BARIUM. — Barium is not employed medicinally, and is of no interest to physicians except as they may require its aid for purposes of chemical research. So, too, of the fifty salts of the metal, but two—the chloride and sulphocarbo late have ever been employed therapeu tically, and even then only in a desultory and incomplete way. The dioxide and sulphide bear a quasirelation to medi cine, however, but in a chemical rather than a' therapeutic sense, the former being employed in the manufacture of hydrogen dioxide, while the latter finds use, when mixed with starch (1 to 3) and water to the consistency of cream, as a depilatory.
Barium chloride is a white, crystalline substance possessed of a bitter, disagree able taste. It is readily soluble in water, fairly so in alcohol, and but scarcely at all in absolute alcohol.
Preparations and chlo ride, to 2 grains.
Barium sulphocarbolate, to 1 grain.
Physiological Action.—A recent work on therapeutics is responsible for the statement that barium chloride in its action upon the circulation resembles both ergot and digitalis: a conclusion that would seem, physiologically speak self-contradictory. Hypodermic in jections of the chloride of barium, in doses of grain per pound of the body-weight, produce death in dogs in twenty-four hours after the administra tion of the drug. With smaller amounts death is more retarded, but the toxic phenomena produced in the meantime are vomiting, diarrhoea. albuminuria with bwmaturia, and convulsions pre ceding the fatal termination. The most prominent post-mortem lesion found is nephritis with congestion of the glome rules, limmorrhages in the tubes, and lesions in the cells of the labyrinth_ These lesions are different from those caused by mercury; they consist of a granulo-fatty infiltration of the secre tory epithelium of Heidenhain. Traces of haemoglobin are found in the cells, this hemoglobin soon passing into the secreting cells and afterward into the urine. These histological changes ex plain the phenomena observed during life: albuminuria and Immoglobinuria.
(Pilliet and lialbec.) Barium chloride exerts its chief in fluence on the heart and resembles very closely in its effects those of digitalis. In the frog small doses increase the ac tion of the heart-muscle, and large doses arrest this viscus in systole. The inter esting fact was discovered that a heart arrested by musearine or chloral was started again by using this salt, and it was also found that the strongest elec trical stimulation of the vagi failed to relax the systolic spasm. Furthermore, it was proved that this loss of inhibitory control was not due to a depression of these nerves, but to the direct cardiac effects. In warm-blooded animals the drug slows the heart solely by its action on this viscus, but if very large doses are given there is a primary acceleration of the pulse, probably due to stimulation of the accelerator nerves. Finally, this is replaced by slowing caused by direct depression of the heart-muscle. Barium also increases to a marked extent arterial pressure, and, like pilocarpine, increases the secretion of saliva. (Barg.) The foregoing is also borne out by studies made by Ringer and Sainsbury. The physiological action of the phocarbolate has not been investigated. Therapeutics. — Barium chloride has been tried externally in a multitude of maladies, but in such a way that it is hardly safe to attempt to deduce conclu sions of a definite character therefrom. Even in the latter part of the last cent ury an ointment of this salt was sug gested as a remedy for scrofulous tumors; later it was tried—as have been most salts—as an application to goitrous swellings; recently Robert, of Dorpat, attempted to relieve dilated cutaneous veins by application of a solution in corporated with lanolin, "but without result." Strange to say, a late work on materia medica and therapeutics gives Kobert's evidence as favorable instead of unfavorable, the error arising probably from the fact that Bartholow rendered a report opposed to that of the Russian observer.