The action of the heart is increased by jaborandi, but the arterial tension is notably diminished. The rise in the pulse-rate averages twenty beats, and the duration of this effect is about two and a half hours. A very distinct fall of temperature (0·5° to 2° Fahr.) ensues when the sweating begins, and this decline of body-heat is maintained on an average about four and a half hours. According to Robin, Gil-let de Grandmont, and others, a transient rise of temperature precedes the fall, but Ringer and Riegel deny the accuracy of this observation. In some subjects, very serious symptoms due to the sudden development of extensive pulmonary oedema have been observed by Thomas, Napier, Sanger, Jenkins, and others.

The nauseant effects of pilocarpus and its alkaloid are, it is probable, referable to the action which it exerts on the muscular layer of the stomach and intestines. Very active movements of these organs follow its administration, and even a tetanizing action is observed. Secretion of the mucous membrane is increased, due, doubtless, to stimulation of the pancreas and the glands of the mucous membrane (Harnack und Meyer, Morat).

The effects of jaborandi on children, according to Ringer, are, singularly enough, much less, for corresponding doses, than on adults, as respects the flushing, the sweating, the salivation, and the temperature.

More or less drowsiness, both in children and adults, follows the profuse sweating, and pallor succeeds to the flushing. Chilliness is experienced with the cessation of the sweating stage. Languor and debility persist for some hours after the completion of the effects. The drowsiness is probably not due to a direct action of the remedy on the cerebrum, but to the greatly-diminished vascular tonus, and to the loss of fluid from the vessels. Vision is generally affected. The pupil is usually contracted, and the power of accommodation is impaired. No characteristic or constant changes in the fundus of the eye have been observed on ophthalmoscopic examination. Locally applied to the eye, jaborandi causes "contraction of the pupil, tension of the accommodative apparatus of the eye, with approximation to the nearest and farthest points of vision, and amblyopic impairment of vision from diminished sensibility of the retina." The eye resumes its normal state in about an hour and a half (Tweedy).

The results of experiment indicate that the action of jaborandi is paralyzant of the vaso-motor nervous system. The flushing of the skin is doubtless due to dilatation of the arterioles, and the increased action of the heart must be referred to the same cause. The sphygmograph demonstrates the lowering of the vascular tension. The decline in temperature must be referred chiefly to the profuse transpiration, but the depression of the vascular tonus may also somewhat influence this result. The data do not yet exist for a statement of the mode in which jaborandi excites the salivary and cutaneous secretions. It probably affects the end-organs of the excito-secretory nerves (Har-nack und Meyer, Vulpian, Dujardin-Beaumetz, Grocco, and others).

That pilocarpus stimulates the gravid uterus is affirmed by many observers. Vander Neg asserts that, when injected subcutaneously or into a vein, it promptly induces uterine contractions, or increases the energy of those already existing. Kleinwachter reports two cases in which it induced premature labor. Three injections of two centigrammes each produced this result in one case, and two injections sufficed in the other. Dr. Prochownick, of Hamburg, also reports two cases of eclampsia, in which the hypodermatic injection of hydrochlorate of pilocarpine inaugurated labor in a half-hour. It frequently fails, even in considerable doses, to have this effect. Of nine reported instances in which it was used to induce premature labor, in six it was successful and in three it had no effect. The cases in which uterine action has been induced were chiefly eclampsia, and hence there is an important source of fallacy.

Elimination of the active constituents of jaborandi probably takes place through the organs whose functions are so powerfully excited. It is a remarkable circumstance that the amount of urea passing out in the sweat caused by jaborandi is enormously increased over the normal, amounting to from fifteen to seventeen grains. The urine is not increased, as a rule, but Gubler apparently demonstrated that small doses frequently repeated had a distinct diuretic action. His theory is based on the notion that, being a universal gland-stimulant, if the skin is not directly stimulated and the fluids directed to it, the kidneys will be acted on. In some instances the growth of hair has been promoted by the subcutaneous and topical application of pilocarpus (Prentiss, Andre, and others).

The experiments which have demonstrated the existence of a physiological antagonism between jaborandi and belladonna have thrown much light on the action of the former. When the heart of a frog is arrested in the diastole by jaborandi, it immediately recommences its beat when atropine is subcutaneously injected (Langley). When the superior ganglion of the cervical sympathetic, and the lingual, and the pneumogastric nerve are divided, jaborandi administered causes profuse salivary secretion; but this action is at once antagonized and the secretion arrested by the injection of atropine. These agents, therefore, are exactly opposed as respects their action on the nerve-endings in the salivary glands (Carville). The effects of one grain of atropine, in a boy poisoned by it, were, as respects the state of the mouth and skin, antagonized by thirty grains of jaborandi. In three men the perspiration and salivation caused by sixty grains of jaborandi were arrested by the subcutaneous injection of 1/100 of a grain of atropine (Ringer and Gould).