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old hand
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old hand
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Foxglove is also my favorite example of herbal remedies driving drug development... it's the central compound to the digitalis family of drugs for regulating the heart rate. Interesting history on the foxglove/digitalis connection at http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/digitalis/digtalis.htm. [Although "Molecule of the Month"? I think I'm going to vomit...  ]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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and the latin name, digitalis , contains the word digit, (finger) and means "for the finger". a much better fit for latin name then the latin name for columbine (named for doves, since someone thought the flower resembled doves, dipping their heads down to drink) in latin the flower is Aquilegia because its namer thought it resembled the talons of an eagle!
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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wofahulicodoc: Where are you when we need you? That article about digitalis has one big fat error it in.
The primary effect of digitalis, I remember from fifty years ago, it that it decreases the resting length of cardiac muscle,and so restores lost contractile power, and thereby corrects cardiac failure. It is also used for other cardiac problems, but I do not know enough about them to discuss them.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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my understanding of digitalis was it made the heart pump strong, but slower.. It works by increasing the intensity of the heart muscle contractions but diminishing the rate-- and by pumping slower, it let the heart muscle rest longer..
since congestive heart failure is often characterized by an an increase rate, of ineffective pumping, it causes the heart to be overworked, but circulation to be sluggish, which then results in the blood stagnating, and causes edema, first in the extremities, and eventually in the lungs, which causes them to be saturated, and less effective at oxygen exchange, which increases the CO2 level in the blood, which then signal the brain to increase the heart rate, and the cycle increases till the heart, is total worn out and totally fails... (or the fluid that collects in the lungs leads to pnumonia, and the weakened heart is further starved for oxygen)
a secondary treatment for congestive heart failure is diuretics, which reduce the volume of fluid, and the edema, (but then make the blood too thick, so Hepatrin(sp?) is then used to thin the blood.. )
until the circulary system was understood, digitalis was a treatment for dropsy.. or edema.
but i am sure Doc comfort, or one of the other more knowledgable scientist on the board will correct me if i am wrong..
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Carpal Tunnel
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Heart failure is regrettably much more complicated than that; you could give yourself a hernia lifting textbooks on the subject...
Alert: Probably more than you wanted to know about digitalis (foxglove)
Digitalis has many different effects on the heart, known by their Greek names:
inotropic - makes the muscle contract more vigorously (faster and stronger); that's the primary benefit
chronotropic - makes the rate faster in spontaneously-active pacemaker-like cells, so that too much makes an excessively fast heart. (But as the heart failure is relieved by the inotropic benefit, the heart doesn't have to work as hard, and then it can slow down a bit. It's only a secondary effect of the digoxin.)
dromotropic - makes the conduction of impulses from atria to ventricles slower, so that if there is Atrial Fibrillation and the ventricles are going too fast, digoxin will slow it. (That's another place where the slowing-down comes into play.)
bathmotropic - makes the individual cells more irritable, so they may give extra beats more frequently. Can be dangerous, or merely annoying but harmless, or not even noticed!
I feel like a real dinosaur now - those Greek names aren't even in the current textbooks of pharmacology any more! Too abstruse for our times, I suppose. The properties of the drug remain unchanged, though
Except for the irritability part, these are generally beneficial for a person with a failing heart. Unfortunately it's very easy to tip over into excess since the difference between "enough" and "too much" is quite small: the drug has a "narrow toxic/therapeutic ratio."
We use other things too for relieving the various symptoms of heart failure: diuretics for fluid retention; "ACE inhibitors" to permit more "circulation-per-squeeze" without using any more energy; "beta-blockers" so the heart isn't running on overdrive continuously. Digoxin has become an "add-on" drug. And of course there is more public awareness of what causes the problem in the first place, as well as more effective medicines, leading to better control of smoking, of blood pressure, of cholesterol, and of diabetes, and therefore to less coronary artery disease to have to treat.
It's interesting that the chief cause of heart disease in Withering's day (rheumatic fever; rheumatic heart disease) is virtually unheard-of today in this country, so that we're largely dealing with a diffferent set of problems.
Getting back to "digitalis," the extract of D. purpurea: it's actually a combination of a lot of related compounds called digitalis glycosides (dozens, I was told) which differ only by minor changes in the structure of the parent compound and the associated sugar part but have great variation in effects. Nowadays the drug has been standardized and synthesized, and isn't obtained from the plant any more. The most common preparation is "digoxin," only recently available as a generic but even the venerable brand Lanoxin (r) is very inexpensive by today's standards.
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stranger
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stranger
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>> Magenta - A brilliant red colour derived from coal-tar, named in commemoration of the battle of Magenta, which was fought in 1859.
The name given to bloody red of battle -- a commemoration, or a commentary?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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As far as bloodshed is concerned, the battle of Magenta was less horrible than most.
I found a net site that said there were 6,000 casualties. But it was very important in
its significance in leading to the unification of Italy.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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Miss, Mistress, Mrs (masteress, lady-master). Miss used to be written Mis, and is the first syllable of
Mistress; Mrs. is the contraction of mistress, called Misess. Even in the reign of George II. unmarried
ladies used to be styled Mrs.; as, Mrs. Lepel, Mrs. Bellenden, Mrs. Blount, all unmarried ladies. (See
Pope's Letters.)
Early in Charles II.'s reign, Evelyn tells us that “lewd women began to be styled Misse;” now Mistress
is more frequently applied to them.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Mistletoe Shakespeare calls it “the baleful mistletoe” (Titus Andronicus, ii. 3), in allusion to the
Scandinavian story that it was with an arrow made of mistletoe that Balder was slain. (See Kissing Under
The Mistletoe .)
The word mistletoe is a corruption of mistel-ta, where mist is the German for “dung,” or rather the
“droppings of a bird,” from the notion that the plant was so propagated, especially by the missel-thrush.
Ta is for tan, Old Norse tein, meaning “a plant” or “shoot.”
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