140 
NAT. ORDER. PAPAVERACEiE. 
nardly met with such cases ; and even in the recent state of ca- 
tarrhs from cold, I have found the early use of Opium hurtful ; 
and in cases of pnemonic inflammation, I have always found it to 
be very much so, if exhibited before the violence of the disease 
had been moderated by repeated doses of a medicine of a nutral- 
izing quality. When that indeed has been done, I have found the 
Opium very useful in quieting the cough, and I have hardly ever 
found it hurtful by stopping the expectoration. It may suspend 
this for some hours ; but if the glands of the bronchia have been 
duly relaxed by suitable applications, the expectoration, after the 
use of opiates, always returns with more advantage than before. 
The mucus which had issued before, had been poured out from 
tne follicles in an acrid state ; but, by being made to stagnate, it 
becomes milder, and is discharged in what the ancients called a 
concocted state, with more relief to the lungs." 
When Opium is so managed as to procure sweat, it will tend 
to remove an inflammatory state of the system, and may prove 
generally useful. A notable instance of this may be observed in 
the cure of acute rheumatism, by means of Dover's powder. 
In the small-pox. Opium, since the time of Sydenham, has 
been generally and successfully prescribed, especially after the 
fifth day of the disease ; but, during the first stage of the eruptive 
fever, we are told that it always does harm ; an opinion which 
our experience in the treatment of small-pox in this city warrants 
"US to contradict ; for even at that period of the disorder, we often 
find the pulse languid, and the countenance pale, though pains in 
the loins and head are at the same time very severe. These 
symptoms, with restlessness, and other signs of irritability, which 
appear for some days after the attack of the disease, are con- 
siderably relieved by Opium ; taking care always to keep the 
bowels sufficiently open, by a free use of the Podophyllum pel- 
tatum. 
In hoemorrhagic disorders, the use of Opium is inferred from 
