A Short Clinical Note on Tincture of Ephedra as a Cardiac Stimulant

The value of ephedrine as a therapeutic agent has been appreciated for some years but little attention has been paid to its dextrorotatory isomer pseudo-ephedrine. This latter alkaloid occurs in large quantities in the Indian species of ephedra, most of the specimens containing a proportion of 50 per cent, of the total alkaloid content. Lieut.-Col. R. N. Chopra, i-M.s., and his collaborators of the Department ?f Pharmacology at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, have made a special study of this alkaloid (Chopra, Dikshit and Pillai, 1929 and 1929a, and Chopra and Basu, 1930). They found that the pharmacological action of pseudo-ephedrine closely resembles that of ephedrine. Both alkaloids are rapidly absorbed from the gastro-intestinal tract and produce constriction of the bloodvessels and a well-marked rise in blood pres-