Part 38 (2/2)

Eyes: Strange feeling of fullness about the eyes, with sight obscured, so that it appears that one is looking through clear water which produces about all of the seven prismatic colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and violet.

Paralysis of nerves, and muscles of the eyes, producing amblyopia.

Pupils contracted and do not respond to light.

Eyesight lost with feeling as if in consequence of long exposure to strong, arc-electric lights.

Neck and Back: Numb, pithy or woody feeling about and in the spine.

Lower Extremities: Loss of power to control movements of body or limbs.

Swaying, staggering gait.

Reflex action of tendon-patella lost.

General: Weakness and insecurity of all powers of locomotion.

Feeling of intoxication, with almost entire loss of vision.

Amblyopia: sense of touch greatly weakened.

(From the _Kansas City Star_.)

The loco weed of the Western plains is to vegetation what the rattlesnake is to animal life. The name comes from the Spanish and signifies insanity. It is a dusky green and grows in small bunches or handfuls and scatters itself in a spa.r.s.e and meagre way about the country. It is in short a vegetable nomad and travels about not a little. Localities where it this season flourishes in abundance may not see any of it next year, nor indeed for a number of years to come.

The prime property of the loco is to induce insanity in men or animals who partake of it. Animals--mules, horses, sheep and cattle--avoid it naturally, and under ordinary circ.u.mstances never touch it. But in the winter, when an inch or two of snow has covered the gra.s.s, these green bunches of loco standing clear and above the snow are tempting bits to animals which are going about half starved at the best. Even then it is not common for them to eat it. Still, some do and it at once creates an appet.i.te in the victim similar in its intense force to the alcohol habit in mankind.

Once started on the downward path of loco a mule will abandon all other forms of food and look for it. In a short time its effects become perfectly apparent. You will see a locoed mule standing out on the shadowless plain with not a living, moving thing in his vicinity. His head is drooping and his eyes are half closed. On the instant he will kick and thresh out his heels in the most warlike way. Under the influence of loco he sees himself surrounded by mult.i.tudes of threatening ghosts and is repelling them.

The mind of the animal is completely gone. He cannot be driven or worked because of his utter lack of reason. He will go right or left or turn around in the harness in spite of bits or whip, or will fail to start or stop, and all in a vacant, idiotic way devoid of malice. The victim becomes as thin physically as mentally, and after retrograding four or five months at last dies, the most complete wreck on record. Many gruesome tales are furnished of cruel Spanish and Mexican ladies who, in a jealous fit, have locoed their American admirers through the medium of loco tea. Two or three cases in kind are reported in the Texas lunatic asylum.

OENTHE CROCATA.

PREPARATION.--The fresh root is macerated in two parts by weight of alcohol.

(The following paper on _OEnanthe crocata_ was kindly sent to the editor by Dr. W. A. Dewey, of the Ann Arbor University, Michigan):

_OEnanthe crocata_ belongs to the large family of the Umbelliferae which furnishes us with _Conium_ and _Cicuta_. It grows in marshy localities in England and France. In Botanical works of the 16th and 17th centuries it was often confounded with _Cicuta virosa_, an error which has even been made in more recent times, in fact, only one Botanist of the 19th century described the plant with sufficient exactness for its recognition, and that was DeLobel, who published his Botany in 1851. It is one of the largest plants of the family, being 3 to 5 feet high. Our tincture is from the fresh root.

HISTORICAL.--_OEnanthe_ was known to Galen and Dioscorides, and numerous citations might be made to show that the drug was used from the earliest times in various affections, affections that nearly every drug was tried in, but it is in the ”Cyanosura Materia Medica of Boecler, published in 1729,” that we first find a hint as to its true action.

”Those who ate much of it were taken with dark vertigos, going from one place to another, swaying, frightened, turning in a circle as Lobilus pretends to have seen.”

Hahnemann, in his ”Apotheker Lexicon” (Leipzig, 1793), says of the drug: ”It is said that the whole plant is poisonous and causes vertigo, stupefaction, loss of force, convulsions, delirium, stiffness, insensibility, falling of the hair, and taken in large quant.i.ties will cause death.”

He says further: ”That, administered with great circ.u.mspection, it should prove useful in certain varieties of delirium, vertigos and cramps.”

This is interesting coming from Hahnemann at the time when he had discovered the law, but had not as yet given it to the world.

_OEnanthe_ was considered in the last century as one of the most pernicious plants of Europe, especially for cattle, who, having eaten it, can neither vomit nor digest it and they soon die in convulsions; this from the root, however, as they eat the leaves with impunity. It is interesting to note that animals poisoned with it decompose rapidly.

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