Notes of a case in which chrysophanic acid was administered internally by accident / by John Glaister.

  • Glaister, John, 1856-1932.
Date:
[1881?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes of a case in which chrysophanic acid was administered internally by accident / by John Glaister. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    irritant; the question which then naturally suggests itself is, Can it be given internally in doses which would produce therapeutic action, and fall short of producing severe sympt(Jins such as experienced by my patient ? In answer to this. Dr. Thompson, after an extended series of observations in the use of the drug, says that such a dose can be given without producing severe results. This case of mine, however, shows that even such a small dose as three grains will produce effects which are unpleasant and very severe; and it also points to the fact that its effects are not always to be referred to the gastro-intestinal tract simply, but to the urinary tract also. The question has now arisen in the minds of some of those who are accustomed to the use of this drug externally in skin diseases, whether the same beneficial effect now obtained by such use could not be more speedily and comfortably got by its internal administration. This has arisen from the fact that, in some cases, where the acid ointment has been applied only to one side of the body, the other, perhaps equally as much affected, has been nearly as quickly cured ; and this would point to the absorption of the drug into the body. Every one knows that it cures skin affections by the irritant action it produces where it is applied—by its altering the character of the inflaummtory condition producing the chronic disease, and giving it, as it were, a more acute tone. But how does it act internally ? It certainly acts as an irritant, but whether directly as the metallic irritant poisons, or indirectly as apomorphia, is a question not yet, I think, settled. The presence of food in the stomach prevents its early action, thereby pointing in the direction of the behaviour of an ordinary metallic irritant. Its mode of exhibition, too, influences the rapidity of its action; when given with an alkaline solution, it acts more quickly, things being equal, than it does undissolved, as in water or an acid medium. So that, given in a powder, as in the case of my patient, and into an empty stomach, it will, by reason of its being undissolved in the water used as a vehicle for taking it, and also because it would remain undissolved in the acid contents of the stomach, probably act as a direct irritant; when, however, it has been exhibited dissolved, as in an alkaline solution, or where it has passed from the stomach with food and only been dissolved by contact with the alkaline juice of the pancreas, and then absorbed, it will probably act as an indirect irritant. In the light of the foregoing case, I must confess, even in the face of the recorded observations of Dr. Thompson, that I