4. Two children plucked chamomile flowers and had vomiting of bile. (Ibid. 35).
5. In substance or strong infusion C. produces sense of warmth in the stomach, and, it is said, some acceleration of the pulse. In large doses it occasions nausea, vomiting, looseness of bowels, pain with fulness of head; and it is even said (by Giacomini) in certain idiosyncrasies to produce a sort of somnolent intoxication with general depression and exhaustion. (STILLE.).
Experiments on animals.
1 By far the most important physiological effect of C. oil is its power to lessen the reflex excitability. Binz first drew
attention to this property of C. among several other essential oils, and Grisar has since worked out the research with special care and very important results. His experiments were conducted on the principle introduced into practical physiology by Truck. This consists in suspending frogs with one limb immersed in dilute acid; the time which suffices so to irritate the limb as to cause it to be spasmodically withdrawn from the fluid is carefully marked b a metronome and forms the test of the degree of reflex excitability. The element of volition is got rid of by the preliminary adoption of Goltz’s process – the division of the cerebral hemisphere by a knife passed through the skull from one posterior orbital canthus to the other; this reduces the frog to the condition of a perfect machine for testing reflex excitability. Frogs so prepared are exposed to the acid, their degree of reflex excitability is tested by metronome beats, and the C or other ethereal oil is injected beneath the skin, after which successive observations are taken as the system become more and more impregnated with the drug. The result of experiments made in this way, and also with decapitated frogs, leave no doubt that C. oil, even in doses that are not fatally poisonous, reduces the reflex excitability of frogs in a very marked degree. But the most important fact evolved by the researches of Grisar was that reflex excitability which has been artificially excited by strychnia or brucia can be calmed again by C. oil; or rather, that an animal fortified with dose of C. oil is not capable of being tetanised by a dose of strychnia which throws an unprotected frog of similar size into characteristic spasms. (PHILLIPS, op. cit.).
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.