is also excreted in the milk; hence the danger in the administration of large doses of morphine to nursing mothers.
Morphine-scopolamine anaesthesia was introduced in 1902 by Steinbückel. It has been used by some surgeons for the production of anaesthesia previous to the administration of ether or chloroform, but the use of the method is now more usually relegated to obstetric practice.
Morphinism (Morphinomania).—Chronic morphine poisoning is very common, as morphine taken constantly creates a habit. Once acquired the habitué depends on the drug for a comfortable existence, and as the organism becomes quickly tolerant of the alkaloid the original dose no longer suffices. The total amount of morphine indulged in by the habitual morphinist may reach an astonishing figure; 15 grs. a day is said to be common, and some medical writers record quantities such as 60 to 70 grs. in the 24 hours in extreme cases. The early stages of morphinism are marked by moral degeneration; the patient seems to lose all sense of right and wrong, and will lie most plausibly and even thieve to obtain the drug; personal disorderliness, disregard of time, neglect of business and decline of family affection become soon evident. Physical symptoms also appear; the face assumes an earthy colour, the body wastes, constipation is usually present to an extreme degree, the secretions become arrested, loss of appetite and indigestion follow and the mouth is parched. The nails become brittle and the skin dry, sterility shows itself in women and sexual impotence in men. While not directly causing death, morphinism so lowers the bodily powers that the patient is easily carried off by some intercurrent malady. The sudden withdrawal of the drug from a morphine habitué is followed by a train of alarming symptoms. As the time approaches for the usual dose there is marked restlessness, followed by excitement and later by chills, pallor, sinking, nausea, with perhaps vomiting and diarrhoea. Horrible mental depression and melancholia are present, and there may be hallucinations of vision and hearing passing into violent delirium. At this stage collapse may set in, the patient become faint, the limbs twitch, the radical pulse become imperceptible, and unconsciousness supervene. The condition may even go on to a fatal result should morphine be continuously withheld, but injection of even a small quantity of morphine causes these symptoms to cease abruptly. The sudden withdrawal of morphine should therefore never be practised with takers of large quantities of the drug, but gradually diminishing doses given by the physician should be substituted. For the successful treatment of morphinism, complete isolation of the patient is necessary in a place where he is supervised so that he can obtain no morphine. Isolation in a home is far the best, as friends may give way to entreaties and servants be bribed. The “tapering off” of the dose is the best method. Absence from home and strict supervision lasting over a long period, usually a year, are necessary to prevent relapse. The lowered bodily health requires to be built up, and a long sea voyage under adequate supervision is usually recommended.
MORPHOLOGY, (Gr. μορφή, form), a term introduced by Goethe to denote in biology the study of the unity of type in organic form (for which the Linnaean term “Metamorphosis” had formerly been employed). It now usually covers the entire
science of organic form. There are numerous restricted senses of the term in various sciences, but here we shall deal with
it as a substantive side of zoology and botany.
Historical Outline.—If we disregard such vague likenesses as those expressed in the popular classifications of plants by size into herbs, shrubs and trees, or of terrestrial animals by habit into beasts and creeping things, the history of morphology begins with Aristotle. Founder of comparative anatomy and taxonomy, he established eight great divisions (to which are appended certain minor groups)—Viviparous Quadrupeds, Birds, Oviparous Quadrupeds and Apoda, Fishes, Malakia, Malacostraca, Entoma, and Ostracodermata—distinguishing the first four groups as Enaima (“with blood”) from the remaining four as Anaima (“bloodless”). In these two divisions we recognize the Vertebrata and Invertebrata of J. B. P. A. Lamarck, the first four groups corresponding with the Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, whilst the others agree more loosely with the Cephalopods, Crustacea, Insecta, and Echinoderms with Mollusca other than the Cephalopods. Far from committing the mistake attributed to him of reckoning Bats as Birds, or Cetaceans as Fishes, he discerned the true affinities of both, and erected the latter into a special γένος beside the Viviparous Quadrupeds, more on account of their absence of limbs than of their aquatic habit. Not only is his method inductive, and his groups founded on the aggregate of known characters, but he foreshadows such generalizations as those of the correlation of organs, and of the progress of development from a general to a special form afterwards established by G. L. Cuvier and K. E. von Baer respectively. In the correspondence he suggests between the scales of Fishes and the feathers of Birds, or in that hinted at between the fins of Fishes and the limbs of Quadrupeds, the idea of homology is nascent; and from the compilation of his disciple Nicolaus of Damascus, who regards leaves as imperfectly developed fruits, he seems almost to have anticipated the idea of the metamorphosis of plants. Even after the reappearance of Aristotle’s works in the 13th century, little can be recorded but revivals of his conclusions. Monographs on groups of plants and animals frequently appeared, those of P. Belon on Birds and G. Rondelet on Fishes being among the earliest; and in the former of these (1555) we find a comparison of the skeletons of Bird and Man in the same posture and as nearly as possible bone for bone—an idea which, despite the contemporaneous renaissance of human anatomy initiated by Vesalius, disappeared for centuries, unappreciated save by the surgeon Ambroise Paré. B. Palissy, like Leonardo da Vinci before him, discerned the true nature of fossils; and such flashes of insight continued to appear from time to time during the 17th century. Thus, Joachim Jung recognized “the distinction between root and stem, the difference between leaves and foliaceous branches, the transition from the ordinary leaves to the folia floris,” and W. Harvey anticipated the generalizations of modern embryology by his researches on development and his theory of epigenesis.
The encyclopaedic period of which Gesner is the highest representative was continued by Aldrovandi and others in the 17th century; but, aided by the Baconian movement, then influencing all scientific minds, it developed into one of genuinely systematic aim. At this stage of progress the most important part was taken by John Ray, whose classificatory labours among plants and animals were crowned with success. He first expelled the fabulous monsters and prodigies of which the encyclopaedists had handed on the tradition from medieval times, and succeeded, particularly among plants, in distinguishing many natural groups, for which his own terms sometimes survive—e.g. Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, Umbelliferae and Leguminosae. The true precursor of Linnaeus, he introduced the idea of species in natural history, and reformed the practice of definition and terminology. Of the works which followed up Ray’s systematic labours, none can be even named until we come to those of his great successor Linnaeus, whose grasp of logical method and lucidity of thought and expression enabled him to reform and reorganize the whole labours of his predecessors into a compact and definite “systema naturae.” The very genius of order, he established modern taxonomy, not only by the introduction of the binomial nomenclature and the renovation of descriptive terminology and method, but by the subordination of the species under the successive higher categories of genus, order and class, so reconciling the analytic and synthetic tendencies of his predecessors. Although the classification of plants by the number of their essential organs is highly artificial, it must be remembered that this artificiality is after all only a question of degree, and that he not only distinctly recognized its provisional character but collected and extended those fragments of the natural system with which A. de Jussieu soon afterwards began to build. His classification of animals, too, was largely natural, and, though on the whole he lent his authority to maintain the notion of three kingdoms of nature, he at least at one time discerned the fundamental unity of animals and vegetables, and united them in opposition to the non-living world as Organisata. At the same time he was still far more a scholastic naturalist than a modern investigator.
While the artificial system was at the zenith of its usefulness, Bernard de Jussieu was arranging his gardens on the lines afforded by the fragmentary natural system of Linnaeus. His ideas were elaborated by his nephew Antoine de Jussieu, who published diagnoses of the natural orders, so giving the system its modern character. Its subsequent elaboration and definite establishment are due mainly to the labours of Pyrame de
