JVarcotine, and Sulphate of Morphine. 39 



Art. III. — Results of Experiments and Observations on Narcotine, 

 and Sulphate op Morphine ;* by William Tully, M. D. Pro- 

 fessor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Medical Institu- 

 tion of Yale College. 



It is now many years since the discovery of that proximate prin- 

 ciple of Opium, commonly called Narcotine, and even a consider- 

 able number since it has been known to be capable, in certain doses, 

 of destroying brute animals, with the phenomena usually produced 

 by a narcotic ; and yet, I have no knowledge of any experiments or 

 observations, hitherto, that can be considered as contributing much, 

 if indeed any thing, towards the determination of its medicinal pow- 

 ers upon the human subject. As far as I know, most of the late 

 writers upon Materia medica have concurred in ascribing all the 

 remedial properties of Opium, to some salt of Morphine, (another 

 proximate principle of this drug) although it is admitted that Opium 

 contains only about seven per centum of Morphine, and that a given 

 quantity of Morphine is very far from being fifteen times as active as 

 the same quantity of Opium, which ought to be the fact, were Mor- 

 phine its sole medicinal principle. According to the best observa- 

 tions, a given quantity of Morphine, instead of possessing fiftsen 

 times the activity of the same quantity of Opium, can at most; be 

 considered as possessing only about four times the activity, and per- 

 haps there is room for just doubt, whether there is even as mjch 

 difference as this. Now it cannot be reasonably supposed tha; as 



* It is well observed by a distinguished pharmaceutist, that the original ending in ina, 

 (me in English,) of the names of the vegetable salifiable bases, must be retained by 

 physicians, to the exclusion of the termination in a simply, or ia, which has beer re- 

 cently adopted by the chemists, since the similarity oiAtropia to Atropa — of DaHria 

 to Datura, — o{ Brucia to Brucea, — of Sanguinara to Sanguinaria, — of Cinchonii to 

 Cinchona, — of Gentiania to Gentiana, etc. (the former of which are the present 

 fashionable names for the active principles, and the latter the long establisied 

 names for the vegetables from which they are obtained,) is altogether incompatible 

 in prescription with the safety of patients. In all the editions of Magendie's Formu- 

 lary, — in Anthony Todd Thomson's Conspectus of the British Pharmacopoeias,— in 

 Rennie's Supplement to the British and French Pharmacopoeias, — and (as has been 

 said,) in some of the latest Pharmacopoeias of the continent of Europe, the termina- 

 tion in ina is retained. It was to be hoped that the responsibility of a useless 

 change in nomenclature which, if adopted, would endanger so many lives, would 

 never be assumed by any practitioner of medicine. 



