282 REMARKS UPON THE COMPOSITION OF CHLORODYNE. 
blood corpuscles, or what is better known as congestion,) and in rare cases de¬ 
lirium and convulsions. It contracts the pupil, and, in fatal cases, its action 
terminates in profound coma. It appears to act upon, more especially, that 
part of the nervous centre known as the cerebrum, and hence, taking it for 
granted that the cerebrum is the seat of the mind, in other words the source of 
thought, memory, perception, and sensation, w r e expect to find these faculties 
in abeyance whilst this portion of the nervous system is under the influence of 
this drug. The cerebrum, however, consisting of two hemispheres, which may 
be looked upon as two minds, but which in perfect health work in absolute and 
harmonious unity, differs from this in certain diseased states; and when one 
hemisphere is disordered, say simply congested, the impressions received under 
such circumstances do not engender unity of ideas; on the contrary, two sen¬ 
sations are produced, different ideas are at the same moment called forth, and 
two trains of thoughts may be carried on by the one mind, acting and being 
acted upon differently in the two hemispheres. Under these circumstances, 
some of the incoherences of dreaming and delirium are explicable. 
Belladonna. —The action of this drug is decidedly antagonistic and dissimilar 
to that of opium. It never produces congestion of the brain ; on the contrary, 
it produces anaemia. It acts directly upon the nervous, but more especially 
upon the organic or sympathetic, system of nerves; and whatever effects it 
produces upon the cerebro-spinal system, these are, for the most part, primarily 
of a reflex nature. I am greatly inclined to believe that it does not act, like 
opium, upon the cerebral hemispheres, but that its action is directed more to 
the cerebellum and medulla oblongata. I have frequently noticed persons, 
whilst under the influence of large doses of this drug, to want that voluntary 
power of self-movement and co-ordination ; there has been a want of harmony 
in their movements, a feeling somewhat akin to drunkenness and inability to 
preserve their equilibrium. It dilates the pupil of the eye. This is in direct 
contradistinction to opium, which invariably contracts it. It produces dimness 
of, and in some cases double, vision, dryness of the tongue, fauces, and throat; 
in poisonous doses, intense thirst, but inability to swallow drink, great pain 
over the region of the stomach and prsecordia, intense pain at the back of the 
head, overflow of tears, a feeling of suffocation and inability to inspire freely, 
from partial paralysis of the diaphragm* The fatal termination to poisonous 
doses of this drug is due to coma, not direct, but indirect through apulla. 
Indian Hemp .—This drug is anodyne, and appears to possess an essential 
property in controlling inordinate muscular spasm. Linnaeus speaks of its 
properties as Vis narcotica , phantastica, dementens , etc. ; it undoubtedly pro¬ 
duces pleasurable ideas, and in some instances allays and tranquillizes irritability 
of the nervous system, where opium and other sedatives fail to produce any 
effect. As I said before, I doubt the existence of this drug in Dr. Browne’s 
chlorodyne. If it does contain any narcotic of this class, it is tobacco. 
Having thus reviewed what I consider to be the physiological action of the two 
most essential drugs in the composition of chlorodyne, I will now lay before your 
readers the following case which I treated, where the patient who had been in 
the habit of taking chlorodyne (like many others, to the utter and ruinous im¬ 
pairment of their nervous systems, the prostration of all vital energy, tending 
finally to the destruction of every intellectual and mental faculty), took an 
overdose. From his own statement, it must have been nearly one-thircl of an 
ounce, which would undoubtedly have proved fatal, had not the proper remedial 
agents been promptly and energetically administered. 
J. C. was admitted into Charing Cross Hospital, accompanied by two 
policemen, who said, they found him lying upon the pavement in a state of 
great distress, and by him, or in his hand, was found an empty one-ounce vial 
blue bottle, labelled “Dr. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne,” and part of the usual 
