Belladonna Poisoning
Belladonna is one of the most powerful and useful drugs, which we possess. Both the leaves and the roots are used for medical preparations, which include a liniment plaster, tincture, ointment and extract. Belladonna is also a strong poison.
Accidental belladonna poisoning sometimes occurs from eating the berries or swallowing the liniment or the tincture.
In such cases the mouth becomes very dry and swallowing and speaking are difficult.
The pupil is dilated and fixed, that is to say, it does not contract when light falls on the eye.
Sometimes the body is covered with a scarlet rash. The patient is excited, and then actively delirious.
Finally there is unconsciousness.
An emetic of mustard and water should be given at once and then strong warm tea in large quantities.
The doctor should be summoned immediately.
Belladonna as a medicine
This plant is often found in the hedgerows and can be recognized by its reddish-purple bell shaped flowers and the small black berries that follow.
Generally familiar as deadly nightshade, the plant is called by botanist's atropa belladonna.
Most people have become aquatinted with belladonna either as a means of relieving pain or the arresting the secretion of milk when it is necessary to take a child off the breast.
Belladonna acts as an anodyne by its paralyzing effect on the nerve endings. It may be used for this purpose in the plaster, The ointment or the liniment.
More successful than the simple liniment of belladonna is the combination of this with the liniments of aconite and chloroform, known as A.B.C. liniment.
Not only does belladonna dry up the milk in the breast; it has the same affect on all other bodily secretions except for urine.
It checks sweating, for instance, and is sometimes used to check the exhausting, drenching sweats of consumption and other debilitating diseases. Then it is given in a pill and is often combined with oxide of zinc.
To check breast milk a plaster is applied, cut circularly and with an opening for the nipple, or a little glycerin of belladonna is rubbed on. This consists of equal parts of extract of belladonna and glycerin.
The drug also relieves and may prevent spasms, and the pain and other disagree-able symptoms which spasms occasion.
Thus it is useful in asthma, in renal colic, in intestinal colic, in bronchitis, whooping cough and epilepsy.
It is sometimes conspicuously successful when the last mention disease occurs in children.
In such cases it is generally combined with bromides. Its power to prevent intestinal colic leads to its frequent inclusion in pills or tables containing active purgatives.
Belladonna is also used in some forms of heart disease and has a remarkable effect sometimes in reliving heart pain.
For this purpose a large belladonna plaster is sometimes placed over the heart.
Doubt has been thrown on the possibility of the drug being absorbed into the system when applied in the form of liniments, but when a plaster is put on and begins to melt, the drug may, by admixture with the fatty secretions of the skin, makes its way through the latter.
As regards the case of belladonna liniment, the effect in relieving pain may well be due to the heat engendered by the lint and protective or to the rubbing used in its application.
Among the affects of this drug those on the eye are notable. The pupil is dilated, and the accommodation is paralyzed so that reading or other neat work becomes impossible and the vision or near objects are blurred.
Preparations of belladonna, like so many drugs of vegetable origin, owe their activity to their containing an alkaloid, in this instance atropine.
In many cases it is more convenient to use the alkaloid or its salts in preference to the ordinary preparations of belladonna.