Grindelia

Grindelia squarrosa.

Natural order , Compositæ.

Authority.

J. H. Bundy, M.D., Hom. Times, vol. iv, 1877, p. 125.

I prepared a tincture of the dried plant, using 8 ounces to a pint of Alcohol 78°, by percolation. At 7 P.M. I took a teaspoonful of the tincture; repeated the dose in half an hour, at which time I began to feel a terrible fulness in my head, as though I had taken 10 or more grains of Quinine. This continued for about ten or fifteen minutes, when I was taken with a pain in my left eye and right knee-joint, precisely like acute rheumatism. The pain in my knee did not last more than half an hour, and at this time I took the third spoonful. The pain in my eye became the most intense that can be imagined, the pupil becoming dilated largely; and strange to say, it was two hours before the right eye became affected, but when it did, my misery was only doubled. At the time the right eye became affected, I was taken with an unbearable pain in the entire region of the liver and spleen, and so severe was it that I could not lie still one moment, and the soreness in the region of the pain was like nothing to which I can compare it, except that of acute rheumatism. With a towel tied around my head, and hot applications over liver and spleen, declaring that I had inflammation of the brain and of the liver and spleen, did I pass the most terrible night of my life.

The pain of the eyes was in the eyeballs, and ran directly back to the brain, and to turn or move them was torturing. In fact the pain produced by the drug, wherever it occurred, was like that of rheumatism, pain with soreness. The conjunctiva was remarkably injected, and the eyes presented the appearance noticed in congestion of the brain. The pain in my eyes, together with the soreness, lasted three days.

The action of the drug on the nervous system is remarkable. It at first, when given in full doses, acts on the optic nerve, and in a little time it just as surely influences the par vagum, and to that degree it seems to interrupt the respiration. The interruption of respiration in my own case was so great as to prevent sleep, even if the pain had not prevented. The moment I would fall asleep the respiratory movement would cease, and it would not be resumed until awakened by the suffocation that resulted from the suspension of respiration.