354 ON 'OPIUM. 



Effects of T^a? stupified and paralytic, in 20 minutes convulsed : after 



opium on the . , *' ' 



living system. ^'^^ mmates, voluiitary motion had ceased: after an hour 



and ten minuites it was dead and the irritability in all the 



muscles was destroyed. 



Exp. 8.* Thirty drops were injected into another frog, 

 after the remoTal of the heart; it lived an hour and 15 mi~ 

 nixtes, and after death the irritability was exhausted. 



Exp. 9.f Twenty drops were injected into a third: It. 

 lived an hour and twelve minutes, and the state of irrital^U 

 lity was the same as in the preceding. 



Do^s the Quantitif of Opium sufficient to occasion Deatky 



effect this by inducing a Change in the Condition of the 



Blood? 



Exp. 10. J By some former experiments, No. 17 and 

 ^5, § it had been found that 33 drops of the solution of 

 opium injected into the jugular vein of a rabbit would oc- 

 casion death in the course of a few minutes, and exhaust 

 the irritability of the muscular fibre. Another rabbit was 

 selected, and 33 drops injected into the crural vein ; no other 

 effect resulted from this but some degree of stupefaction. 

 Twenty-six minutes afterwards 33 more drops were injected 

 into the crural 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 con- 

 valescent, and the day following it fed as usual. 



The occasion did not oifer to make a computation of the 

 quantity of opium which would be necessary to kill a rab- 

 bit when introduced by a crural vein, but the omission 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 jugu- 

 lar vein, mustarise from some other state, than a change 

 in the condition of the blood, and that the effect of opium. 



* Vid. Inaug. Dissert, p. 29. Exp. 21. f Vid. p. 30. Exp. 22 

 ; Vid. p 74. Exp. 46. - § Vid. p. 20 & 53. 



must 



