Abstract
About 50 years ago, central stimulants, particularly picrotoxin and coriamyrtin, were used to oppose the depression caused by aliphatic narcotics. Recently, Tatum and his coworkers 1 , 2 tested the antidotal effect of a number of central stimulants with the exception of coriamyrtin in experimental barbiturate poisoning. They produced the poisoning by oral or intraperitoneal administration of the barbiturate and found that picrotoxin was the most effective antidote in both short and long acting barbiturate depressions. Following the barbiturate, picrotoxin was given by diverse routes in doses of 8.8 to 12 mg. per kg. This drug increased the percentage recovery of the animals, e. g., in 7 rabbits given picrotoxin following a dose of 350 mg. of sodium barbital per kg., 4 recovered and 3 died, whereas in 6 controls, 1 recovered and 5 died. Also the average recovery time of the surviving animals was shortened by picrotoxin. However, this dose given by these authors is not in excess of the average fatal dose to any appreciable extent. Gower and van de Erve 3 used a larger dose of sodium barbital and injected the drug intravenously. In one dog, they injected 600 mg. of this drug at 3 different times allowing 5 to 9 days to intervene after the complete recovery of the animal from the preceding dose. In these 3 experiments, the amount of picrotoxin which they used over a period of 4 to 8 hours following the sodium barbital injection varied from 6 to 8.8 mg. per kg. The dog recovered in each case within 32 hours. The dose of sodium barbital used by these workers was at least 50% in excess of the average fatal dose and about 3 times the minimum anesthetic dose.
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