*niferum. It has a reddish-brown colour, and a glimmering lustre on a fresh surface. It is soft and plastic when recent; but if pure, may be dried so as to become brittle. Its smell is strong and quite peculiar. It has a very bitter and most peculiar taste. In consequence of this taste one would suppose it no easy matter to administer opium secretly. The plan resorted to by thieves and robbers seems to be, to deaden the sense of taste by strong spirits, and then to ply the person with porter or ale drugged with laudanum, or the black drop, which possesses less odour.
The following account of the chemical history of opium will be confined in a great measure to the leading properties of the principles, in which its active qualities are concentrated, or which are likely by their chemical characters to supply proof of its presence.
The common solvents act readily on opium. Water dissolves its active principles even at low temperatures. So does alcohol. So particularly do the mineral and vegetable acids when much diluted. Ether removes from it little else than one of its active principles, narcotine. By the action of these agents are procured various preparations in common use. Laudanum is a spirituous infusion, and contains the active ingredients of a twelfth part of its weight of opium. Scotch Paregoric Elixir, a solution in ammoniated spirit, is only one-fifth of the strength of laudanum; and English Paregoric, tincture of opium and camphor for its chief ingredients, is four times weaker still. Wine of opium contains the soluble part of a sixteenth of its weight. The black drop and Battley's sedative liquor are believed to be solutions of opium in vegetable acids, and to possess, the former four, the latter three times the strength of laudanum. But their strength has been greatly exaggerated; neither of them, according to my own experience, being above half what is supposed. The juice and infusion of the garden poppy are also powerfully narcotic, so as even to have caused death both when given by the mouth and in the way of injection.[1] Many other pharmaceutic preparations contain opium.
If opium be infused in successive portions of cold water, the water dissolves all its poisonous principles, and also a peculiar acid possessing characteristic chemical properties. These principles are separated by means of the alkalis, the alkaline carbonates, or the alkaline earths. The most important of them are morphia, the chief alkaloid of opium,—narcotine, a feeble poison, not an alkaloid,—a peculiar acid, termed meconic acid,—and a resinoid substance. Other crystalline principles also exist in opium, though apparently in too small proportion either to affect its action or to be available in medico-legal analysis as the means of detecting the drug. These are codeïa, meconine, narceïne, paramorphia, and porphyroxine.
Of the various principles now indicated it is necessary to notice here only morphia, narcotine, codeïa, porphyroxine and meconic acid. They require mention either as being active poisons, or because a knowledge of their leading characters may be useful in conducting a medico-legal analysis in a case of poisoning with opium.
- ↑ Archives Gén. xiv. 406.
