254 
ON THERAPEUTICS. 
and the various grades of that action are, under different con¬ 
ditions of system, exceedingly desirable ; always upon the 
assumption that the main object is to diminish some exalted or 
excited function. 
As “calmants,” narcotic agents are valuable in small doses, 
when any undue excitement of nervous action is present. 
After operations it frequently happens that much nervous 
excitability is consequent, not so much upon pain or inflam¬ 
mation, as upon the recollection of the violence that has been 
necessarily used, dwelling upon the animal’s mind, and 
occasioning alarm upon the slightest movement or sound. A 
slight wound, or other comparatively trifling accident, or unim¬ 
portant disease, will, in animals of a certain temperament, 
produce these symptoms, and interfere with the progress of 
the cure. In such cases, small doses of chloroform, opium, or 
henbane, act immediately, by lessening the nervous impres¬ 
sibility and calming the excitement. 
As “ anti-spasmodics,” narcotics are particularly valuable; 
their action, indeed, is almost unfailing in intestinal spasm. 
Opium generally at once diminishes the excited irritability of 
the muscular fibre, most probably by lessening the nervous 
action, and thus removing the stimulus. In the extreme and 
continuous spasm of tetanus, belladonna has been found to 
modify the paroxysms; opium has also been effectual for the 
Same purpose, and chloroform when introduced by enema, so 
as to avoid any of the stimulating effects which follow its in- 
halation, is immediately successful in decreasing the excite¬ 
ment and causing at least partial relaxation of the muscies. 
As “ stupefacients,” narcotics are indispensable when exces¬ 
sive pain is an accompaniment of injury or disease, as during 
its existence we shall seek in vain to lessen or remove the 
affection upon which the pain depends, and than which in 
reality it is commonly of greater moment. Nothing is more 
familiar than the fact that death frequently follows injury or 
disease of an unimportant part of the body, solely from the 
pain with which the derangement is associated. To lessen 
the sensibility, to deaden or “ benumb/’ is to render the animal 
in a measure unconscious of the disease, and, at the same 
time, to remove all danger of the serious result that other- 
wise might prematurely happen ; the actual malady may be 
attacked with confidence and deliberation, as the surgeon is 
no longer disconcerted by an observation of suffering upon 
which his remedies exert no ameliorating influence. 
It does not appear that narcotics, even carried to the extent 
of anaesthesia, interfere w ith the actions of other remedies, so 
that where pain become so important an element in a disease. 
