By Thomas Bruges Flower, Esq. 



Ill 



good reason that the ancients applied the term laudanum to opium, 

 for it is indeed powerful to do good, though, as in the case of other 

 energetic instruments, it is when misdirected strong to work evil. 

 Stimulant or sedative, excitant or narcotic, as concurrent circum- 

 stances may determine, it has for ages been used as a preparative 

 for deeds of enterprise, to mitigate the sufferings of disease, or to 

 obtain respite from the canker- workings of consuming care. 



The operation of opium is usually considered to be confined to 

 the nervous system, its effects on the other organs of living animals 

 being of a secondary character, acting on them through the medium 

 of their nerves. This, although true to the fullest extent in the 

 higher order of animals, is nevertheless but a partial view of the 

 subject. It is against the Principle of Life, whose simplest condi- 

 tion is sensation, that its operation is directed. Its primary or es- 

 sential action on the nerves of animals obtains, because these are 

 the media of sensibility in those species which possess them. Ani- 

 mals without a detectable nervous system, {"Bolygastrica," 8fc.) have 

 their vitality extinguished by opium. "The action of opium va- 

 ries with the degree of development of the nervous system," i.e., 

 the manifestations of its actions are varied according to the condition 

 of the co-existing and co-related structures. In plants which have 

 no nerves, nor other especial organs of sensation, but in which sen- 

 sation still exists as the result and the evidence of life, the delete- 

 rious power of opium is fully shewn. If watered with a solution of 

 this poisonous substance, the organic sensibility of the sensitive 

 plants, " Mimosa sensitiva and pudica," is destroyed, they droop and 

 die. Even the Poppy itself, the elaborator of this powerful con- 

 troller of vital action, succumbs beneath its influence, affording the 

 analogue in the vegetable kingdom, to the instance among animals, 

 which perish from the effects of their own virus — Rattle-snake, &c. 



The structure of the capsule likewise presents many points of 

 considerable interest. It bears so close a resemblance to that of 

 Nymphcea, that it formed one of De Candolle's reasons for consider- 

 ing the " Papaveracea?" and " : Nymphceacece" to be allied. 1 The 



1 " Ob. structuram, fructus et stigmatis Papaveri, valde similem." Regni 



Veget. Syst. Nat. vol. ii. p. 42. This similarity of structure is repeatedly 



