Indeed, there is scarcely any disorder in which, under some circumstances, its use is not found proper; and though in many cases it fails of producing sleep, yet if taken in a full dose, it occasions a pleasant tranquillity of mind, and a drowsiness which approaches to sleep, and which always refreshes the patient. Besides the sedative power of opium, it is known to act more or less as a stimulant, exciting the motion of the blood; but this increased action has been ingeniously, and, as we think, rationally ascribed to that general law of the animal economy, by which any noxious influence is resisted by a consequent reaction of the system. By a certain conjoined effort of this sedative and stimulant effect, opium has been thought to produce intoxication, a quality for which it is much used in eastern countries. The requisite dose of opium varies in different persons, and in different states of the same person. A quarter of a grain will in one adult produce effects which ten times the quantity will not do in another; and a dose that might prove fatal in cholera or cholic, would not be perceptible in many cases of tetanus or mania. The lowest fatal dose, to those unaccustomed to take it, seems to be about four grains; but a dangerous dose is so apt to produce vomiting, that it has seldom time to occasion death. When given in too small a dose, it often produces disturbed sleep, and other disagreeable consequences; and in some cases it seems impossible to be made to agree in any dose or form. Often, on the other hand, from a small dose, sound sleep and alleviation of pain will be produced, while a larger one occasions vertigo and delirium. Some prefer the repetition of small doses; others the giving a full dose at once: its operation is supposed to last about eight hours. Among the Turks opium is much in use. Wine is indeed strictly prohibited by their religion. Mahomet knew his disciples too well to entrust them with the use of it; for they are strangers to moderation in their passions: wine seems to have a different effect on their constitution from what it has on the rest of mankind; it drives them generally to fury, frenzy, and distraction. But, notwithstanding the prohibition, the vice of drinking gains ground with the Turks, and imperceptibly creeps from the lower to the higher stations: perhaps in this instance, as in many others, restraint may quicken appetite and inflame desire. Men of some distinction, even those in great offices, frequently make what they call parties of pleasure, merely to get dead drunk; and after lying two or three days wallowing in their liquor, return fresh and happy to their office. A frequent request to such Christians as they know they can trust is, to procure them the best wine. Some principal officers, both in the seraglio and' Porte, have so strong a passion for it, that they have invented small leathern boxes, in which they convey it home without the privity of their trustiest servants: others fill large leathern pipes, which are pliant, round their bodies, and so carry wine clandestinely into the seraglio, at the risk perhaps of their lives. When it happens that, toward the decline of life, religious scruples have seized them, or that those in high offices have apprehended the Grand Signior might discover them by the odour of their morning draught, they frequently change their wine to opium, which is equally intoxicating, and perhaps attended with worse consequences, both to the corporeal and mental faculties. Some still continue that practice; but at present those among the great, who feel scruples or fear the discovery, rather betake themselves to distilled strong waters, with which they are abundantly supplied from Zante and Corfu. The casuistry with which they silence their scruples is, that fire, which purifies all things, has, in distillation, destroyed and dissipated the impure parts of the wine; and that brandy is no where expressly interdicted by Mahomet. The vice of drinking wine is, however, looked upon with detestation by the generality of Turks; and even the use of opium is held in great contempt, as a vicious practice. When they would depreciate the character of any considerable man who is known to chew it, they call him a Tiriachi, that is, "an opium eater," by which they mean a person of an extravagant and irregular turn of mind. [Junker. Wildenow. Woodville. Amanitates Academica. 3 1 CHAP. VI. VEGETABLE POISONS. A SECTION I. Preliminary Observations. POISON may be defined to be any substance which, when applied to the animal frame externally or internally, injures or destroys it, by exciting morbid action. This definition, we allow, is extensive; but the diversified nature of the substances that fall within the meaning of the term, and the multiform mode of their action, prevent us from being able to limit it within narrower bounds. Poisons may, therefore, be contemplated under the four classes of animal, vegetable, mineral, and hallituous. At the two last we have already occasionally glanced, in various chapters of the first book of the present work; the more curious of the animal poisons will fall within the scope of the ensuing book; and we have only in the division before us, to notice those that belong to the vegetable world. Preliminarily, however, we will observe, that most of the substances properly called poisonous, are only so in certain doses; for below this point in the general scale, many of them form the most active and consequently the most most valuable medicines of the dispensatory. There are nevertheless some poisons which are deleterious and even fatal in the smallest quantities imaginable, and which are hence never administered medicinally; such are those of hydrophobia and the plague. There are other poisons, again, which are innocent when taken into the stomach, but which prove deleterious when applied to the lungs, or to an abraded surface; thus carbonic acid is continually swallowed with fermented liquors with impunity, and the poison of the viper may be taken in the same manner whilst inspiring carbonic acid kills, and the poison of the viper inserted into the flesh often proves fatal. : There is again a third kind of substances which act as poisons, whether applied externally or internally, as arsenic. When a substance produces disease not only in mankind but in all animals, it is distinguished by the term common poison, as arsenic, sublimate, &c. whilst that which is poisonous to man only, or to animals, and often to one genus, is said to be a relative poison; thus aloes is poisonous to dogs and wolves; the phellandrium aquaticum kills horses, whilst oxen devour it greedily and with impunity. It appears, then, that substances act as poisons only in regard to their dose, the part of the body they are applied to, and the subject. Narcotic Poisonous Vegetables. 1. Papaver somniferum * Vomits, acids, and the other anti-narcotics mentioned at the end of this table, are the antidotes. 2. Opium The antidotes are first vomits which also purge, then vinegar, and oil. 15. Hyosciamus alba 16. Hyosciamus physalodes This requires the same anti- 18. Azalea pontica dotes. 3. Physalis somnifera 4. Solanum lycopersicum 5. Solanum mammosum 6. Solanum insanum 7. Solanum dulcamara 8. Solanum nigrum 9. Altropa mandragora 10. Datura stramonium 11. Datura metel 12. Datura ferox 13. Datura tatula 14. Hyosciamus niger 19. Antirrhinum orontium 21. Lolium temulentum 29. Lactuca scarolia 30. Paris quadrifolia 31. Prunus lauro cerasus. Against all these narcotics are recommended, after vomiting, 1. Acids; as vinegar, lemon-juice, spirits of vitriol diluted. 2. A very strong infusion of Turkey coffee. 3. Small doses * It is difficult, as we have already observed, to draw the line between medicines and poisons; this and many in the ensuing list are both. |