ON THE TOXICITY OF ARSINE-TRI-1-PIPERIDINIUM CHLORIDE

¹ Department of Pharmacology University of Wisconsin

1. The intravenous lethal dose of arsine-tri-1-piperidinium chloride for the rabbit lies between 0.2 and 0.3 gram per kilo body weight, when injected in 5 cc. of water at the rate of 1 cc. per minute. Death follows in from three to six minutes.

2. The intramuscular lethal dose for rabbits lies between 0.5 and 1 gram per kilo body weight. Two doses of 0.5 gram per kilo given an hour apart kill within two hours after the original dose. Doses of 0.5 gram per kilo given twenty-four hours apart do not kill.

3. In the etherized dog 0.07 to 0.08 gram per kilo (intravenous) were found to be lethal.

4. Death is by paralysis of the respiration, the heart sometimes continuing to beat for some minutes. The drug appears to have much the same effect upon respiratory, vasomotor, and cardio-inhibitory centers as is shown by tetramethyl ammonium chloride. In sublethal dosage it produces salivation and tremor in muscular effort resembling coniine and piperidine, and in paralyzing the motor nerve endings of voluntary muscles late in the intoxication, the drug resembles coniine and curare.

5. The drug produces none of the morphological changes in the tissues characteristic of chronic arsenical poisoning, even after daily injection of sublethal doses over two weeks' time. The arsenic in the molecule is apparently so firmly bound and hidden that it produces none of the effects characteristic of organic arsenical compounds.

6. Arsine-tri-1-piperidinium chloride exercises no trypanocidal action upon Tr. equiperdum infection in rats.