MORPHINE. 
303 
§ 363-] 
Goats. —According to Guinard, goats are proof against the narcotic 
influence of morphine. Large doses kill goats, but death is caused by 
interference with the respiratory function. A young goat weighing 30 
kilos, showed little effect beyond a slightly increased cerebral excitability 
after two doses of 8 and 8-5 grms. respectively of morphine hydro¬ 
chlorate had been administered by intravenous injection, the second 
being given an hour and a half after the first. To the same animal two 
days afterwards 195 grms. were administered in the same way, yet the 
goat recovered. The lethal dose for a goat seems to be no less than 
1000 times that which will produce narcotism in man, and lies somewhere 
between 0-25 and 0-30 grm. per kilo, of the body weight. 1 
Cats and the Felidae. —According to Guinard, 2 morphine injected 
subcutaneously or intravenously into cats, in doses varying from 0*4 
mgrm. to 90 mgrms. per kilo., never produces sleep or narcotic prostra¬ 
tion. On the contrary, it causes a remarkable degree of excitement, 
increasing in intensity with the dose given. This excitement is evidently 
accompanied by disorder in the functions of the brain, and if the dose is 
large convulsions set in, ending in death. According to Milne-Edwards, 
the same symptoms are produced in lions and tigers. 
Birds, especially pigeons, are able to eat almost incredible quantities 
of opium. A pigeon is said 3 to have consumed 801 grains of opium, 
mixed with its food, in fourteen days. The explanation of this is that 
the poison is not absorbed ; for subcutaneous injections of salts of 
morphine act rapidly on all birds hitherto experimented upon. 
convulsive phenomena may continue, with intervals, for an hour. Differences are 
observed with different animals ; but the chief characters of the phenomena are as 
described. In certain animals, and with small doses, there may be a brief con¬ 
vulsive phase at the commencement of the sleep, but it is much less constant than 
the later period of spasm. These convulsions, the authors believe, have not pre¬ 
viously been described, except as a consequence of very large doses, amounting to 
grammes. The period of cerebral excitement, described by Claude Bernard as occur¬ 
ring at the commencement of the sleep from morphine, is a phenomenon of a dif¬ 
ferent order. The conclusions drawn from the experiments are:—(1) That morphine 
is not diametrically opposed to thebaine, as is often stated, since it has, to a certain 
degree, the convulsive properties of the latter alkaloid. (2) That the excito-motor 
action of opium cannot be exclusively attributed to the convulsive alkaloids, but is, 
in fact, due to those which are soporific. According to the ordinary composition 
of opium, 5 centigrammes of morphine represent about a milligramme of thebaine. 
But these experiments show that the quantity of morphine has a much more powerful 
convulsive action than a milligramme of thebaine. (3) There is not the supposed 
antagonism between the action of morphine on the frog and on the mammalia. ( 4 ) 
The researches hitherto undertaken on the antagonism between morphine and other 
agents need to be repeated, and a separate study made of the substances which 
antagonise the convulsive and soporific action. 
1 Compt. Rend., cxvi. 520-522. 
2 Ibid., cxi. 981-983. The bovine animals also get excited, and no narcotic 
effect is produced by dosing them with morphine.— Compt. Rend. Soc. de Bioloyie, 
t. iv., v. 
3 Hermann’s Lehrbuch der exper. Toxicoloyie, p. 374. 
