Chapter 291: Drug Induction

Digitalis and belladonna, the only two truly confirmed effective natural plant medicines in hand, with relatively clear mechanisms.

The former is fresh plants picked and delivered recently; the latter is a souvenir from the trip to Westminster, dried and preserved, perhaps mixed with a few blueberries that weren't picked out.

Of course, when they were still fresh and distinguishable, Kraft had no time to carefully tell them apart. After drying, they were completely indistinguishable, like strawberry seeds falling into a pile of white sesame seeds.

Fortunately, there was no precision requirement now; he believed the sample wouldn't mind if the reagent carried a fruity scent.

Take two teaspoons of dried fruit, dissolve them in the remaining hot water. The shriveled fruits swelled, the liquid dyed a shimmering light purple, looking very beautiful in the highly transparent white glass container.

Actually, when belladonna appeared at banquets, it wasn't entirely the assassin's masterpiece; it also became a dangerous cosmetic.

Due to an aesthetic sense Kraft couldn't quite understand, some people insisted that larger pupils made eyes look spirited and more charming; coincidentally, some genius discovered that belladonna poisoning caused pupil dilation.

Thus, belladonna eye drops became a popular beauty product; a drop before going out could grant dazzling, charming large pupils. Despite occasional accidents with varying degrees of severity, its devotees only increased.

This might be one of the earliest medicinal examples of belladonna, perfectly explaining its pharmacological mechanism: an anticholinergic drug. Since cholinergic receptors are widely distributed in many smooth muscles and glands, the scope belladonna can affect is very large.

The sphincter muscle controlling pupil constriction is certainly one of them; one must say that using it locally as eye drops is a relatively wise method—the wisest method is not to use it blindly. "Blindly" here can be taken literally.

Kraft used a quill to draw a little, dripping it onto the sample that had returned to normal; the surface without keratin protection quickly absorbed the liquid, the purple seeping into the semi-transparent soft tissue, slowly spreading and fading.

Following the color's spreading trajectory, one could see tiny capillary tubes invisible before coloring; the absorbed liquid transported along the tube system, quickly penetrating a corner of the sample, then abruptly stopping.

With a small, complex fluctuation, the flow of body fluid suddenly got stuck. It was as if valves in the tubes closed, forcibly restricting the drug within a certain range, greatly slowing the diffusion speed.

"This works?" In normal blood vessels, valves should act as one-way valves to prevent blood from flowing backward, but in the sample, this simple structure seemed modified, capable of controlling opening and closing as needed.

It could choose to keep poisoning localized, rather than, like humans, spreading throughout the body via blood circulation after absorption.

Kraft tried pouring in more liquid, but it became "smart," choosing not to absorb; instead, it formed that previous keratin layer, isolating itself from the outside world.

This could not dissuade the professor from continuing the experiment. Since it wouldn't absorb, he would inject the drug directly.

He temporarily lacked a syringe in the strict sense; he hadn't thought of needing one before. In his view, there were basically no drugs suitable for injection at present.

But unfortunately for patients, the concept of intravenous injection appeared far earlier than drugs suitable for intravenous injection.

People had long tried injecting drugs into blood vessels to accelerate onset; of course, they didn't use syringes. Theoretically, all that was needed was a sharp, thin tube and a container capable of providing pressure.

"Next time I really should ask if the Higo family can make a syringe; digitalis would make them agree." Conditions were limited; Kraft used the syringe's ancestor provided by the clinic—a skin sac made from an animal organ temporarily storing liquid metabolic end products.

"Uh, that thing looks a bit like..." Kup felt the tool's form and liquid storage method were somewhat ominous.

"You're right; I got it, so David couldn't possibly use it on patients." Kraft connected the needle and the bulb, drew up the belladonna solution, and injected the liquid into the sample.

To prevent diffusion difficulties, he specifically injected at different points and depths in multiple doses.

The sample sphere, completely dyed light purple, contracted and relaxed violently; the frequency noticeably increased, while internal digestive vesicles became stagnant and sluggish. Some solid particles and small chunks of various colors proliferated and grew larger; rich new blood vessels maintained their supply, suspected to be compensatorily enlarged secretory glands.

As expected, another composite fluctuation appeared under the mental sensory field, unanalyzable. Probably because target receptors were everywhere, causing the entire organism to be in adjustment.

The sample took some time to adjust; the fluctuation intensity was even stronger than when encountering high temperatures, but also more chaotic.

For different system imbalances caused by the same drug, it chose to respond decisively through changes in multiple pathways.

The assistant noticed the professor's seriousness mixed with confusion, and a little disappointment.

"Juice the stems and leaves of the purple bellflower, quickly," he ordered. The hourglass had no one turning it, but something else seemed to be urging time on.

"Please wait a moment, it will be ready soon." Kup threw the whole plant into a washboard-like juicer, pressed down to squeeze out fresh juice, bottled it, and handed it to the eager employer.

After simple four-fold dilution, the digitalis injection was squeezed into the sample that had just calmed down.

Unlike the vividly colored belladonna tea, the pale yellow-green solution was hard to distinguish once entered, with no track to follow.

Kraft instinctively widened his eyes, waiting for the result. Time passed; the familiar pain and discomfort of the past unexpectedly weren't so severe; instead, an unsettling sense of ease began to grow.

It should be near the time, but subjectively it hadn't arrived yet; he wanted to see a bit more.

The sample's overall activity slowed, but the amplitude became larger, as if shifting from short gasps to deep breaths; those rhythmic muscle fiber bundles powerfully pulled surrounding tissue, contracting inward.

The strengthened contraction squeezed body fluid pumping at high speed through the tubes to all parts of the organism, affecting more muscle bundles, so the contraction became even stronger.

Once this trend reached a certain limit, the situation reversed; the frequency of contraction and relaxation began to increase, while intensity weakened.

When the frequency reached a certain level, the scale of contraction dropped to an extremely undesirable degree; rather than contraction and relaxation, it was more like spasms and tremors; high-frequency, shallow, rapid contractions could no longer effectively generate pressure.

The condition appearing in humans also appeared in the sample, manifested in a similar way.

This would be incredibly intuitive for explaining myocardial cell electrophysiology; it would make an excellent teaching aid. Myocardial contraction requires maintaining a certain ion concentration difference between the inside and outside of cells, and digitalis's sodium-potassium pump inhibition, after reaching a certain degree, disrupts this state due to changes in potassium ion concentration difference, leading to a decrease in resting potential.

For someone who happened to remember a bit of basic cell electrophysiology, it would quickly occur to them what this meant—increased excitability.

Manifested in the heart, it becomes faster and faster; when it reaches a certain point, twitching like a spasm, its contraction no longer produces effective pressure, just as a constantly twitching hand cannot lift anything.

【Ventricular Fibrillation】

The most fatal arrhythmia formed right then, the entire process visible. The professor glanced regretfully at Kup; unfortunately, the only teachable subject here was far from having learned to this extent.

"Let me see, how will you deal with it now?" Kraft observed the sample with great interest, his attention heightened to the extreme.

Now the sample's entire circulatory system should have completely stalled; creating any new tissue would be useless unless it could reverse this critical problem.

His expectation received a response.

A new fluctuation overflowed from the Moon Bone; it wasn't necessarily strong, but it wasn't accompanied by too much noise, so that in a brief instant it stood out, reaching a recognizable degree.

The ever-ready mental organ perceived it, engraving this ripple, which couldn't be described by other sensory forms, into its precise memory.

Visible to the naked eye, the tremors of the myocardial bundle branches inside the sample were controlled.