Stimulant

“ If sufficiently relaxed or astringed, the movements may entirely cease so as to appear lifeless, but when a stimulant is again added the same result is obtained as before—it begins to move, and acts as vigorous as ever, which shows that it was not injured in the least by the agents used. ”

“ When a climber is exhausted and help is near a flask of brandy is invaluable, but when a party has to spend a bitterly cold night in the open, it is madness to touch spirits at all. The effect of a stimulant is to quicken the action of the heart and drive the blood with increased rapidity to the surface. ”

“ There are, however, able physicians who maintain that, taken in small doses, and under certain physical conditions, it has the effect of a stimulant. All agree that, when taken in any amount, it tends to create an appetite for more. ”

“ It is in these cases that a Stimulant medicine is appropriate. It does not do good by communicating vital energy, but by remedying the want of nervous action, by which want the manifestation of the vital energy is subdued. This must always be borne in mind when the applicability of Stimulants is under consideration.
Some writers have complicated the subject by classing as Stimulants all medicines which tend, directly or indirectly, to communicate vital strength; as Tonics, and remedies which counteract morbid depressing causes. ”

“ MR. JUSTIN WINSER. Referring to your note, I may say that I have never used stimulants to incite intellectual work, but have found occasionally in social gatherings a certain intellectual exhilaration arising from its use, which conduces to quickness of wit, etc., but perhaps not so much from alcoholic liquors as from coffee, a cup of coffee being with me a good preparation for an after-dinner speech. My moderate use of a stimulant has not disclosed to me beneficial or hurtful effects. I often go long intervals without it ”

“ But the more common idea attached to the word stimulant is, that it is a principle which imparts a speed and energy to the organs of the system above the ordinary point secured by perfect and appropriate nourishment. ”

“ We take a solution of what we call a stimulant and immerse the bioplasm in it, and we find that it increases its activity, moves faster, takes up more pabulum, and divides more rapidly than in the unstimulated condition. ”

“ We may fairly compare these stimulants to a whip with which we urge on a horse. A short reflection, however, will teach us that rest would be the best stimulant for a tired horse; but, unfortunately, physiological thinking is not yet the commonsense view of all. ”

“ A small dose of a drug may serve as a stimulant for the lagging forces, while a larger dose would directly repress them or produce injurious secondary effects. As soon as we recognise that the aim of medicine is not to destroy the disease but rather to stimulate the resisting forces of the body, the whole logic of therapeutics assumes a new aspect. ”

“ It is the custom in England, and a terribly wrong and fatal one it is, to fly to stimulants for the relief of temporary-exhaustion; that is, at the very time when our bodies are tired, and nature courts a brief rest, we dig in the spur, we wield the whip, and keep her at it invariably to her detriment. The very fact that the amount of stimulant taken requires to be increased after a time proves how deleterious is this plan, the modest glass of sherry, or mildest ale, needs after a time to be replaced by fiery brandy or heart-corroding gin. ”

“ Every poison-vice is progressive, and, soon after the introduction of a new stimulant, the majority of individual consumers will find that the habit "grows upon them," as our language aptly expresses it. The direct effect of the poison, hereditary influences, etc., induce a growing depression of vital energy, which, in turn, leads to an increased demand for the means of stimulation. ”

“ At the end of that time, I found my general health so much improved, that I determined to make abstinence a permanent rule, and have stuck to my determination ever since, with decided benefit. I shall certainly never resume smoking. I never use any stimulants whatever when writing, and believe the use of them to be most pernicious; indeed, I have seen terrible results from them. When a writer feels dull, the best stimulant is fresh air. ”

“ In the former case we name this property a physical receptivity, in the second irritability, and the exciting power a stimulant; from which it is clear that the same influence can act both as a mere physical power and as a stimulant: heat, for instance, can expand a body, and at the same time quicken its organic formation or growth ”

“ We must differentiate between a diseased mental condition that imperatively calls for some narcotic or stimulant, and that craving for these substances that is only developed after their prolonged use, and which did not exist before their use was begun. ”

“ All stimulants, that is, articles which do not go to nourish the system, such as tea, coffee, tobacco, wine, porter, spirits, and the like, should be strictly avoided. All stimulation of the system is followed, necessarily, by commensurate depression. A person takes a stimulant, and feels better for the time. ”

“ The stimulant habit in all its forms—"exhilarating beverages," "tonic medicines," "prophylactic bitters," etc.—is a dire delusion. A healthy man needs no artificial excitants; the vital principle in its normal vigor is an all-sufficient stimulus; the inspiration bought at the rum-shop is but a poor substitute for the spontaneous exaltations of a healthy mind in a healthy body. ”

“ After absorption their action, speaking generally, is exerted on the brain and spinal cord, and is at first slightly stimulant and afterwards depressing, even to the causing of sleepiness and stupor. Locally applied they depress the terminations of sensory nerves, and may thereby lessen pain. On the heart and circulation the effects are stimulant unless large doses are given, when the pulse becomes slow and blood-pressure much lessened. During excretion they irritate the kidneys and the sweat-glands, and thereby increase the excretion of urine and of sweat. ”

“ When cold, fatigued, depressed in mind, and on other occasions, you may feel inclined to resort to artificial stimulus. Respecting this many-sided theme I have a few words to offer—of direct bearing on the collector's case. It should be clearly understood, in the first place, that a stimulant confers no strength whatever: it simply calls the powers that be into increased action, at their own expense. ”

“ But the stimulant powers may act so powerfully, and exhaust the excitability to such a degree, that they may overstep the bounds of sthenic or inflammatory disease and bring on debility. Debility may therefore arise either from the stimuli acting too weakly, or from a deficient excitability, while the stimulus is not deficient. ”

