Tobacco And Lobelia
=Tobacco.=--Nicotiana tabacum owes its poisonous properties to its
alkaloid nicotine, a volatile, oily, amber-coloured liquid, with an
acrid taste and ethereal odour; soluble in water, alcohol, ether, and
chloroform. The drug has an intense depressant action on the heart and
respiratory centre.
Symptoms.--Giddiness, fainting, nausea, and vomiting, with syncope,
muscular tremors, stupor, stertorous breathi
Death has occurred after seventeen or eighteen pipes at a sitting.
Post-Mortem Appearances.--Not uniform or characteristic. General
relaxed condition of muscles; engorgement of cerebral and pulmonary
vessels. Congestion of gastric mucous membrane.
Treatment.--Emetics, stimulants, hypodermic injection of 1/25 grain of
strychnine. Warmth to the surface by hot bottles, hot blankets.
Method of Extraction from the Stomach.--Digest the contents of the
stomach in cold distilled water and very dilute sulphuric acid;
strain, filter, and press residue. Evaporate the filtrate to half its
bulk, digest with alcohol, and evaporate alcohol off in a water-bath.
Dissolve residue (sulphate of nicotine) in water, and make solution
alkaline with potash; then shake with ether in a test-tube. Remove ether
and allow it slowly to evaporate. Test resulting alkaloid.
Tests.--No change of colour with the mineral acids. White deposit with
corrosive sublimate. Sulphuric acid and bichromate of potassium give a
green colour, oxide of chromium. Precipitate with bichloride of platinum
and with carbazotic acid.
=Lobelia Inflata= (Indian Tobacco).--Much used in America by the
Coffenite practitioners, and a valuable remedy for asthma.
Symptoms.--Nausea, vomiting, giddiness, cold sweats, prostration.
Headache, giddiness, tremors, insensibility, and convulsions.
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