has been recommended by some as a remedy for cardiac fatty degeneration, as it has also in atheroma of the arteries in the aged. It is also a remedy for praecordial pain and for cardiac dyspnea. It has been strongly endorsed in heart affections with disorders of compensation. Strophanthus is useful in valvular heart disease only so far as there is muscular insufficiency, where the compensatory increase of muscular action is not sufficient to offset the valvular insufficiency. “It has been reported useful in cases of mitral regurgitation with dilatation; mitral stenosis with regurgitation; regurgitation wi1


References

1) Felter, Harvey Wickes, 1922, The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Cincinnati, Ohio.