“ Such mothers appeal to their medical advisers to prescribe some stimulant which will enable them to overcome the difficulty which they experience, and often are greatly dissatisfied if informed that there is no drug in the materia medica which will make up for structural weakness in [Pg 239] the organs which masticate, digest or assimilate the food. The proper course for such women to adopt is a simple and rational one. ”

“ The ill-nourished and the depressed in body and mind crave most for stimulants. A food creates energy in the body, including the nervous system, and this is the only legitimate form of stimulation. A mere stimulant does not create but draws on the reserve forces. What was latent energy—to become in the natural course gradually available—under stimulation is rapidly set free ”

“ Stimulants and Narcotics.—It will be noted that no provision is made for coffee or tea in the above menu. The general conditions of life in a student community serve as a sufficient stimulation. Tea and coffee are stimulants, and on general principles, it is not wise to use stimulants unless one needs them. The college student does not need any other stimulant than is afforded by the conditions in a college community. ”

“ I scarcely ever leave my writing table. I never take a walk, nor recreation, even after meals; and yet have not felt any head-ache, constipation, or any derangement in the urinary organs. I have never had occasion to have recourse to stimulants, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, &c., in order to work, or to obtain clearness of mind. On the contrary, stimulants give rise in my case to abnormal vibrations in the brain, which are adverse to its quick and regular working. ”

“ Stimulants in Health Unnecessary.—Stimulants have been aptly styled "the whips of the nervous system." The healthy nervous system, however, like the well-disposed and well-fed horse, needs no whip, but is irritated and harmed through its use. Even in periods of weakness and depression, stimulants are usually not called for, but a more perfect provision for hygienic needs. ”

“ According as we settle in our minds whether a given case of pain is an exaggeration or a lessening of the ordinary physiological condition, our treatment will logically be either narcotic or stimulant. ”

“ We know also that if we accept the Atomic theory, by which so many chemical phenomena are cleared up and explained, we must admit a certain definite and peculiar arrangement and shape to the ultimate particles of every compound body. These considerations render it possible that the ultimate particles of a stimulant medicine may be of such a nature as to irritate, or to refuse to coincide with, the ultimate molecules of the sensitive nerve with which they come in contact ”

“ Every organ, or indeed the whole body, is endowed with this property in a greater or less degree, so that the effects produced by any stimulus, though they are more powerful on the part where they are applied, affect the whole system: odours afford an instance of this; and the prick of a pin in the finger, produces excitement, or a stimulant effect, over the whole body. ”

“ PROFESSOR EVERETT. In reply to your letter, I have to say that I think all stimulants, whether in the form of alcoholic drinks, tea or coffee, or tobacco, should be very moderately used. For my own part, I have never smoked or snuffed, and my daily allowance of alcoholic drinks is a so-called pint bottle of beer or two glasses of wine. I have more frequently suffered from nervous excitability due to tea or coffee, than from any other kind of stimulant. I can compose best when my brain is coolest and my digestion easiest. I do not believe in artificial stimulus to literary effort. ”

“ The desire or craving for stimulants in the most general sense of the word—for drugs acting upon the nerves whether as excitant or sedative agents—is an almost if not absolutely universal human appetite; so general, so early developed, that we might almost call it an instinct. Alcohol, of course, is the most popular, under ordinary circumstances the most seductive, and by far the most widely diffused of all stimulant substances. ”

“ They regard it as a stimulant; although its action on the living organism appears to them to be largely veiled in mystery. In many cases of disease, particularly those of acutely inflammatory or febrile character, they judge it to be not at all indicated. ”

“ When the action of a substance is the reverse of stimulant, it cannot with propriety be exhibited in this form, unless the dose be so small that the operation of the spirit cannot be taken into account, as with the narcotic tinctures. ”

“ The state of exhaustion, produced by the too powerful action of stimuli; and this may be produced either by the too powerful, or long continued action of the common stimulants which support life, such as food, air, heat, and exercise; or it may be caused by an application of stimulants, which act more powerfully on the excitability, and which exhaust it more quickly, such as wine, spirits, and opium, musk, camphor, and various other articles used in medicines. ”

“ Speaking with direct reference to the effect of alkaloids in general, Professor Prescott says, “While a certain portion stimulates the nervous system, a large portion acts as a sedative, so that a difference in quantity of the potion causes a difference in kind of its effects.” It should ever be borne in mind that the increased action under stimulation is simply the extra effort forced upon the vital organism to expel an intruder—the intruder being the stimulant itself. ”

“ There are drugs which affect the body in two different ways: some excite the nerves, and through the nerves the heart and blood-stream, to more intense activity; others have the effect of deadening the nerves, and dulling the sense of exhaustion and pain. One of these groups is called stimulants, and the other is called narcotics; but as a matter of fact the stimulants are really narcotics, because they operate by dulling the nerves whose function it is to prevent the over-accumulation of fatigue poisons ”

“ As a general rule, they are originally of the sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less gallop without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant so fascinates their peculiar nervous system as absinthe. ”

“ A man would be considered to be indulging in the wildest and most dangerous fancies who would run through the catalogue of Narcotics when he desired to produce a general stimulant effect. To this system it might further be objected, that Alteratives are again entirely omitted; and that the class of Mechanical agents would seem to belong to the division of Irritants, included among Local Stimulants. Dr. Murray classes Refrigerants among Chemical remedies, for which, when I come to speak of Acids, I hope to show that there are good reasons. ”