Talk:Aconitum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.


Aconitum is within the scope of WikiProject Plants, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to plants and botany. For more information, visit the project page.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

I moved the following from the main article, so it can be worked into the article without making the article so much ugly andy 08:18, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Why not? Most copyright licenses, including wikipedia's GNU FDL, require that. Apparently, the main incompatibility lies in the restriction on commercial use.

I restored the "is used" because aconite is widely used in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine worldwide. It is hardly a historic use. I may restore the Therapeutics section. KSVaughan2 21:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] =Proving; Allen, Timothy Field

 (The Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica: A Record of the Positive Effects of Drugs upon the Healthy Human Organism.  New York: Boricke & Tafel, c1874-78. (Incomplete)

Generalities

    Convulsion.
    Clonic spasms.
    •Spasms of the eyes; clenched jaws; the body became rigid and bends backward; the limbs are distorted with spasms, and he dies.
    Convulsive attacks; the upper and lower limbs drawn inward; the legs in constant motion; face covered with cold sweat; the eyes turned up; the joints crack during the spasms.
    Violent convulsive fit; the eyes drawn up under the lids; the fits clenched across the throat; the teeth grate violently against one another, and a thick ropy saliva was forced through the lips. In the evening sudden crying out, gnashing of teeth; then, from long-continued hiccup, stiff immobility like a statue (catalepsy).
    Twitching of tendons.
    The symptoms at last become chiefly confined to the tendinous or muscular structures, such as shortened feeling of the tendons of the ham and of the tendo Achillis.
    Twitching of various groups of muscles, especially of the forearm, as if he held the conductors of an electromagnetic apparatus in his hand, only the pains come and go slower.
    Excessive restlessness and tossing about for several hours.
    She gave an occasional sigh, tossed her arms backward above her head and sought to shift her position by jerks.
    Extreme sense of nervousness.
    Extreme nervousness and agitation.
    Fearful and uncertain in his actions.
    •Sensitiveness to fresh air.
    Remarkable degree of sensitiveness to the least draft of cold air.
    Feeling as if he would take cold.
    All the symptoms of having caught cold.
    Sensation as if all the blood vessels were congealed.
    Very shaky and nervous.
    Trembling and tendency to palpitation.
    Great trembling.
    Increased tremulousness and vertigo.
    General muscular tremors.
    Paralytic and bruised pains in arms and legs, with violent trembling all over the body, especially in the extremities, which prevents walking; with very pale face, dilated pupils, faintness, palpitation, cold sweat on the back, and dizzy headache inn the temples, soon followed by burning head of the face, with a sensation of tension and redness of the face, and sleepiness after dinner (46 h)..
    He complained of lassitude of the whole body, great weakness, and pressure at the heart.
    General sore, tired feeling in the body.

On awaking in the morning such great exhaustion he was unwilling to get up; it went of, however, on rising.

    Frequent attacks, almost every other hour, of extreme weakness and insensibility, so that he can stir neither hand nor foot, and cannot sit up in bed; he does not feel his former pains, cannot see nor hear, nor even speak aloud; the legs are stretched out (after a few h)..
    Grew very weak and almost blind in half an hour, though still conscious.
    Prostrated, weak, and sleepy.
    •Great muscular weakness, weariness, prostration, almost total inability to stand.
    Great loss of strength.
    Progressive failure of strength.
    Great weariness, as if after walking far.
    Feeling very weary, languid, and unable to rise from the couch; obliged to discontinue all work; the system feels prostrated, with sense of inward fever.
    Great laziness (19 d)..
    Unusual fatigue.
    Walking and talking tire him; he feels very much affected.
    Easily tired when walking, and especially going up stairs.
    •He loses his ability to stand, must sit down.

    She hates movement, prefers sitting.
    She must lie down in bed she feels so sick; head so confused, dizzy, and painful, and the limbs so heavy (19 a)..
    Complains of his head being heavy, his strength and spirit exhausted, so that he had to lie down.
    Urgent desire to lie down.
    She must lie down (2-5 h)..
    Faintness.
    •Faintness on attempting to sit up.
    Attacks of fainting follow constructive sensation of the chest, and icy coldness.
    Went quite suddenly and unconsciously into a swoon in the evening while standing up urinating; all thee blood seemed to rush to his head, and he feel heavily to the ground (first time in his life).
    Fainting fit directly after urinating; everything whirled around him; for the time he completely lost all consciousness; hands bedewed with cold sweat, and for some time after he remained quite prostrated.
    Impaired sensibility of the surface.
    Touch diminished, so that he cannot distinguish small objects by the feeling.
    Formication and crawling, now in one place, now in another, with an uncomfortable shuddering sensation, especially on the upper arm and lower leg.
    The paralytic condition soon quit the left side and passed over to the right.
    •Numbness and tingling over the body.
    Muscles sore and stiff.
    Sensation as if the whole body, from the shoulders downward, was heavy as lead, while a heavy pressure, from all sides and from above downwards, seemed to render the whole body smaller in size and stature, the head and neck seeming to retain their natural proportions.
    Sensation of swelling of many parts of the body, generally accompanied by shuddering cold or rigor (several)........


