Talk:Gelsemium

message: I was just speaking with a Bulgarian friend of mine about how she had just been prescribed Gelsemium for its role as a cardiac depressant. This would seem to indicate that it is still being used medicinally beyond 1906, right up to the modern day.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.222.88.83 (talk) 22:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current use in Bulgarian medicine? 

message: This article from 1909 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25288743  (the very last page) recommends its use for opiate withdrawal. 
"When the remedy ceases to be required it should be withdrawn as quickly as possible; and with the exercise of care there is little difficulty about leaving it off, even if the drug has been continued for a period of months. The assumed difficulty arises from the extreme irritability of the nervous system which follows the sudden omission of the usual sedative dose. This is sometimes distressing in the extreme, and many a victim to the drug, although profoundly anxious to free himself from its thraldom, has shrunk from provoking the suffering which he well knows the struggle for liberty will entail. This suffering may be avoided if the dose be gradually reduced until the quantity taken is very small. If then it be withheld altogether, the nervous unrest which ensues is moderate enough to be readily controllable by a few doses of tincture of gelsemium. I have in my mind the case of a professional man who had suffered from a severe attack of subacute sciatica. For many weeks the patient had been treated with hypodermic injections of morphine using one-sixth of a grain after breakfast, the same quantity after a midday lunch, and one-third of a grain at bedtime. Only by such means could the painful spasms of the complaint be controlled sufficiently to enable the patient to pursue his professional duties. At length the attack came to an end. The dose of morphine was then gradually reduced day by day until it was brought down to one-twelfth of a grain at bedtime. It was then stopped altogether and the nervous unrest which followed, although very definite and harassing, yielded at once to a dose of twenty minims of the gelsemium tincture taken at bedtime. This was required on only two or three nights; the nerves then recovered their tone completely."
This makes me wonder if it's ever been studied for its neurological effects, to see how exactly it helped. Suppose it has some kind of effect on dopamine receptors in particular? --Snowgrouse (talk) 19:41, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opiate withdrawal 

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