EXPERIMENTAL INQUIRY INTO THE CEREBRAL AND NEUROMUSCULAR MANIFESTATIONS OF DIGITALIS

INTRODUCTION  Cerebral symptoms in the course of heart disease are not at all uncommon. Everyone is familiar with the classical work of Head,¹ and several other interesting publications on the subject such as by Rieseman² and others. There is, however, one group of psychoses occurring in cardiac patients which has perhaps received insufficient attention on the part of clinicians. These are the patients exhibiting hallucinations, delirium and other mental affections occurring at the height of digitalis therapy. The father of rational digitalis therapeutics, Withering,³ did not fail to note certain cerebral manifestations of digitalis and mentions them causally in his famous study of the foxglove:"The foxglove when given in very large and quickly repeated doses occasions sickness, vomiting, purging, dizziness, distorted vision-objects appearing green or yellow; increased secretions of urine with frequent motions to part with it; slow pulse even as slow as 35 to a minute; cold sweats,