Mind

    Nightly raging delirium; he will not be kept in bed; in the morning excessive sweat.
    He did all things hurriedly, and ran about the house.
    Transient frenzy.
    Hope is aroused, immediately after vomiting.
    Crazy folly.
    He commenced to be delirious, and played upon a leaf.
    Maniacal delirium.
    Delirium.
    Loquacity.
    Exalted spirits.
    Gayety, with inclination to sing and dance (1/2 h)..
    More gay and excited than usual (1st h)..
    He cannot remain long at one occupation.
    Excessive disagreeable restlessness; without occasion for hurrying, he is in the greatest haste, every obstacle that delays his rapid pace is excessively annoying; he knocks against some people who do not get out of his way fast enough, and runs in breath less haste up the steps; this hurried disposition lasted two hours.
    He raves, though awake; jumps out of bed and imagines he is driving sheep (4 h)..
    Lucid (clairvoyant) vision.
    Lively memory.
    Lively imagination.
    Great activity of mind.
    He sits buried in thought.
    Rapid change of thought, great exertion is required to fix the train of thought.
    Unsteadiness of ideas; on attempting to think of one thing, another forces it out of the mind, and this if supplanted by another, and so on, until he becomes quite confused.
    Restlessness, uninterrupted, unpleasant; he must now sit, now stand, now walk, he does not know what is the matter.
    Excessive restlessness, all movements and actions are performed with great haste and hurry.
    Impatience, he throws himself anxiously about, and constantly changes his position, etc.
    Hurried speech.
    Speaks much and rapidly.
    •Alternate attacks of opposite moral symptoms.
    Variable humor, at one time gay, at another dejected.
    At times he seemed to weep, and at times he sang.
    Now he doubts his recovery, now he is full of hope.
    Happiness.
    Now he was perfectly conscious, and then again he raved.
    Quarrelsome, with constantly varying delirium, he chatters childish nonsense, and is extravagantly gay.
    Morose, peevish.
    Quarrelsome (6 h)..
    Irascibility.
    Fretful.
    Vexation about trifles.
    Extremely inclined to be vexed (1/2 h)..
    Great in-difference, irritable.
    •The slightest noise is unbearable (1/2 h)..
    Over-sensitive to light and noise.
    He takes every joke in bad part (3 h)..
    •Cannot bear pain, nor to be touched, nor uncovered.
    •Great Anxiety.  .........

[edit] Somebody check the medical section?

Can somebody verify that the therapeutics section is accurate? The writing sounds rather archaic, like some early 20th century medical texts I've seen quoted elsewhere. Examples: AFAIK, "neuralgia" is an obsolete term; one of the dosages is given in "minims", a fluid measure fifty years' dead; the word "anodyne" is used instead of "anaesthetic" or "analgesic".

The same seems to be true of the pharmacology and toxicology sections, and possibly even of the chemistry section, now that I look at it again.

At the very least, it should be noted that this is historical information that is of dubious value today.

Please sign your comments. There is a citation at the bottom of the article that information was incorporated from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, and I'm guessing the sections you mention were taken verbatim. This sort of thing is exactly why many people are arguing against the use of the 1911 EB as a source: because people are copying and pasting without possessing the knowledge or wisdom to know which info is still relevant and which is obsolete. Historical information has its uses, but if the basic data about a topic isn't given primary focus, then the historical data is, as you say, meaningless. Please make corrections as you see fit. Be bold! I'm placing a template to indicate that the article needs verification. Canonblack 15:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe from the spelling that the writer is British. Those words are still used. However your point is well taken. I added the information on Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and detoxification and those are current and in the literature. Ksvaughan2 19:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proper name for species Aconitum delphinifolium or Aconitum delphiniifolium

I am trying to determine the most current name for Aconitum delphinifolium or delphiniifolium. In this article it is listed as Aconitum delphinifolium but the subspecies are listed as delphiniifolium. The PLANTS database lists it as delphiniifolium [1] but GRIN lists it as delphinifolium [2] Open2universe 02:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corrected a link

I corrected the link to the pictures of aconite plants. Old one wasn't working cause they had changed the database on that site. 121.247.54.35 07:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] When does the Wolfbane Bloom?

With reference to this poem from The Wolfman:

Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.

When does the wolfbane bloom? No mention of this data in this article...Colin4C (talk) 16:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)