Notes on the Newer Remedies: Their Therapeutic Applications and Modes of Administration, Second Edition Page: 29

A NTIFEBRIN.

pressure, the action being of a cardiac and vaso-motor
origin.
Respiration.-Medicinal quantities produce no effect
on this function. Large, and especially poisonous,
amounts cause the respiration to become at first accel-
erated, then markedly decreased and difficult. These
results are the outcome of an action primarily on the
blood itself and secondarily on the respiratory centres.
Death is due chiefly to failure of the respiration.
Nervous Syslem.-Antifebrin causes a short period
of excitement followed by general anaesthesia and anal-
gesia. Poisonous doses produce paralysis of the pe-
ripheral motor nerves, although the drug probably first
affects the sensory side of the cord and finally the motor
apparatus. Reflex action is completely abolished from
interference with motor and sensory impullses. These
phenomena are followed by coma and death.
Temperature. Antifebrin is able to produce lowering
of the normal bodily temperature, causing, in poisonous
amounts, collapse accompanied with more or less pro-
nounced rigors and sweating, The drug is a powerful
antipyretic, reducing fever by increasing heat-dissipation
and diminishing heat-production.
Metabolism.-This drug apparently increases the ex-
cretion of urea and that of uric acid.
Urine anid Elimination.-Antifebrin in large doses
produces a dark urine, which is said to be due to the
presence of broken-down coloring matter of the blood.
This drug is eliminated through the kidneys in the form
of paramido-phenol sulphate.
Therapeutic Applications.-This drug has been
advantageously employed chiefly as an antipyretic in
fevers, and in phthisis and pulmonary diseases generally.
It is most suitable in sthenic fevers. .In fevers of the
asthenic type, as well as in all pulmonary disorders, the
use of antifebrin is exceedingly dangerous, if not
unwarrantable. It is in these latter instances that the
remedy is apt to produce collapse pari passu with the

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