STUDIES ON BARBITURATES XIX. ANALYSIS OF THE BARBITURATE-PICROTOXIN ANTAGONISM

¹ From the Department of Pharmacology and Materia Medica, Georgetown University, School of Medicine, Washington, D. C.

Doses of picrotoxin from 58 to 101 mgm. per kilogram administered over a period of forty hours will save the lives of dogs receiving 1250 mgm. of sodium barbital and 100 mgm. of sodium pentobarbital, but will fail to save animals poisoned with 1500 mgm. of sodium barbital or 150 mgm. of sodium pentobarbital.

Metrazol has a life-saving action in doses of 350 to 500 mgm. per kilogram against doses of sodium barbital from 600 to 1000 mgm. per kilogram and of sodium pentobarbital of 100 mgm. per kilogram.

The blood sugar concentration remains normal or rises above normal in the animals receiving large doses of both the barbiturate and the antidote. The body temperature, after an initial fall, is also maintained at the normal level under the same conditions. Dogs excrete from one-half.to three-fourths of the massive doses of sodium barbital or, conversely, may destroy from one-half to one-fourth of these amounts or fairly large quantities of this drug during the course of seventy-two hours.