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PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM. 
-^-^ of its weight. Hot ether dissolves it freely, and suffers it to 
crystallize on cooling. According to M. Magendie, a single grain 
of pure narcotine dissolved in oil, and given to a dog, produced a 
state of stupor, but very different from sleep, and death generally 
in twenty-four hours. Narcotine combined with aceti cacid, he 
found to produce quite a different effect, twenty-four grains 
having been given to an animal without its perishing. While under 
its influence, he says, they are agitated by convulsions, similar to 
those produced by au over-dose of camphor; the same signs of 
fright, the same incapability of going forward, the foaming at the 
mouth, and convulsions of the jaws. The most interesting, and 
indeed the most important experiment related by Magendie, was 
the action of the combined substances, morphine and narcotine, on 
a dog. He dissolved a grain of each in acetic acid, and intro- 
duced the mixture into the pleura of the animal, which soon 
fell asleep ; but he says a very remarkable struggle appeared 
to go on for an hour between the strangulating effects of the 
narcotine and the anodyne effects of the morphine ; at last the 
animal slept, probably under the sole influence of the morphine. 
He adds, *' may it not be inferred from this experiment, which I have 
often repeated in various ways and with analogous results, that the 
variable effects of opium are to be attributed to its containing these 
two opposite principles?'' From these experiments of Magendie, M. 
Robiquet was tempted to prepare an extract of opium which should 
be entirely devoid of narcotine. For this purpose, he macerates 
bruised opium in cold water, filtrates and evaporates to the con- 
sistence of a thick syrup, which he digests in rectified ether, and 
after frequent shakings, decants the solution ; the ether is then 
separated by distillation. This operation is repeated as long as any 
crystals of narcotine appear as the residue of the distillation. When 
these crystals can no longer be discovered, he evaporates the solution 
to a pilular consistence, which he considers as entirely devoid of 
narcotine. M. Magendie in recommending this new preparation of 
opium to the attention of physicians, says, " I have tried the extract, 
thus prepared, on animals. Its action appears to be decidedly 
narcotic, and entirely like that of morphine, only weaker." Mr. 
Haden, the able translator of Magendie's work on these new pre- 
parations, very properly observes, that " the freedom from narcotine 
which characterizes the extractum opii (which is aqueous) ought 
to recommend it to medical men as preferable to the tincture of 
opium, which contains narcotine in abundance, on account of its 
being a spirituous solution." We have ourselves known many persons 
