gave rise to a physiological inquiry by three French physicians, Deguise, Dupuy, and Leuret, who assigned to it feeble properties; but more reliance is usually placed in the experiments of Orfila, who found that one part of morphia is equal in energy to two parts of the watery extract, and to four parts of crude opium. The observations I have made on the medicinal effects of morphia and its muriate, lead me to believe that half a grain is fully equal in power to three grains of the best Turkey-opium. Probably those who have observed but slight effects from it have accidentally used narcotine instead of it; for at one time they were often confounded together.
On man morphia acts like opium; it produces somnolency. It was at one time thought that in medicinal doses it does not produce either the disagreeable subsequent or idiosyncratic effects of opium; Magendie made some observations to this purport;[1] and Dr. Quadri of Naples was led to the same conclusion.[2] Others, however, have doubted the accuracy of these authors, and opposite results appear to have been procured by some. My own experience with the muriate of morphia inclines me to concur in opinion with Magendie and Quadri.
The effects of morphia on man in fatal doses have hitherto been observed in a few cases only. An instance, which was the occasion of a criminal trial at Aberdeen in 1842, has been communicated to me by Dr. Traill, who was consulted in the case on the part of the crown. A schoolmaster gave ten grains of the muriate to a girl immediately after she came out of an epileptic fit. In fifteen minutes she seemed to fall asleep; she continued in this state for some hours before it was discovered that she was in a state of stupor, from which she could not be roused; and she expired twelve hours after the poison was administered. A similar case occasioned by ten grains, and also fatal, occurred at Cheltenham in 1839.
Orfila relates the particulars of the case of a young Parisian graduate, who swallowed twenty-two grains for the purpose of self-destruction. In ten minntes he felt heat in the stomach and hindhead, with excessive itchiness; in three hours and a half he had also a sense of pricking in the eyes, with dimness of vision; and in an hour more he for the first time felt approaching stupor. Half an hour afterwards, when the people of the house entered his room he could not see them, though he was sensible enough to be able to reply to their inquiries, that he lay in bed because he had not slept the night before. Soon after this he fell into a state of profound stupor and lost all consciousness. In thirteen hours he was visited by Orfila, who found him cold, quite comatose, and affected with locked-jaw; the pupils were feebly dilated, the pulse 120, the breathing hurried and stertorous, the belly tense and tympanitic; and there were occasional convulsions, with intense itching of the skin. By means of copious venesection, sinapisms, ammoniated friction, stimu-*
