_Nux Vomica._
This seed has not at present a place in the British pharmacopœiæ; it
presents however several points of interest to the physiologist, the
physician, and the chemist. Its virulent action upon animals has been
long known; and it has been administered in combination with gentian in
intermittents.[567] (_Ludovic. Phar._ p. 113,) and as a narcotic in
mania; it also constituted an ingredient in the famous _Electuarium de
ovo_, (_Ph. Angl. p. 263._) Nux vomica has been said to produce benefit
in the plague; the German writers have strongly commended it in mania,
epilepsy, and hydrophobia; as well as in chronic rheumatism, gout,
scrophula, lues venera, and cutaneous eruptions; in Sweden it is stated
to have displayed very beneficial effects in Dysentery. Dr. Fourquier
has lately introduced its use in the Hopital de la Charité, in cases of
partial paralysis, and it is said, with very great success.[568] The
value of the practice has been since confirmed by the experiments of
Dumeril, Majendie, Hebreard, Husson, and Asselin. The dose is four or
five grains of the powder in pills, during the day. The French codex
contains two alcoholic extracts of this substance; the one prepared with
a strong spirit (22, 32, Beaumé, i. e. from sp. gr. ·915 to ·856,) is
much more active and powerful than that made with a weak spirit. (12,
22, Beaumé, i. e. from sp. gr. ·985 to ·915.)
M. M. Pelletier and Caventou have discovered in this substance, a
peculiar proximate principle, to which its virulence is owing; it was
named _Vauqueline_, in honour of the celebrated French philosopher, but
in deference to the opinion of the French Academy of Sciences, the
discoverers have substituted the name _Strychnia_, because “a name
dearly loved, ought not to be applied to a noxious principle!”[569]
(_Annales de Chimie_, _vol._ 8 to 10.) Strychnia is highly alkaline, and
crystallizes in very small four-sided prisms, terminated by four-sided
pyramids; its taste is insupportably bitter, leaving a slight metallic
flavour, and is so powerful as even to be perceptible when a grain is
dissolved in eighty pounds of water;[570] it has no smell; is not
changed by exposure to the air, nor is it either fusible or volatile,
for when submitted to the action of heat, it only fuses at the moment of
its decomposition which takes place at a temperature inferior to that
which destroys most vegetable substances; it is so extremely active and
violent, that in doses of half a grain it occasions serious effects, and
in larger ones convulsions and death; it is perhaps the most
powerful,[571] and next to hydro-cyanic acid, the most rapid of poisons;
notwithstanding its strong taste, it is very sparingly soluble in water,
requiring 6667 parts of that fluid for its solution at 50, and 2500 at
212°. It is very soluble in alcohol, but unlike most of the other
vegetable alkalies, is nearly insoluble in æther; with acids it forms
neutral and crystallizable salts; these salts as well as their base,
have the singular property of becoming bloodred by the action of
concentrated nitric acid. The alcoholic solution of Strychnia has the
property of precipitating the greater number of metallic oxides from
their acid solutions. It is precipitated by alkalies and alkaline
earths. Strychnia exists in native combination in the Strychnus with an
acid which has some analogy with the malic, and which Pelletier and
Caventou propose to call the _Igasuric acid_, from the Malay name for
the bean of St. Ignatius,[572] (Strychnus Ignatius,) in which its
properties were first examined. In conformity with such views, the
active principle of the tribe of Strychni is an _Igasurate of
Strychnia_;—a fact which suggests the existence of a most singular and
striking analogy between the chemical constitution of these
narcotico-acrid bodies[573] and that of opium. The recent experiments of
Pelletier have shewn, moreover, that besides Strychnia, the Nux Vomica
contains _Brucia_, an alkaline body which had been previously discovered
in spurious Angustura. Its properties are similar to those of Strychnia,
but it is less active. Being much more soluble in alcohol than
_Strychnia_, if care be taken to crystallize the latter several times in
alcohol, it will be separated, the _Brucia_ remaining in the _mother
waters_. Strychnia has been given in doses of one-twelfth of a grain,
but it is a most dangerous remedy, and is liable to occasion tetanic
convulsions.[574] It has been said, however, to prove serviceable in
cases of Epilepsy that had resisted every other method of cure. Dr.
Fleming informs us that the Hindoos of upper India are in the habit of
adding Nux Vomica in the process of distilling Arrack, for the purpose
of rendering the spirit more intoxicating. The London Porter brewers
have been accused of the same pernicious practice.