Experiments on animals.
I. The recorded experiments on animals show very various effects. On some animals – dogs and rabbits – the root and the juice seem to have had little or no effect. In others there occurred vomiting, restlessness, convulsions, mostly of the tetanus type, and death. The appearances after death were generally contracted stomach with dark red or brown patches; lungs sometimes normal, sometimes congested or inflamed; blood fluid, right ventricle generally full of blood. (WIBMER, op. cit.)
2. TROJANOWSKI made experiments with aqueous and alcoholic extracts on cats and dogs. The characteristic feature of the poisoning is peculiar, decidedly clonic spasms, only interrupted by short free intervals, extending from muscles of head and neck to those of body generally, especially of respiratory apparatus. Spasms are nearly always introduced by loud screaming and slight convulsive trembling, and a kind of horripilation is observed before and after them. Consciousness remains perfectly intact. Before the convulsions break out, the animals become unsteady in gait and posture. Subsequently there is general paralysis, with loss of consciousness and death. Autopsy reveals stomach and intestinal canal perfectly intact; blood dark and perfectly fluid; brain and cord show considerable venous hyperaemia and oedematous infiltration; large veins of thorax and lungs also are full of blood. (Dorpat Medorrhinum Zeitschr., 5 1874.)
3. BOEHM has obtained a substance possessing the peculiar properties of the plant, which he names cicutoxin. Experimenting upon frogs, he ascertained that the hemispheres had nothing to do with the development of the C. spasms, nor did the cerebellum share in them. If section is made through spinal cord below calamus scriptorius, parts supplied by spinal nerves given off below section are paralysed, while reflex irritability remains. In such cases it still produces the characteristic spasmodic movements of head, neck, and chest, and the peculiar cry. (Latter is explained by excess of inspiratory over expiratory action; when spasmodic seizure sets in, abdominal muscles, contracting, force air out through larynx, which is itself spasmodically narrowed.) In mammalia, after ingestion of poison, there is a period of repose lasting 15 – 30 minutes. Then animal grows uneasy, and is soon attacked by the characteristic violent tetanic spasms. Immediate cause of death is deficient respiration. When given by mouth, about 3/4 gr. of cicutoxin to every pound in weight will be fatal to a cat; but more is needed for a dog. Action of drug is on medulla oblongata. (SCHMIDT’s Jahrbucher, 1876.).
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.