1^ On the Effects of Opium 



^■^hit would occasion death in the course of ^ 

 hw minutes and exhaust the irritability of the 

 .muscular fibre. Another rabbjt was selected 

 and 33 drops injected into the crural vein; no 

 other effect resulted from this but some degree 

 of stupefaction. Twenty-si^ minutes after- 

 wards 33 more drops were injected into the 

 'irural vein of the other limb. 



The animal in a short time became more 

 languid, but was not convulsed ^ its pulse was 

 rendered more slow and feeble, at the period of 

 36 minutes from the injection into the first 

 crural vein. 



Seven hours from the first injection, the 

 animal was convalescent, and the day following 

 it fed as usual. 



The occasion did not offer to make a com- 

 putation of the quantity of opium which would 

 be necessary to kill a rabbit when introduced 

 by a crural vein, but the ornission of this does 

 not detract from the force of the evidence which 

 the above experiment supplies, that the cause 

 of the death of the animal, when the solution is 

 introduced by the jugular vein, must arise from 

 some other state, than a change in the condition 

 of the blood, and that the effect of opium must 

 have been extended over the entire system, by 

 other means than the circulation ; for, what 

 reason can be given why the mass of fluids should 



