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FAPAVER SOMNIFERUM. ORD. XXI. Rheeades. - 381 
time of Sydenham. Opium is the chief narcotic now employed; 
it acts directly upon the nervous power, diminishing the sen- 
sibility, irritabitity, and mobility of the system; and, according 
to a late ingenious author, in a certain manner-suspending the 
motion of the nervous fluid, to and from the brain, and thereby 
inducing sleep, one of its principal effects. From this sedative 
power of opium, by which it allays pain, inordinate action, and 
restlessness, it naturally follows, that it may be employed with 
advantage in a great variety of diseases. 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 
ceconomy, by which any noxious influence is resisted by a conse- 
quent re-action of the system. By a certain conjoined effort of 
this sedative and stimulant effect, opium has been thought to pro- 
duce intoxication, a quality for which it is much used in eastern- 
countries... | 
We shall now proceed to consider the use of opium in particular’ 
diseases, beginning with fevers. 
In most continued fevers of this climate, though originating 
from contagion, or certain corruptions of human effluvia, &c. there 
is, at the beginning, more or less of inflammatory diathesis, and 
while this continues, opium would generally aggravate the symp- 
toms, and prove dangerous. Its use is likewise forbidden in the 
more advanced stage of this fever, whenever topical inflammation 
of the brain is ascertained, which sometimes exists and produces 
delirium, though other symptoms of the nervous and putrid kind 
prevail. But when irritation upon the brain is not of the inflam-- 
® See Cullen’s Mat, Med. C. sedantia, See also what is said of opium. 
No, 32.—vot. 3. 53 
