Test.—The contraction of the pupil which it causes.
XL.—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 breathing, and insensible pupil. 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.