THE ACTION OF DIGITALIS ON THE HEART.

Abstract

At the session of the Académie de Médecine held July 2,M. Francois-Franckreported a series of experiments in which he had studied the action of digitalis on the heart, and at the same time the effect of different digitalins. On mammifera, administered in a therapeutic dose, digitalis produced uniform definite effects. It showed the beat of the accelerated heart; it regulated the beat of the arythmic heart; and it greatly augmented the systolic power and the diastolic resistance. The author held that these effects were developed equally on the two sides of the heart, contrary to the views ofM. Germain See, who thought that the action of digitalis was greater on the right heart, and contrary to the German physiologists who held that the drug's power was manifested on the left heart. In a toxic dose he found that digitalis produced first an excessive slowing of the heart