Excerpt from Annual of the Universal Medical Sciences, 1895, Vol. 5: A Yearly Report of the Progress of the General Sanitary Sciences Throughout the World

Dissolved in a mixture of glycerin, alcohol, and distilled water, in the proportion of 311 grain gramme) to the drachm (4 cubic centimetres), he has used it in about 60 cases of facial erysipelas, and regards it as the best-known remedy for this affection, reducing the pain, preventing complications, and cutting short the attack. It is also of great value in certain forms of neuralgia, especially facial neuralgia. Neuralgias dependent upon chloranaemia are, however, better treated with exalgiu. In many cases of laryngitis and aphonia due to an ordinary cold the nitrate of aconitia is also beneficial. The drug may be given in maximum doses of 311 grain gramme) a day, divided in ten doses. In pyretic con ditions he has never observed any intolerance of the drug, but in afebrile states there is occasionally a little formication caused by the doses above mentioned, and in such case it is necessary to suspend the administration of the remedy. The menstruum of alcohol, glycerin, and water, so proportioned that the mixture has the specific gravity of distilled water, is useful for the exhibition of all the alkaloids.

In spite of the good effects of aconite, however, many phy sicians Object to its use on account of its being a dangerous medic ament. Ferrand, of Paris, believes it to be a powerful drug the use of which should be restricted to the laboratory. Grave accidents are often seen to follow the administration of small doses, and he himself observed a case of death following a mini mum dose. There are, without doubt, many cases of individual intolerance for the drug, and syncope may occur in certain patients from small quantities. Even with tincture of aconite, he has seen 10 drops provoke symptoms of poisoning. Idiosyncrasy is much more frequently observed with aconite than with any other drug. This in itself should be enough to cause physicians, if not to reject it completely as a remedy, at least to advise its use only exceptionally.

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