To the above may be added the artificial alkaloid homatropine (C₁₀H₂₁NO₃), which has not been found in a plant, but is prepared synthetically; in chemical constitution it is mandelyl-tropeine, atropine being tropyltropeine.
The differences in the action of the four principal solanaceous alkaloids are briefly as follows:
Atropine has a stimulant action on the central nervous system especially on the motor area; it depresses and in large doses paralyses the nerve endings of secretory glands, plain muscle, and the heart.
Hyoscyamine is intermediate in its action between atropine and hyoscine; causes less stimulation of the central nervous system than atropine, and is a weaker sedative and hypnotic than hyoscine. It has the same action peripherally as atropine but is twice as powerful.
Hyoscine resembles atropine in its paralysing effect upon peripheral nerve endings, the action being quicker, more powerful, and less lasting. It does not possess the stimulating effect of atropine upon the brain; depression of the motor area is marked from the first.
Homatropine resembles atropine in its action but is less powerful.
CHAPTER XX.
CURE ALLS.
The greater number of the proprietary medicines described in these pages are advertised as cures for a wide range of ailments, but usually there is some one disease for the treatment of which they are particularly recommended, so that it has been possible to classify them according to their alleged purposes. In very many other cases, however, the claims made are so wide that the article is put forward as a sort of cure-all. Thus one of the articles described is stated to cure such different disorders as constipation, rheumatism, St. Vitus’s dance, heart disease, rickets, sleeplessness, kidney complaints, and women’s special ailments, among many others, and is said to be “a real elixir of life in solid form”; the facts as to its composition, ascertained by analysis, show what the possibility of its being a “cure”—for heart disease, for instance—is. As to “Pink Pills,” another of the nostrums analysed, which probably owes its popularity partly to bold advertisement and partly to its alliterative name, the method followed appears to be to recommend them for different diseases in different advertisements; personal testimony, or what is put forward as such, from sufferers who have been cured, is made the basis of most of these, and illustrations are employed to catch the eye of the casual reader. Analysis showed that these pills were practically the ordinary iron-carbonate pills commonly called Blaud’s pill, which ought to be freshly made. The Pink Pills are of lower strength than usually prescribed, and to judge by the proportion of iron that was found to be in the higher state of oxidation, very carelessly prepared. They differ vastly, however, from other Blaud’s pills in the price charged for them. Thus the proprietary Pink Pills are sold at a little over a penny each, while coated Blaud’s pills can be bought retail at a few pence a gross, and wholesale in large quantities at a little over a penny a gross. The analyses of other proprietary preparations show a similar disparity between the market price of the drug supplied and the price charged to the person who is beguiled into purchasing; thus thirteen-pence-halfpenny, two shillings and sixpence, and two shillings and ninepence are the selling prices of nostrums, the ingredients of which are estimated to cost respectively one-eighth, one-third, and one-tenth of a penny.
Preparations of this class are not in all cases very clearly marked off from those recommended for some special disease, such as have been dealt with in previous chapters, for many of them are recommended for some one disease, of which nearly all others are asserted to be variations.