ABSTRACT
Anticholinergic treatment has long been utilized in the treatment of obstructive lung disease. As early as the seventeenth century, inhalation of smoke from the Datura plant’s roots was recommended as a treatment for asthma in India. The Datura plant is a genus of the deadly nightshade family (Solanaceae), the burning of which results in vaporization of alkaloids, including atropine. Atropine inhalation by this method was introduced into Western medicine by the early 1800s and became common by the middle of the nineteenth century. Botanical sources of atropine fell into disfavor with practitioners of Western medicine in the first half of this century with the advent of adrenergic bronchodilators, which were more rapidly acting and did not induce the troublesome central nervous system (CNS) side effects, tachycardia and dry mouth, associated with atropine and other plant alkaloids. However, in the early 1970s, with the introduction of the quaternary ammonium compounds (QAC), which are free of most of the side effects associated with atropine, anticholinergic therapy has again found a central role in the treatment of obstructive lung disease.
